Most experts would agree that the ability to have intimate relationships is a highly desirable quality. Researchers in this area have offered evidence to suggest that people who score high on various intimacy scales and questionnaires demonstrate other desirable qualities. These individuals seem to engage in more intimate behaviors, they disclose more about themselves to others, they feel more in control of their fate, they tend to be more active, and they experience less alienation from friends, family, and self.
Problems with intimacy seem often to be related to how different people define intimacy and how they handle the intimacy-related issues that emerge in their important relationships.
An example: During the early phase of their couples therapy, Martha claimed that Phil was not able to be adequately intimate, while Phil claimed that he had no problem whatsoever with intimacy; his problem, he claimed, was that Martha was never satisfied with his many efforts at being an intimate spouse. Martha complained that Phil never said, “I love you,” suggesting to her that he had “problems with intimacy.” Phil replied, “For the past three years, I have driven six miles out of my way on Fridays after work to buy you those special pickles you love so much. Doesn’t that sound like love to you?”
Going out of his way to buy a favorite food for his wife was Phil’s way of expressing his intimate feelings for his wife. Martha, because of her different criteria, was not seeing his weekly gesture as loving, but as dutiful behavior on the part of a cooperative spouse. For her, Phil had a problem with intimacy, while Phil felt his means of expressing intimacy were being devalued.
Sometimes intimacy takes unconventional forms. The adult children of an older couple once referred their parents to me because of concerns about their constant arguing. The couple reluctantly attended the first session and quickly began to do what they had been doing for the entire 45 years of their marriage; argue. The “conflict-ridden” marriage I had been asked to “treat” turned out to be a stable, intact, secure relationship that showed no signs of falling apart, as their children feared. It seemed to me that I was watching two reasonably happy people for whom arguing represented a form of intimacy with which both were comfortable-even though no one else was.
While it is certainly desirable to have a high degree of intimacy with one’s partner, it’s also important to be clear about how one defines and understands various forms of intimate behavior.
