An intimate relationship is an interpersonal relationship that involves physical or emotional intimacy. Physical intimacy is characterized by romantic or passionate attachment or sexual activity. While the term intimate relationship commonly implies the inclusion of a sexual relationship, the term is also used as a euphemism for a relationship that is strictly sexual.

Intimate relationships play a central role in the overall human experience. Humans have a general desire to belong and to love, which is usually satisfied within an intimate relationship. These relationships involve feelings of liking or loving one or more people, romance, physical or sexual attraction, sexual relationships, or emotional and personal support between the members. Intimate relationships allow a social network for people to form strong emotional attachments.

Love is a vital part of our existence. Not only does it quench a fluid hunger to not live in a world separate and isolated from others, but it also asks that we regard ourselves as a possibly true and important element in another person’s life. We all seek a witness to our life here on earth, we want someone who will come into our lives with the same or similar attractions that hold us pleasantly captive in our own personal cocoon, and we don’t want to be alone.

Intimacy is a big step for most people, especially those who feel a genuine and grounded force towards the true intentions of love. There are those who can easily abuse the sanctity of love and intimacy, but those people must live according to what they believe. But for those who are aware of the power generated through the union of love with a special someone, intimacy can be most special.

At times there is a great fear associated with relationships and intimacy. This fear can become powerful enough to destroy all possibilities of the harmony that comes with true love. People think that attraction plays the most powerful role in intimacy, but in actuality, the attraction is a brand prescribed by society. Everything in our lives orbits around sexuality, and beauty. These factors created by advertising giants were created to sell products, and effectively it has been done. So every time we find ourselves at the threshold of finding love, we fall backward a step and evaluate ourselves based on what we think and believe will be attractive to the other person.

Self-worth, past memories, and the self-image we hold so close to our hearts generally are reflected upon before the decision to accept love ever takes place. With these as the guiding parameters to love, it’s no wonder so many relationships are destined to fail, even before they have started.

I spent a great deal of time falling in and out of love. Although most of the reasons associated with the dissolution of the relationship seemed to come from me, I can’t quite understand why or how I ended up in relationships that appeared to be great in the beginning and then suddenly fizzled out in such a short period of time.

All the right elements seemed to have been there, laughter, conversation, intellectual similarities, and even the law of attraction, and sexuality, which itself was not always at the top of the list. I thought if I would shift around my priorities or criteria; make number one number two, and number two number three, I could dispel any possible variables that I couldn’t detect as being the reason my relationships were failing me. I tried recalling past relationships, making note of all the things that seemed to have created the relationship and then draw on the times and things that began during its time of descent, but even that failed me.

There were times when I found myself trying to protect any possible (victims), which was what I was beginning to think women in my life were at this point. I kept to myself, busied my life with work, and empty explorations about town, I read, watched movies, and when the need for sexual intimacy arose, I masturbated, which only set about curing a biological urge, it had no regard for my emotional state of mind.

After four or five months in this seeming paralysis, I found myself richly alone. I wanted to be in love, intimacy, someone to plug this hole piercing through my heart. I had been told once by a past lover: “Bruce, I think you are in love with being in love.” She threw me a curveball I couldn’t catch, but then I got it. What she was saying was that it was not the actual relationship I wanted, but rather a version of a relationship that began and ended with the initial stages, the romantic portion of winning your lover.

Of course, I never accepted this as a solid observation, and so what I did was catalog it in my mental safety deposit box. I was determined to find love on a real and genuine basis, and the only way I could think of how to do it, was to get on with it, and so I did.

Throughout this post, you may come to think of me as a man who enjoys the act of procuring multiple relationships at different intervals of my life, not so. What I am is a man who believes that he will find love, real unadulterated love. Trial and error play a big part in this, and like all people who have tried to find love, you go through a process of giving love a try. And so intimate relationships are the act of giving love enough space to grow, to blossom and to bloom into what we feel love is for us.

“People think that intimacy is about sex, but intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone about your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them and their response is “you’re safe with me,” -that’s intimacy.”

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The world is populated with ignorance and misinformation about intimacy. Many people feel intimacy is hardwired into our brain, but in fact, intimacy comes as a response to a feeling, not necessarily an emotion. Intimacy is a closeness, an act of trust gained through a relationship with another person who does not have to be of the opposite sex. Intimacy in its formal pronunciation does sound as nutritional as the fricative F or the sibilant S, but only so because we have been lead to think that intimacy is sexual. It’s intimacy when a parent and child relate so well or work colleagues find cohesiveness in the projects they share. It’s about trust, symmetry, and a genuine ability to feel completely comfortable with the other person in any environment. Intimacy is about love.