Skip to main content

Intimacy



Intimacy is rooted in understanding. It is impossible to live without at least one intimate relationship. As John Powell says in The Secret of Staying in Love, “No one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.” Intimacy is that mirror.

Understanding each other leads to the discovery of each other’s inner beauty. It heals the wounds that inevitably mar that beauty occasionally. It can remove scars too. Intimacy has the tenderness of a soothing balm. Intimacy is a melodious poem that keeps on composing itself endlessly. Its rhythm is like the flow of a mountain brook; there are occasional stumbles and rumbles too.  

“Is physical intimacy the only thing which matters in a relationship? Can you live without it and yet be happy?” Blogger Anushree Aggarwal raised the question. Why can’t one live without physical intimacy and yet be happy? There are plenty of people who do that; priests and nuns, for example. Real intimacy may have nothing to do with physicality.



If we consider ordinary relationships, physicality is not an issue at all. I have a few intimate friends with none of whom I have any physical relationship and won’t ever have.

The physical aspect is not a part of intimacy, in fact. That is a mere biological need which has certain emotional trappings. My hunch [since I have no experience in this matter] is that physical intimacy is undesirable in healthy friendships except with one person. Yes, that fidelity is crucial when it comes to physicality. Otherwise, relationships are likely to be shallow affairs. Moreover, does sex play any role in friendly relationships?

Real intimacy is a sacred experience, as John O’Donohue says. Intimacy belongs to the soul, not to the body.


Top post on IndiBlogger, the biggest community of Indian Bloggers

Comments

  1. Jyotirmoy SarkarAugust 25, 2018 at 7:08 PM

    Beautiful writ up, good to go through the quotes and the view points(Logic) you have shared.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nima DasAugust 27, 2018 at 11:15 AM

    Agree with you fully. Intimacy gives you insights into your soul but also to sustain a relationship itimacy is not the only factor.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 27, 2018 at 11:38 AM

      Only a few relationships can be intimate for any individual. Among them physical intimacy should be a guarded affair, limited by marital or similar fidelity. That's my view.

      Delete
  3. Arvind PasseyAugust 29, 2018 at 3:52 PM

    Yes, I agree that real intimacy is a sacred experience... but then we have maverick hormones doing the unexpected all the time. The mind too remains helpless when hormones decide to strike. Do read about the link-up of intimacy with hormones in my post.

    Arvind Passey
    www.passey.info

    ReplyDelete
  4. Datta GhoshAugust 29, 2018 at 5:18 PM

    I kept nodding throughout the post. I agree, companionship transcends the boundaries of physical intimacy. And again, the definition pf physical intimacy varies from person to person. Over all there is something sacred in relationships that really matter.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnuSeptember 11, 2018 at 12:57 PM

    i believe sometimes the intimacy with your special someone does need the physical touch!
    agree with you, that discovering inner beauty is a beautiful journey by itself.

    thank u for writing such a nice post for my idea:)

    ReplyDelete
  6. sumita sofatApril 29, 2019 at 10:40 AM

    Nice Blog! Thanks for sharing information .Sofat infertility & women care centre provides the best fertility treatment at a reasonable price. Dr Sumita Sofat is the best gynecologist and Infertility specialist. Sofat Infertility Clinic is the best IVF centre Ludhiana.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Kanishka GuptaNovember 27, 2020 at 2:46 PM

    Types of intimacy depend the type of your relationship.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Shooting an Elephant

George Orwell [1903-1950] We had an anthology of classical essays as part of our undergrad English course. Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell was one of the essays. The horror of political hegemony is the core theme of the essay. Orwell was a subdivisional police officer of the British Empire in Burma (today Myanmar) when he was forced to shoot an elephant. The elephant had gone musth (an Urdu term for the temporary insanity of male elephants when they are in need of a female) and Orwell was asked to control the commotion created by the giant creature. By the time Orwell reached with his gun, the elephant had become normal. Yet Orwell shot it. The first bullet stunned the animal, the second made him waver, and Orwell had to empty the entire magazine into the elephant’s body in order to put an end to its mammoth suffering. “He was dying,” writes Orwell, “very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further…. It seeme...
11 comments
Read more

Urban Naxal

Fiction “We have to guard against the urban Naxals who are the biggest threat to the nation’s unity today,” the Prime Minister was saying on the TV. He was addressing an audience that stood a hundred metres away for security reasons. It was the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel which the Prime Minister had sanctified as National Unity Day. “In order to usurp the Sardar from the Congress,” Mathew said. The clarification was meant for Alice, his niece who had landed from London a couple of days back.    Mathew had retired a few months back as a lecturer in sociology from the University of Kerala. He was known for his radical leftist views. He would be what the PM calls an urban Naxal. Alice knew that. Her mother, Mathew’s sister, had told her all about her learned uncle’s “leftist perversions.” “Your uncle thinks that he is a Messiah of the masses,” Alice’s mother had warned her before she left for India on a short holiday. “Don’t let him infiltrate your brai...
14 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

Egregious

·       Donald Trump terminated all trade negotiations with Canada “based on their egregious behaviour.” ·       Pakistan has an egregious record of assassinations among its leaders. ·       Benjamin Netanyahu’s egregious disregard for civilian suffering has drawn widespread international condemnation. Now, look at the following sentences. ·       Archias is an egregious and most excellent man. [Cicero’s speech in 62 BCE] ·       “An egregious captain and most valiant soldier.” [Roger Ascham in 1545] U p to about 16 th century, the word egregious had a positive meaning: excellent or outstanding . Cicero was defending Greek poet Aulus Licinius Archias’s request for Roman citizenship. Archias had left his country out of disgust for the corruption of its Seleucid rulers. Ascham was speaking about the qualities of valiant soldiers when he used the ...
6 comments
Read more