Three Pre-Requisites for Intimacy

My last roommate, Divya, and I were talking about relationships a few weeks ago. During that conversation, I was vibing with her about three pre-requisites I discovered, to even be capable of an intimate, committed relationship.

First, I accepted my best self and quit trying to be my "ideal" self. No happy person can fulfill a false persona for an indefinite period of time. Eventually, with your partner, your true self will shine through. Consequently, it's practical to just be yourself from the beginning so there are no surprises.

Doing so is not easy, even though "being yourself" is proverbial wisdom. In society and culture we're surrounded by messages that talk about how to be an "ideal" lover, worker, and partner instead of ourselves. Fashion magazines, books (like Neil Strauss's "The Game"), blog posts on LinkedIn, etc. have checklists on how to be an ideal person to others. We're constantly nudged into being someone else, often subliminally. That makes it hard to "just be yourself."

Accepting my best self required me to stop trying to be the center of every social network, and constantly trying to be everyone's friend. It also required me to place less emphasis on being the best consultant at my company and considering myself a success only if I gained admission to the most prestigious graduate schools in the country.

Second, I allowed myself to feel deserving of love. After all, if you can't accept love it's basically impossible to give it. About 2 and a half years ago, everything in life was going well - I had a good salary, a good enough GMAT score, and lots of fun times with friends - but I felt guilty about it, especially about relationships. I didn't feel like I was worthy of being loved. In retrospect, pursuing extrinsic things (i.e., career, money, social status) was probably something I was doing so that I would feel accomplished enough to deserve love. I was in a terrible mental state and was driving myself to be crazier by the day.

I was lucky though, a few close friends and my family pulled me back and just gave me love without me even asking for it. They told me I was worthy of love (from other people and from God). They gave me books to read so that I could re-wire my brain. Everyone has a different process for realizing that they were worthy of being loved, and I was lucky to have a lot of support through it.

These two realizations have to come early on (or before) a relationship. My third realization came after starting a relationship with Robyn.

Third, I started to find joy in making sacrifices for my partner. Not just compromise or acceptance in sacrifice, but joy. Relationships (of any flavor) don't work without sacrifice. If they're not joyful, they aren't additive to the energy of the relationship, they're subtractive. Given the choice, why not be joyful about sacrifice? For Robyn and I, finding in joy in sacrifice was a virtuous sacrifice for our relationship.

Here's an example. I'm very messy about having clothes strewn about in my apartment. Robyn isn't ever upset with me about it, but she's definitely not amused by messy clothes. Knowing that she would rather have laundry taken care of neatly, I started to make an effort to put my clothes where they belong. This is something Robyn presumably appreciated so it made me happy. Because it made me happy, it became a habit, which made Robyn even more happy. Now, we're in an upward spiral of sacrifice and appreciation in more than just the realm of laundry. None of it would've happened, however, if either of us didn't find joy in the smallest of sacrifices.

To have intimacy, I discovered at least three pre-requisites: accepting yourself, accepting love, and finding joy in sacrifice for others.

The funny thing is, they have very little to do with "knowing what you want", "trying out lots of people", finding "the one" or other externally-focused cliches. Rather, these three truths I've discovered have to do entirely with changing yourself.

Photo Credit

What's love got to do with it?

The last time I saw the phrase in text, it was looking up lyrics to a popular Fat Joe single. And, maybe he was onto something and maybe he just liked the rhyme. Nevertheless, the line finishes: "it should be about us, it should be about trust, babe".

Logic would suggest that love either has something to do with it, or it has nothing to do with it. This is of course not necessarily what human would suggest...it's much more complicated then that.

Lately, I've been thinking that successful, fulfilling marriages and love are divorced concepts. (Note that I've been thinking about this sort of thing because of the stuff I've been reading and the engaged/newlywed couples I've been around, not to mention marriages I've been attending or hearing about). What does one really have to do with the other, besides the notion that in the contemporary western tradition loves sometimes leads to marriage.

In what I've been reading and observing however, it seems like love has little to with what helps couples go the distance. It seems more the case that couples who are committed, diligent, flexible and adaptive are the ones that make it. Love certainly seems to provide energy and motivation, but in the big scheme of things is love really more than a very small part of what constitutes lasting relationships? Love doesn't pay the bills, does it?

I guess it just seems like there are bigger things at play then love. At times, perceptions of love make about as much sense to me as perceptions of money. There's so much money in the world, it's probably one of the most common things around. But, yet it's written up at the final destination for satisfaction. Just like love. People obsess about love. It's not just that love has it's place in our lives...it consumes. People fall out of love and relationships end. People say loving each other wasn't enough, so relationships end. So, how much does it really matter?

But the obsession around love, makes me feel like it matters. There's so much buzz about love--that seems timeless, genuine and pure--it prevents me from being totally skeptical about love as an idea. The prospect of the feeling, of the supposed state of mind, keep me a romantic. And, I think it does that to many people, even though it doesn't make sense.

If love didn't matter, wouldn't we have given up on the love idea by now? Love and romance have been present in literature forever--though it's connotation and meaning have surely changed over time--so does that mean it's something that has real value?

I mean, I want it to matter. And, I don't think I'm alone in this, nor do I think this desire is solely cultural or generational. It's something we hope for, even if it's not a game-changer in lasting relationships. And perhaps that's why it's so important, not because it has "anything to do with" but because it sustains hope. And maybe hope isn't all we need either, but I think hope is one of those things I'm willing to accept, nearly blindly, as something that could have a lot to do with the good stuff.

Quick thought about weddings

Quickly, my attitudes about weddings changed a bit this weekend. They are not, steely affairs where the Bride's posse relinquishes the ability to be caretakers of the daughter and the demarcation of the Groom's buddies losing a direct link to their friend. This sentiment seems silly, yes, but believe me...it's all the more real the closer you get to the officiated parties.

Rather, weddings are a treasure of a celebration. They commemorate a timeless, sacred human bond of one person to another. That's a big deal, whether it's between friends, partners, or family members, because those bonds--ones that really bind--don't come around all that often.

I was mistaken for interpreting weddings as a moment for the splitting and suturing of relationships into a new whole. They are rather the celebration of something anew, instead of rearranging lives they are instances where a new, two-seated life is created.

A straight-forward observation, yes. Was a little slow on the uptake.