An intimate relationship is one in which you have personal closeness that involves vulnerability and openness. It doesn’t have to be sexual. We can have an intimate relationship with our spouses, siblings, friends, parents, children, or anyone else.

Intimacy seems like it should be easy, but it is not. Sin makes us naturally self-centered, shame-based, defensive, and self-conscious. Intimacy is dependent on the ability of both people to do the things they need to do to be intimate. And it is like a dance because both people make moves toward or away from intimacy in response to each other. The dance involves these steps:

• The courage to risk sharing openly about one’s wants, needs, thoughts, desires, wishes, dreams, weaknesses, and hurts. It is a risk because the other person has the power to respond positively or negatively.
• The other person listens without being defensive, taking what is said personally, reacting negatively, judging, or withdrawing from the relationship.
• The mutual ability to continue to share and explore the truth about each other by seeking to do whatever it takes to understand the heart of the other person while offering mutual acceptance and unconditional love toward each other.

As you can see, the ability to maintain intimacy in a relationship requires two healthy people. It requires the ability to do the following:

• Own one’s feelings, thoughts, behaviors, wishes, needs, desires, weaknesses, and hurts.
• Trust to share oneself.
• The ability to tolerate hearing things that might evoke feelings while controlling one’s response because of the commitment to grow in understanding of the other person.  Hearing truth in a relationship often triggers one’s own fears, abandonment, and unresolved issues.

Intimacy requires a relationship in which it is safe to be honest at a very deep level.  If both people will not risk sharing their truth and cannot hear truth without reacting negatively, then the dance won’t work.

By Karla Downing

Relationship Devotional Prayer

 
God,

Help me risk being vulnerable and close with the people in my life that I want to have intimate relationships with. Give me the ability to share and hear truth.

Relationship Devotional Challenge

• Evaluate your ability to be intimate.
• Are you willing to share about yourself?
• Are you able to hear the truth about others without reacting negatively even when it makes you uncomfortable?

Scripture Meditation

 
Proverbs 20:5

“The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out” (NIV).