1.32: Sex and Intimacy
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Learning Objectives
- Explain the concept of intimacy, particularly emotional intimacy.
Watch this video or scan the QR code to explore how casual sex can affect you.
I believe, and I would like to make a case for those who do not believe it, that intimacy does not always involve sex or sexual intercourse; that sexual intercourse does not always involve (emotional) intimacy. And further, contrary to some views, even intimacy that is (primarily) sexual can be achieved without intercourse.
Now there is one use and dictionary meaning of intimate denoting sexual intercourse specifically, as when someone asks whether a dating couple has “been intimate” yet, but that is different from the sense of intimacy involving emotional closeness, psychological openness, and the comfortable voluntary sharing of one’s most personal and private or secret thoughts, feelings, actions, etc. with another. And it is this latter kind of intimacy, let me call it emotional intimacy, that I am particularly concerned with because I believe it is this kind of intimacy that people generally mean when they discuss seeking intimacy in a relationship, though I also want to discuss what I think is a related point involving intimacy that is primarily or strictly sexual.
The reason I discuss this is two-fold. First, I have heard a number of comments that imply that somehow if people do not have intercourse they have not shared real intimacy, even if they have had mutually orgasmic sex via, say, petting to climax. Phil Donahue, one morning, as just one example, discussing with prostitutes how they try to protect against getting AIDS, was informed that hand manipulation of the client was frequently used instead of vaginal intercourse. His response was something like “So in some cases then there is no real intimacy?” However, that sounded like it was generally really intimate to me, at least sexually intimate. It may not have been emotionally intimate; but having sex with a prostitute, even when it involves intercourse, may not be particularly emotionally intimate either. And if, as some reports indicate, many men often pay prostitutes primarily to listen to them talk, the conversation may have more to do with whether emotional intimacy is achieved than the kind of sex, if there is any sex at all. I would think someone needs to spell out just what they mean when they talk about “real” intimacy with a prostitute.
Second, though I am not certain whether this involves intimacy or something else, I have heard a number of both men and women say that the only possibly satisfying or meaningful or real sex is that which involves intercourse, and often by that, some even further mean intercourse that is “unobstructed” by something like a condom. And these people seem to mean or imply that this is not (just) because they think a condom makes intercourse physically unsatisfying or orgasm impossible for them, but because there is something more emotionally or metaphysically basic involved. If a condom were perfectly undetectable in feeling, these people seem to imply or say that it would still be unacceptable, even though they are not trying to risk or cause pregnancy. Further, even if these people can have an orgasm or physically satisfying sex without intercourse, they still seem to think that is not “real” sex or is not as emotionally satisfying or important.
(It may be that some people feel that sexual intimacy involves intercourse without birth control and that it involves the willingness to risk and accept or welcome pregnancy with each other, but (1) the above view about intercourse is held by some women who take birth control pills, some men with vasectomies, and people of both sexes who are infertile for some other reason and who are therefore not risking pregnancy, and (2) most people who are sexually active, in a society where infinitely large families are not necessary and where reasonable forms of birth control are readily available, realize that risking pregnancy each time one has sex can have very unhappy or even disastrous consequences. These people are not trying to risk pregnancy. And, in fact, fear of pregnancy or disease can be one very powerful element that makes emotional intimacy with intercourse impossible even if it possibly allows orgasm and some sort of physical satisfaction.)
If these people are wrong, as I think they are, that (unprotected) intercourse is necessary for (sexual) intimacy or even sexual satisfaction, then in today’s society, they sometimes are unwisely and unnecessarily risking pregnancy, VD, and AIDS, and advocating others do the same, when they have sex, particularly when it is with a new partner or partner who may have acquired a sexually transmitted disease. They are unnecessarily and unwisely risking these things to achieve an intimacy that may result from intercourse but does not really require it to occur. Those teenagers and other sexual novices in particular, who feel more compelled to have sex than they do to abstain from sex in spite of the risk of pregnancy, disease, and the emotional heartbreaks, disappointments, and crises that sex in a relationship sometimes intensifies, may be well advised to try (to learn) safely petting each other to orgasm to see whether that does not provide sufficient pleasure and intimacy instead of having intercourse, even with a condom. Such sex may at least prevent risk of pregnancy and disease. I think there are positions and techniques for petting that can be very pleasurable, satisfying, and intimate.
Further, petting to climax may even require or result in more intimacy because it generally takes a bit more experimentation, exploration, and more communication, and is in some ways more difficult than intercourse is. It is generally worth the time and “trouble” to learn, and it can be very pleasurable to do so if one, and one’s partner are patient and understanding. Sexually and emotionally mutually satisfying intercourse also actually frequently tends to require patience and understanding, but that point escapes some people, particularly some novices (both male and female — males because they do not know how or care enough to bring a woman to orgasm, females because they do not know how to help the male help them, and both because they mistakenly think getting themselves or each other to climax is all that is ever emotionally, or even physically important about sex). I suspect learning to pet someone to climax generally will require more of a commitment, more understanding, greater sensitivity, more tenderness and concern than just having intercourse. The mutual exercise and demonstration of these traits to each other can help produce emotional intimacy and appreciation with each other, over and above that produced by the physical pleasure alone. In some cases, it will even be more fun.
Novices in particular need to remember that touching can be very pleasurable, that pleasure is much of the point of sex, and that in sex, the “journey” can be half (or more) of the thrill and enjoyment. Finally, in this regard, it may be that the presupposition one has about how sex ought to be physically and/or emotionally satisfying determines what actually will satisfy a person. People who think they have to have intercourse (protected or not) to be satisfied, may indeed need that generally. People who do not presuppose that may be satisfied by such things as petting (to climax, or even sometimes not to climax, which for some people may be unwarranted or frightening). The latter presupposition may be a safer and happier one; and if all it takes to be true is an early introduction to it —an introduction to it before one gets the idea that only intercourse is the point or thrill of sex— then perhaps such early introduction is an important thing to attempt.
Now some people claim they cannot reach a state of emotional intimacy in some cases with another person until and unless they have had satisfying sex (however achieved) that removes all the emotional barriers, defenses, anxieties, and tensions that prevent intimacy (in the sense of closeness, openness, honest communication, and sharing of private and personal feelings and ideas)— barriers that nothing else seems to eliminate in the way that satisfying sex does. These people seem to think that sexual intimacy is (psychologically) easier to attempt or achieve than other kinds of intimacy. For some people, perhaps it is easier. But even when this is true, the sex itself is still not emotional intimacy; it is just a method of attaining it. Even for these people, if they are right about themselves (as opposed to just unaware of other methods that might work just as well), sex leads to emotional intimacy, and may even be a part of it, but it is not the emotional or “real” intimacy itself or is not the most important part of it.
I claimed earlier that there can be intercourse without emotional intimacy. (Rape, of course, is an obvious example; but more relevant to this discussion are cases involving mutual willingness for sex.) One example is that portrayed in the movie Klute by Jane Fonda who plays a prostitute who, while she is moaning and talking passionately during intercourse with a client, is looking behind his back at her watch to see how much longer his session has. She is acting passionately and doing something that is physically intimate, but her heart and her mind are not in it. She is not passionate, just pretending to be. She is just doing her job. One does not have to be a prostitute to have intercourse as long as one’s heart or mind is not really involved in it. One might have anxiety about finances, family, health, the problems of a friend or loved one, fear of discovery, pregnancy, or whatever, that sex at the time cannot override. One might not feel particularly romantic, loving, or sexually interested at the time, and may only be obliging a partner one cares about. One might not be in love with one’s partner, but only in heat —that is, only sexually or physically aroused— and that may cause a certain emotional distance even though the sex is physically satisfying, or may cause that distance as soon as the sex is physically satisfying. One might only be experimenting to see what sex is like (or is like with this person) and may find it physically good (or not) and yet not very emotionally satisfying or overcoming of alienation, loneliness, or emotional distance. One might feel some sort of peer or other kinds of social pressure to have intercourse with someone, or at a time, one really would rather not, but is afraid to refuse or does not know how to refuse without causing problems (like on a date with someone really special or important, or even on one’s wedding night if one is really too tired or too emotionally exhausted to be really interested but feels that may not be a good time to voice such disinterest).
The above cases are perhaps only one step removed from a kind of physical intimacy that is certainly not generally emotionally intimate or even sexually intimate —going to the doctor for something like a pelvic exam, breast exam, testicle or prostate, proctoscopy, or urinary tract exams. One might let a doctor examine one’s most intimate or private anatomy without thereby feeling emotionally close to, or psychologically and confidentially comfortable with, that doctor.
Oppositely, I think it is quite possible for at least some people to feel very close, open, loving, and able to be sharing with each other, or with many people, without having to have any sort of physical or sexual intimacy with them. A shared lovely walk, beautiful sunset, experience with children, emotionally powerful movie or play, stimulating, enlightening, revealing, or personally compatible conversation, great chess game or tennis match or football season with one’s teammates, the completion of writing a book together or the completion of any sort of worthwhile and arduous chore together, attending the funeral of a mutual friend and sharing grief or reflections on the meaning of (the friend’s) life, surviving a harrowing experience together, or doing any of a number of things might make people feel very close and very comfortable with each other and cause or make possible emotional intimacy.
Given that these other experiences can cause or lead to intimacy, and given that sexual intercourse is not always intimate, I now wish to return to the issue of actual and/or unprotected intercourse as somehow being the only (even sexually) intimate behavior. The examples mentioned above on behalf of both propositions make me really unable to understand anyone’s contention that only intercourse without a condom or some other form of protection is (sexually) intimate. I certainly, for example, think it is very sexually intimate generally for a couple to be willingly and/or lovingly caressing each other’s genitals in a way that brings pleasure to each. I am not sure that any sort of intercourse makes it more intimate, even if it makes it feel somehow different or makes it even more pleasurable, or just easier, and even if it is the only way one might be able to cause or achieve orgasm, which generally it is not. Most people, at most times, do not let just anyone play with their private parts to give them pleasure (nor do they play with just anyone else’s). That is a very physically or sexually intimate thing to do —a very personal and generally private thing to do. And if two people can pet or otherwise stroke each other to orgasm, they may choose to do so, rather than have intercourse, because that is more physically satisfying at the time, more interesting at the time, less risking of pregnancy, less risking of disease, more pleasurable at the time, more exhilarating at the time (like surreptitiously when at the table of a dinner party), or because of whatever reason. And all that seems pretty (sexually, if not otherwise) intimate to me.
Further, as many poorer X-rated movies demonstrate, there are plenty of positions and motions of intercourse that seem purely mechanical and not very emotionally intimate or personal, and sometimes not even physically pleasurable at all. Participants prolong orgasm long past any pleasurable reason for doing so; they even seem to get into and remain in positions guaranteed to prevent any kind of pleasure (that might encourage orgasm). And this seems to be a rather senseless or purposeless, pointless activity —seeing how long two people can have sex by having sex without any particular pleasure for either partner. People in real life sometimes experiment or try such positions. Sometimes a position will be good for one partner but not the other; sometimes it will not be particularly good for either. Pleasureless positions of intercourse (or positions of pleasureless intercourse) are hardly more intimate, and probably a good deal less intimate, than mutually pleasurable petting or kissing. There is certainly nothing emotionally intimate about such intercourse (other than the satisfaction, if any, of willingly making a sacrifice for someone else’s pleasure if they are having any).
When massage parlors first operated in the metropolitan area where I lived, I went to a few, not to have sex or even a massage (sex or a massage in places that looked like the ones in that city were not even remotely enticing to me, and the idea of having sex of any sort with someone who had sex with you only because you paid them to do it has never interested me at all), but to find out by asking questions what it was that I would be missing. I was interested in the price and what you got for that price, what the women were like, and what kinds of men would frequent such places (besides police looking for evidence to make arrests). Talking with the women revealed some very interesting attitudes toward sex. (One group was watching a soap opera in the “lobby” and was really upset at one of the characters because on the soap she was having an affair with a married man. They thought that was terrible. They didn’t consider what they were doing as being anything like that.) But the most intriguing comment to me was by the girl who told me their price for a “massage” was $45 (this was around 1974) for a half-hour. I asked why it was so much more expensive there when some other places just down the street were only charging around $10. She said, “Those places only give you ‘a handjob’ (for that)”. She meant to disparage such places, of course. I didn’t say anything, but it seemed to me the $10 place then would be the better deal. If I wanted to pay for sex with someone I did not care about, who did not care about me, who I probably would not be interested in even asking out, in a place that was at best unromantic (and at worst sleazy and repulsive), I think I would rather have it for the least amount of money, the least amount of physical contact, and the least chance of catching anything or risking one of those people being the mother of a child of mine. To me, it was not that you got more sexual intimacy for more money; just more risk for more money. And all the places seemed to me to offer too much sexual or physical “intimacy” for the price —even if it had been free.
The Concept of Intimacy
In the above, I explain that many people desire emotional intimacy and that it does not always accompany sexual intimacy and may, and in fact often does, occur in non- sexual circumstances. Sexual (or physical) intimacy and emotional intimacy are not the same thing and do not necessarily occur at the same time (e.g., a medical exam may go beyond physical intimacy without being in any way emotionally intimate in so doing).
I want to try to give a fuller characterization here of what emotional intimacy is. Before I do that, I want to emphasize I am not necessarily talking about sex, and that many intimate moments can occur in daily life if people were open to them. Just as we can talk about intimate dinner parties or intimate social gatherings, any meeting between people offers the potential for intimacy of conversation or an intimate exchange of ideas or the sharing of a meaningful and intimate experience that has nothing to do with immodesty, with sex, or with matters of normal privacy, sensitivity, or potential embarrassment. While revealing private details of one’s life may be an intimate experience, it is only a special case of a far more general concept — that of sharing, in a sense given below, ideas, feelings, or experiences that are personally important and deeply meaningful. When sex is not particularly meaningful it is not emotionally intimate. And since many things besides sex can be deeply meaningful or personally important, there are many more opportunities for emotional intimacy than might be generally thought. And those opportunities do not need to be preludes to attempts at sexual intimacy or a romantic relationship. While loving relationships may include intimacy, intimacy does not need to include love or romance. Intimacy can be, and I think in many cases should be, a part of simple ethical behavior toward others, whether inside or outside of a loving relationship.
Emotions and feelings can be divided in the following ways: those which have a logical component attached to them, and those which do not, in the following sense. One might, for example, feeling giddy and excited or happy, but for no apparent reason. It is not necessary that something, in particular, is on his or her mind, for one to feel happy or for one to feel giddy, or sad. “I just feel really good today; I don’t know why; nothing particular has happened” is a perfectly common answer on occasion to the question of why one seems so excited or happy or giddy. Similarly, one might say, “I don’t know why I feel sad today; nothing bad has happened that I know of. I just feel kind of blue.” Those emotions do not require any particular state of affairs or other states of mind. They can exist, in a sense, by themselves. Similarly one might feel “edgy” or “anxious” or “on edge” without feeling anxious or on edge about anything in particular.
But other feelings are different. They require some companion idea or some companion circumstance to actually exist in the world. For example, although one can feel edgy in general without thinking something is or might be wrong, one cannot feel “edgy about” some particular thing without thinking that there might be something wrong with that thing — say, a friend’s surgical outcome or test for a disease or an exam grade. Or, as I have written in Guilt and Forgiveness , feeling guilty requires feeling one has done something actually wrong, not just feeling nervous about being disgraced or punished because others will think one has done wrong even though one thinks one’s actions were justified and were not wrong. One cannot feel guilty unless one believes one did something wrong, even though one might have feelings that are very much like guilt feelings if one is simply afraid of being caught for something one knows others might mistakenly disapprove. In order to feel guilty one does not have to have actually done something wrong, but one has to believe one has.
I believe that emotional intimacy is one of those types of feelings that have not only an emotional aspect or a feeling aspect, but that must have certain circumstances or companion ideas attached to it as well, or what one has is not intimacy but only a false sense of intimacy. The feeling of a false sense of intimacy will be the same as the feeling of an actual intimate moment, but it will not be the same. But it will turn out there are two somewhat different sorts of circumstances or companion ideas that might be involved with feelings of intimacy. These are related but different enough that in one usage or view, what counts as an intimate experience might not count as an intimate experience with the other usages.
To begin with, a fairly clear cut case, suppose two people have had sex and one feels it was truly a wonderful, bonding experience, and just feels a great deal of love, closeness, and affection for the partner and believes that the partner feels the same way and that this has been a truly emotionally, as well as sexually, intimate moment between them. The partner, however, may have his/her mind on some business or other concern, or may be just trying to please his/her mate but is not really all that interested even in sex but is willing to oblige. Perhaps one of them is a writer and during the love-making gets an idea to work into a short story or a novel or essay in progress. While they are outward “there” for and with their partner, even in conversation, what is really going on in their mind is the development of this idea that has somehow popped into their consciousness. If the partner is so involved with his/her own feelings of closeness at this moment that s/he doesn’t notice the other person is actually distracted or thinking about something else, the first person will have considered the time to be a really intimate experience, but may not if they find out the other person did not share that feeling and was, in fact, rather distracted during the time.
There are two possible reactions by the partner who felt there was intimacy. If the person who described the experience as intimate found out that the partner really had his/her mind elsewhere, s/he might say something like “I thought we were having a moment of real intimacy, but it wasn’t; it just seemed that way to me. His/her mind really wasn’t on it.” Or they might say something like “I thought we were having a moment of intimacy but it was just intimate for me, not for him/her. His/her mind was elsewhere.” I want to discuss the first case first because it is less complex and more straightforward.
Intimacy Requiring an Actual “Meeting of Minds”
Take the cases where one says or believes, or sees the reasonableness in statements such as “I thought we were having a moment of real intimacy, but it wasn’t; it just seemed that way to me. His/her mind really wasn’t on it.” I would like to suggest the following as a way of explaining what it means for an experience to be emotionally intimate:
For an experience between two or more people to be intimate, each must be aware that the experience is being focused on and appreciated as important and significantly meaningful 1 other(s) and to him/herself and each must be appreciative that this shared focus and shared appreciation or meaningfulness of the phenomenon or experience itself is occurring.
There are therefore at least six things that must occur: (1) each person must simultaneously focus on some phenomenon or experience, (2) the phenomenon or experience must be a good one and recognized as such by the participants, (3) the phenomenon or experience must be simultaneously meaningful for each person, (4) each person must appreciate (e.g., be thankful for or happy about) the meaningfulness of the experience of the phenomenon, (5) each person must be aware of his/her own and each others’ (A) focus, (B) feeling of meaningfulness, and (C) appreciation of the experience, and (6) each person must feel appreciation for the sharing of that meaningfulness and for the mutual appreciation of the experience.
If any of the individuals involved lacks any of these things, then the experience is not intimate either for them or with them for the others, in this sense of intimacy. It is not only not an intimate experience for them, it is not an intimate experience with 2 them. That is why if they are distracted by something else and either do not have their mind on the same experience the other person or people do, or they do not know or appreciate the meaningfulness to the other person, or they do not experience any meaningfulness themselves, the experience is not really intimate — either for them or with them. In this sense, the experience is not intimate for them nor is it intimate for the other person, though it may have seemed so to that other person at the time.
Notice that sex is just one kind of activity in which this sort of thing can occur — as both people are focused on and appreciative of both their own and (generally) the other person’s emotional and physical pleasure. It is that successful attention and appreciation, rather than the mere physical pleasure itself (no matter how good that might be) that makes the experience an emotionally intimate, rather than just a physically pleasurable, one.
“One-sided” Intimacy
Now, look at the case where someone says something like “I thought we were having a moment of intimacy but it was just intimate for me, not for him/her. His/her mind was elsewhere.”
There are, I think, two possible, different meanings or conditions for intimacy when someone says something of this sort or considers it to be a reasonable kind of statement:
(1) It can mean either that an experience is, and remains, intimate to a person when it seems or appears, at the time it occurs, to meet the above conditions even though that person is mistaken about the other person’s other people’s focus or senses of appreciation and even if the other person finds out about the mistake later, or it can mean
(2) that an experience is intimate to, and for, a person if and when she or he finds it personally meaningful, good, and is appreciative of it and is grateful s/he shared that experience with the other person(s) even though the other person(s) did not experience it in the same way with her or him.
No Need to Choose Between Mutual and One-sided Intimacy
Since in actual usage, people do talk about intimacy as either being one-sided or as needing to be mutual in order to occur at all, it is not that there is only one definition we must choose. Both are correct because both occur in ordinary use. The important thing is to understand what is meant and what has actually occurred. It is not only important to understand what others mean when they talk about intimate experiences, but it is also, and perhaps more, important for oneself to understand that any perception of mutual intimacy may be mistaken and that this can have unconscious ramifications for how one feels about the experience later, depending on which sense of intimacy one harbors in some latent or undeveloped, unarticulated way. If someone finds out that a wonderful experience they mistakenly thought was mutual actually was not mutual, as long as it is not a case involving deception, they should not abandon their wonder or appreciation for the experience just because they found out it was not intimate for both of them. Mutually intimate experiences are better generally, but that does not mean one-sided intimate experiences are necessarily bad. Again, as long as no intentional deception is involved.
The other important thing is to understand what sorts of behaviors and feelings are appropriate to intimacies of each kind. For example, college students often become enamored of a teacher because the teacher may address a topic or issue that is important to the student in a way that is enlightening and particularly meaningful to that student. The student may take that as a sign of intellectual intimacy — a kind of meeting of the minds. This is often a case of one-sided feeling of intimacy, and the student needs to be aware of that before s/he does something embarrassing or compromising. The teacher, being supposedly older and wiser, should also be aware of what may be the belief of the student and not take advantage of someone’s mistaking one-sided intimacy or a feeling of (mutual) intimacy for actual mutual intimacy. Moreover, each should know that a meeting of the minds does not then mean that a meeting of bodies is necessarily appropriate — that intellectual intimacy is not the same as, and does not necessarily justify, other forms of intimacy. Just because a meaningful meeting of the minds is today somewhat rare (in American society, for example), it does not need to be confused with love or infatuation. It need not be an aphrodisiac just because it is desirable and exciting.
Opening and Recognizing Greater Possibilities for Intimacy
Since the crucial initial aspect for intimacy is sharing in what is good and personally important to another person and having it be important to you while you are together, intimacy can be facilitated or established by caring about another person and helping bring about what is important to them in a way that they particularly appreciate and that you are happy to provide.
There are often opportunities to do this if one simply takes the time to notice or think about what is important to others or to probe gently in order to find it out (without prying or being intrusive or ill-mannered 3 . Any time one is particularly helpful to another person, especially perhaps in meeting their normally unrecognized needs or needs they do not even know they have, or needs which they are initially hesitant to express, the seeds of intimacy have a chance to flourish. Any time one can address in a genuine way something that is interesting and meaningful to another person, especially if it is a topic that normally people are initially hesitant to address, one has a chance to establish intimacy. I met a woman in a wheelchair one time at a social event and asked her why she was in it. She said she had multiple sclerosis. Since that affects your body more than your mind and prevents you from doing what your mind would like to do and thinks it ought to be able to do, and is as much frustrating as it is debilitating, I said, “That is a pain in the ass, isn’t it?” And she looked up at me with a moment of surprise and then broke into the biggest smile and said, “That is exactly what it is!”
In another instance, I visited my college roommate’s fiancée in a hospital ward after she had an appendectomy. While I was there, a sixteen-year-old girl was futilely calling for a nurse, and I went over to her bed and asked if I could help or if she needed some sort of medical assistance.
She said it was nothing. But an older woman called me over and told me the girl’s bedpan needed emptying and that was why she was calling for a nurse. I went back to the girl and said I could empty the bedpan if someone would just point me the way to a bathroom. The girl was totally embarrassed, but I just picked up the bedpan, emptied it, washed it out and returned it. She was mortified. I just smiled and said, “Oh, I’m sure that you would have done the same for me.” She laughed, and we were okay after that. Her mother soon returned from her lunch and took me aside and told me that her daughter had been an active person, a cheerleader at school when one day suddenly she became paralyzed from the waist down and no one knew what was the cause. The girl, being young, was sure that she would recover, but everyone else was terribly worried and all around her were treating her with kid gloves. I sensed that had begun to wear thin with her and that it was even beginning to harm her confidence of recovery. We talked a while, and as I left she asked whether I would come back to see her again the next day. I had already walked partway out of the ward and I turned and said, “Of course; just don’t go running off with anyone else in the meantime.” All the women in the ward gasped simultaneously at what they considered to be an accidental poor choice of words. But I had chosen my words carefully, and the girl’s smile at them lit up the room. It was a delight to see. She had been telling her mother that she was going to get well and leave the hospital on her own two legs, and she and I were the only ones who believed that or talked as though we did. I saw no reason to discourage her at a time that doctors had no clue what either the diagnosis or prognosis was.
One may as well act on hope, and the energy it brings, when there is no good evidence hope cannot be fulfilled. I told her that before she left, I wanted the first dance. Two or three weeks later, I was able to escort her out the door on her own two feet — after talking a nurse out of the required wheelchair exit at the threshold. She had recovered. Last I heard, in talking with her mother by phone, she had made a complete and total recovery, had grown up, married, and had children of her own and all was well.
I do wedding photography, and weddings are situations that can be fraught with anxiety for brides, grooms, families, and there are two kinds of wedding photographers — those who keep their distance and just take pictures of whatever is in front of their camera at the appropriate times, and those who, as one photographer one time put it, not only take pictures but “become for a few hours on her wedding day the best friend a bride has” — the person who understands and appreciates her state of mind, her varying needs for guidance, focus, relaxation, distraction, perspective, and attentiveness to the interests of all her guests, not just those who happen to engage her attention at any one time. This is true, though sometimes to a lesser extent for one’s relationship with the groom, with the bride’s mother and father, and even, in some cases with the parents of the groom, who often are not sure what their proper role or amount of visibility ought to be. If you can help everyone have a good time meeting each others’ needs and interests and those of their guests, they will be most appreciative and one will get heartfelt expressions of gratitude before the film is developed and the pictures are seen. It is not uncommon to hear helpful photographers praised as “great photographers” at the wedding reception itself even though there will be no visible evidence of their photography skills for at least a couple of days. Even in the studio, many people would prefer to have a root canal than to get their picture taken. To understand that and to overcome that feeling by showing you understand it and by being able to make them feel comfortable in front of the camera is, I think, an opportunity for intimacy, however short-lived it might be.
Similarly, teaching school even in a large lecture hall, or conducting a business meeting, affords opportunities for teachers to foster intimacy with their students and bosses with their staff. Good actors and entertainers can establish intimacy with their patrons in certain theaters. A theater that seats 300 to 500 people may be quite intimate when the production is really good and somehow tuned to satisfying the audience’s needs, and people will come from the performance exclaiming what an intimate theater or intimate performance or intimate experience it was.
Many doctors, nurses, and medical assistants can be intimate on one level while remaining properly professionally detached on another. I had to have a barium enema and set of X-rays one time, and it was not the most comfortable of circumstances in which to be, between the potential humiliation and the concern for the outcome. The med-tech made it much easier for me from the very outset when she put on her rubber gloves and said to me, with a twinkle in her eyes as she looked into mine, while I sat on the X-ray table in my hospital gown, “For the next half hour I am going to become your new best friend.” Of course, a statement like that might not be helpful at all for a male tech to say to a female patient, but when she said it, she was saying in essence, with a good touch of humor, that she knows this is scary, embarrassing, and uncomfortable but she is going to do her best not to let it be that way, and she is giving confidence that she will be successful in that endeavor. She was doing the difficult job of essentially establishing an emotional intimacy that overrode and put into a minor perspective the physical intimacy that was the nature of her professional task that morning. The fact that an hour later she would have another patient and would have totally forgotten about me, did not matter to me. It was her attention and concern for me at the time and the effort she made to succeed with me at the time that mattered, and that personalized the experience in a good way.
It may be thought that people who can do that well under trying circumstances have a gift, but the first part of having such a gift is recognizing the need for it, and being willing to take the risk of making oneself vulnerable to an unkind or cold response, in order to try to help a sensitive fellow human being through a difficult time. It requires the same gift to help people in what may start out seeming to be normal circumstances. But it is a gift that can be cultivated. Every contact affords the potential opportunity to bond with another in a personal and intimate way, without necessarily jeopardizing professional distance, integrity, and competency. But for many people, it is difficult to initiate intimacy because they try to hide their own vulnerability and isolation and their most private thoughts they mistakenly believe are theirs alone and too unique or strange to express. Often they are afraid of meeting a rebuff to any overture to meaningful conversation. And some people are indeed resistant to comments that try to get “through to them”. Unfortunately they also sometimes, or temporarily, ruin opportunities not only for themselves but for the next person as they make the initiator feel they are doing something wrong and hesitant to try with the next person.
The trick is to realize that for the most part, if you have thought up something or are troubled by something, others will have entertained the same ideas or be receptive to it, but you have to bring it up. For example, at weddings, while everyone else is saying affectedly polite, saccharine things about the couple’s getting married, if you say instead that you think weddings are appropriate for young people because they are too naive to know better, you will be surprised at how much smiling agreement you get and what a torrent of confirming comments will follow. At a grocery store one time, two women were standing for a long time in front of the canned tuna shelf and I walked up and said, “What, are you guys standing here so long because you are trying to find a dented can to serve to your husbands?” And they both looked at me and said with a laugh “You know, there have been times I’ve thought about that.” The odds were good.
One time I thought I had really overstepped my bounds and I said something I immediately had regretted until it turned out later to have been for the best. Like the med-tech mentioned above, it seems to be generally best to address with humor what is likely bothering people than to try to pretend there is nothing wrong and let people just suffer in silence and maintain either a distant or strained atmosphere. I was photographing a wedding in which the father of the groom, who had been teasing me earlier, was noticeably tense while I was trying to take the group and family pictures. I tried all the usual ploys to get him to relax and smile, and nothing was working. He was older, and his children, all standing there in the family photo, were adults. The father had been divorced once or twice before, as had the bride’s father, and all the mothers and stepmothers were in attendance. I thought maybe that was bothering him or somehow making him very uncomfortable, so I wanted to address it in a humorous way. But the minute I said what I did, I felt I had gone too far. While he was standing in the group, not responding to my most recent normal attempt to get him to smile, I stopped and said for all to hear, “I just don’t understand it; I would have thought that being here in the same room at the same time with all the women you have ever been married to would have made you really happy.” His children roared with laughter, and when they stopped laughing he smiled at me and said “Where is your car parked?” And I said, “If you only hurt my car, I will consider myself lucky.” After that, he was great in the pictures, and later at the reception, he came up to me and put his arm on my shoulder and thanked me for helping him loosen up and enjoy the wedding. He said he really appreciated it.
It does not always require humor. In photographing people who are nervous, it often makes them feel more comfortable if you say that you or they need to move a bit because you don’t have a flattering angle, or that they need to change position or clothes because in two dimensions the angle or that outfit will make them look fat even though it is not that way in real life. By being honest with them about what doesn’t look good and why, people seem to have more confidence that you know what you are doing and they get really pleased when you do say “that looks great now” because they know you sincerely think so. If you only say good things from the beginning, no matter what they do, most people are suspicious and become even more self- conscious.
In teaching philosophy at a black college, I often challenged my students’ ideas, even about racism (though I am white and have always lived in suburbs, and they were primarily from an inner-city). Whenever I disagreed with students about anything, I asked them to justify their position and I argued with them when I thought they were making reasoning errors. And I would almost never let any disagreement drop until we had resolved it. There were a few things we couldn’t resolve, but I had made clear to them, and they knew I meant it, that their grades did not depend on their agreeing with me, so they were free to maintain their position unless I could honestly convince them otherwise. Usually I could; sometimes I couldn’t. What was interesting to me was that they really appreciated that I tried. One class said this was the first time for them in school that any teacher ever cared what they thought and cared enough to disagree with them. Another time, we were talking about racism in America, near the end of the term, and in the midst of the arguments and explanations, one of the girls said “But you don’t understand. Whenever black and white people are together in this country, it is in a white area of town and the blacks are outnumbered, which is intimidating. You never see white people in a black area of town where they are the minority.” The other students all concurred. For a minute I thought she had a point, and then I remembered I was a white person sitting there in a black college in a classroom in the midst of only black students. I held up the backs of my hands to her and said, “What about this? All of you are black and I’m still white, aren’t I? And I am here.” The other students looked surprised, but the girl who had made the comment looked the most surprised, as her mouth just dropped open and her eyes widened. Then she said what was one of the most touching things I had ever heard: “But you aren’t white; you are just Rick!” The others nodded in agreement. And I said it was precisely my point about them — that they too were persons first and should see themselves that way and expect other people to see them that way too, and that most white people by and large then often would. There was far more to the discussion and this was not meant to by a synopsis, but just one point. But I think this particular conversation in class occurred because I work very hard to make my classes, no matter how large, become intimate and intellectually safe and comfortable. One of the emotionally hardest parts of teaching is having a term-end after you have been able to achieve that atmosphere, and then having to start all over again to try to achieve it with a new group.
Some instances mix humor with poignancy. I was talking one time with a young lady I was photographing, who was in my studio with her mother. Somehow the conversation turned to a point where I mentioned that in Homewood (an adjacent suburb) there had been a long time, highly effective, and the revered mayor who was one of the nicest guys in the world, and who adored his wife and his twin daughters. But often in social situations when he was introduced to someone new whom he found out was not married, he would ask with mock sincerity “Then what do you do for aggravation?” It was an “ice-breaker” for him, and it always worked because he was obviously such a loving person and a proud, doting husband and father. When I finished my story about him and mentioned his name, the girl said, “He was my grandfather.” And the mother said she was one of the twins. I hadn’t known that. It was a nice moment.
Being open and genuine with others about normally considered private thoughts will not always be welcome, even if you are not trying to be humorous but are more straightforwardly obviously trying to be kind, but I think it will be welcome far more often than not. And when it is, it can lead to cherished moments and memories for the other person or for both of you —moments that help make life on this planet more intimate, and thus by the very nature of intimacy, not so isolated and alone.
1 I explain what it is for an experience to be meaningful in chapter 24 of The Meaning of Love , but for my purpose here it is sufficient to say that it involves something recognized by someone as important to them on a personal level, which may or may not have anything to do with any practical importance to them as well. In other words if some financial transaction is occurring which gratifies both people, and they both are appreciative of the transaction at a pragmatic level, that will not necessarily be an intimate experience. On the other hand if, say (as in one of the Saturn automobile commercials), a car salesman and his client appreciate the importance to her of her buying her first car and all that it entails for its significance in her life (fiscal ability and responsibility, maturity, independence, rite of passage into adulthood, etc.) and they both realize all this, that transaction, though practical and financial, also takes on a kind of intimacy though it may be transient and perhaps even shortly forgotten.
2 There is an ambiguity in this sense of “with” that I do not know how to make precise other than by an example. Suppose there are five people involved in a conversation that is intimate in the sense under discussion for four of them but not for the fifth person. The conversation is still intimate for the four people even though they are “with” the fifth person, but the intimacy does not include him though the conversation does. They are with him and intimate (with each other), but they are not intimate with him. This kind of verbal anomaly only occurs when two or more people are intimate in the sense above and in the company of one or more other people who do not meet the conditions. If there are only two people involved, and at least one of them does not meet the conditions, then in this kind of understanding of intimacy under discussion, the experience is not intimate for either.
3 One way of politely probing is simply to make a comment that is not rude, prying, indiscrete, or embarrassing and which gives the other person a great opportunity to respond in a frank and personal way if they wish or to ignore, wave off, or make light of your comment if they do not.
Key Takeaways
- Intimacy does not always involve sex or sexual intercourse.
- Sex does not always involve (emotional) intimacy.
- Even intimacy that is primarily sexual can be achieved without intercourse.
Key Terms
- Sexually and emotionally mutually satisfying intercourse frequently tends to require patience and understanding.
Review Questions
- Question : What is one way to define emotional intimacy?
- Question : Do opportunities for emotional intimacy also require sexual intimacy or a romantic relationship? Why or why not?