Intimacy

Intimacy

Being on my life search together with my partner the last 9 months was like riding a rollercoaster.

It was the most intimate relationship I’ve ever been in and now that it’s going to end I realise what we are about throw away, because of fear.

Why?

Well, because of Intimacy.

What is Intimacy?

Intimacy is to KNOW yourself and your partner truly, with all odd sides, including the sides we don’t like about us at all.

How does Intimacy happen?

When we first meet someone, there is this spark and we feel excited.

Lets say, someone enters the surf shop you work in and asks you about harness webbing. Now, this person is really cute and very funny and has a really lovely smile.

Although we don’t know that person yet, there is this spark, there is desire for that person and all is mysterious to us.

All seems more interesting, exciting and new. We are full of hope and got all these butterflies in our bellies and lose the game of pool in MAGMA.

And because there is a mystery about that person it gives us space to interpret into that person what ever we wish, lack or seek.

Now, what happens is, we create a certain picture about that person in our mind.

We have an idea about them, how they are and behave and how they would fit into our life.

We see a certain part of that person and the person itself mostly controls the part that’s visible to us.

We all do know this.

Who of us would love to go ahead telling our desired partner about our anger issues or that we are actually very insecure and scared?

Sometimes, we aren’t aware of our own dark sides and sometimes we aren’t even aware that we are not the person that we thought we were.

How does intimacy fit in here?

I mean, isn’t the excitement about meeting someone new intimacy?

Isn’t going out for food and joining a party with that person intimacy? Are we not intimate when we buy each other presents for Christmas?

I tell you here, that is not true intimacy. This is spending a nice time together, based on our mood, perceptions and our common interests.

Intimacy is, what happens when all this crashes and our dream world falls into pieces.

You scared?

You shouldn’t be, just bail with me here.

Now, life has many faces.

I myself have had a very eventful 9 months where I got swept off my feet over and over again, even until the point where I questioned my whole path, just because of all these things that happened in my life, without any self-infliction.

In life, nothing is safe and secure, things happen to us without our doing and sometimes all things come together and leave us being absolutely overwhelmed.

In a relationship, everyone has his own realities and everyone perceives things that happen to us in life differently.

What might floor one, does not even concern the other but now lets say, something happens that sweeps our feet off the ground.

We might lose our favourite job, cannot find a new one quickly and we have to cut down on money.

Or like me, going to Greece hoping to live the dream and nothing of it worked out at all.

We then are frustrated, hurt and cannot offer the jolly happiness or a smile to our partner.

If we struggle in life, whether self-inflicted or not, we meet our true self.

We sometimes react unfair to others when we suffer, find out we are not as relaxed about money as we thought we were or we are not as capable of dealing with guilt as we would love to be.

When life hits us hard, we meet our own demons. Bad sides we’ve been trying to hide soooo hard from others and buried deep inside of us suddenly appear and break out without any warning.

We all wanna be great personalities, no one wants to make mistakes, fail or have any dark sides.

No one wants to be someone who lets people down or face the fact that sometimes we are way too tired to catch the ones we love.

Now, these demons are part of us, we all have them and together with our good sides, they create our whole personality – our true self.

And when we face them, our partner will face them, too. The one we love, the one we’ve been showing just only one side of our true self in fear of rejection and disapproval.

We did so well to hide our bad sides and to create an amazing picture of ourselves, that now that even our partner is facing the truth we have come to the point, where our dream world and the ideas break into pieces.

This seems sometimes very frightening, as we realise that what we thought was real isn’t real at all, and with this we think we have lost everything – it feels like waking up from a beautiful dream right into a nightmare.

Now, what’s so great then about Intimacy if it only causes fear and suffering?

Because, with all the suffering it causes at first by tearing all our lovely imaginations and perceptions down it creates something beautiful.

It creates true love and trust.

How?

Now, we know that we have been in this situation before. We were close to someone that in the end turned out to be a bit different to what we thought he would be.

Thinking that someone is really smart and then finding out he is not seems to make us suffer and creates a conflict.

Once the picture and reality didn’t fit anymore, we tried to amend people into the picture we had of them, and which then creates even more conflicts!

We might once have thought our partner would be patient but then they turned out to be absolutely impatient or getting easily upset with things.

So the image we had of that person fades.

When the moment of awakening happens, we think all we believed in, all we experienced was wrong and nothing was right. But reality was never wrong, just our picture was. And this doesn’t mean, that just because the picture doesn’t fit anymore, the person doesn’t fit or is wrong or less worth. That what else was there wasn’t real

Excitement and mystery has gone and we think the love has, too.

Now, excitement and mystery isn’t love at all.

It’s just what it is; excitement and Mystery. The same feeling we feel when we go to Alton Towers or for a great holiday we have been waiting for.

What has gone is just the picture of the person, that’s all, but it doesn’t mean the person and things about them aren’t real.

With meeting our partner’s demons we don’t just see our partner for real but it also gives us the chance to reflect our own demons.

Revealing all there is about us creates the truth and we don’t have to waste energy about keeping up a half-truth about ourselves anymore.

It creates freedom! Freedom of being who we really are with no pressure and no guilt.

And with facing our own demons we realise, its just demons, nothing more, and that there is still more about us – the good things about ourselves, too.

Not being able to earn enough money to provide a base for my daughter made me behaving impatient and forcing, but it doesn’t mean I am not still compassionate and happy to go to Toy’s R Us every Sunday afternoon to play with the toys.

Friends that never forgave my partner might make him feel guilty and therefore making him behaving challenging and withdrawing doesn’t mean he isn’t still a person that cares when I am ill and telling funny stories.

But now, each of you, touch your heart.

How often have YOU met someone’s demons and managed to love that very person for it?

Did you embrace that person with loving arms and smile, or did you finish the relationship due to the fact that our Ego was soooo disappointed about the misplaced picture?

When the picture didn’t fit and you found out about your partners demons, did you manage to overcome your hurt pride and tried to see the person in their true shape? Did you manage to go away from the picture, see your partner anew with the beauty and the dark and did you realise it is not very different from you?

It takes a lot to shake off ideas and perceptions about someone as we identify with them.

It takes a lot of courage – courage to face the truth…, which isn’t so bad at all if we finally just amend our picture.

Because no matter you demons there is still all the good sides about you!

Facing our own, means facing our partner.

This kind of intimacy creates a deep trust and understanding.

It scares the shit out of us, but it is the only way to feel save, find peace and real trust in a partnership.

Intimacy and real love spring from shared HARDSHIP, never from perception, distance and fake personalities.

And now here I am, feeling this incredible deep love and peace and this great bond and still I cannot save this anymore.

When my partner and me met, there was the picture he had about me and about himself.

When I realised his big expectations about my personality and because I was in a life search, I was scared.

So I sat down and cried as I knew, this time I cannot hide my demons anymore and my partner came over and asked me: “Why are you crying?”

I sniffed: “Because I cannot offer you what you expect. I cannot be what you expect me to be. I am not just great!”

He knelt down, took my hands into his and looked up: “Why did you come to see me in England?”

I sniffed and thought: “Because I love you.”

He smiled the biggest smile and his blue eyes lightened up in the dark: “You see,” he said and kissed my forehead. “You don’t have to be anything, monkey. Your love is all I need!”

Now we suffered life’s struggle, he found out about his own demons, about mine and now he cannot face our good sides anymore.

The sides that always were there and have never changed.

We are about to throw the biggest bond away, a relationship can have.

Truth, love and trust!