What is Intimacy?

I recently saw a gay blog site that quoted statistics that indicated that about one half of the gay couples in the San Fransisco area have open relationships. As I perused the comments about open relationships and how people think the incidence is much higher,etc., I did not see one comment about intimacy. The primary reason my partner and I of 7 years don't have an open relationship is that the moment a third party enters into the private territory of our sexual relationship, there is a break in the intimacy.

Intimacy is that special feeling that makes you know you are number one in your partner's list of priorities, and that the loss of the relationship with you is the last thing he wants to happen. It is the sense that there is some individual in your life that you know loves you beyond a shadow of a doubt. It is the feeling that there is one individual you know you can trust with knowing everything about you. It is the feeling that if something bad happens to you (ex. you get sick) that he will be there to help you when you can't help yourself. In short, it is the feeling that you come first in the other person's life except perhaps a child.

What is the only difference between you and a friend? Isn't it sex? The sexual relationship is the one part of the relationship you are not expected to share. You may choose to share it at some point, but I think that is the point where inevitably there is a fundamental change in the basis of the relationship. Is that a change that you really want to make? It is not one that we want to make. What you get from it seems far less valuable to us than what you lose.

It is an individual choice of course, but I think it is a choice all too often that is made too lightly. I feel that it is made because something is out of kilter or dying in the relationship, and it will go unexamined. There are tremendous boundary and trust issues that must be negotiated to open a relationship. It seems simpler to work on the relationship than go through all of that.

To sum it up, that is what I think and we think about Living and Loving. Till next blog.
Grover