Imagine what it would be like if we were open with our spouses all of the time. We’re individuals, so there are going to be private moments, but what if you truly shared yourself with someone? Your thoughts, your desires, your past, your imperfections, maybe your spirituality?
I think it’s probably not necessary to share every moment of our lives with our mate. We need space. As individuals, we continue to need time to breathe and be who we are. Beyond that fact of life, what if we shared the tough moments, the things we are battling in our minds? I think if we learned to share, be open and honest with each other, it would take us to new heights in our relationships.
Teammates
When you have openness and honesty between two people, it fosters an awareness and trust that’s hard to garner any other way. When my friends and I share things which are sometimes tough to talk about, it’s often those times which make the relationships stronger. Those are the times when you find out who has your back and who is really on your team. We can talk about anything and they can trust it won’t go any further than the extent of our conversation. They can be honest with me and I can be honest with them. It’s the same in any relationship. Ladies, if you are open with your man, he will appreciate you for feeling like you can talk to him and trust him with whatever the conversation is.
Another component of being a teammate is having the feeling of being in the situation for the long haul together. When we are open with each other, we build trust and a bond together. We also develop a cohesiveness which is a part of what real intimacy is. When we have this cohesiveness, we can often spot what is bothering a mate without verbal cues. I don’t think walking together in relationship is necessarily about knowing everything about each other (still requires openness); it’s about simply knowing each other. True intimacy takes companionship to another level.
Value
Every relationship has a sense of intrinsic value within it. What I mean is that we feel a certain way about our mate which has a magnitude of worth that we place on the relationship. We can like a person, we can love a person and we can have a feeling of being in-love with someone. We take some relationships for granted. We believe some relationships are the crème de la crème of any relationship we could ever hope for. We put a barometer on just about everything we participate in, including relationships. The intrinsic value of true intimacy to me is the highest tangible level a couple can attain in a relationship.
For example, someone can love you and not really know you-intimately. Some people claim to be in love, yet they are in violent relationships. There are fallacies in those thoughts of what their relationship is. The relationship you share with someone when you have a level of true intimacy where you sense they are uncomfortable in a room, or in extreme cases, when you may sense danger for them (like that of a mother thousands of miles away from her child); to me that is more valuable than anything I could dream of. True intimacy is so much more than sex or anything physical, it’s a spiritual connection.
Being open is uncomfortable. It’s not always, if ever, pretty. It’s a challenge to say the very least. Regardless of those things, if you want true intimacy, it’s a requirement of a relationship. One has to be willing to say, “Here I am, in all of my faults and shortcomings.” In the flesh, I love and I want to be loved. In my Spirit, I want to be intimate. I want to be more connected with my (future) wife than anyone else on the planet. That desire mandates openness and honestly, which gives life to our intimacy.