Thoughts on love and intimacy - Part 1 - Introduction
A time ago I wrote an article for publication entitled "What is intimacy?" Like most of these things, it was borne of what was happening in my life at the time. The other day I dug it out to read. It was not half bad, I thought. Then I found myself thinking about what is and what is not possible in love. The question that nagged at me was given that it is not possible for two people to develop, grow and change synchronously in a monogamous relationship then how is it possible not to grow apart, to wake up one day and say I don't really like that person anymore, they are not the same person I thought they were?
Earlier this year I almost bled to death. I shall spare you the gory details but my heart almost gave out when it could not get the oxygen-carrying haemoglobin it needed. I had the most wonderful medical care (Thank you, blood donors!) and now I'm healthier and fitter than I have been for about 15 years or more. That sort of experience does cause a massive "paradigm shift", an entire revolution in one's worldview and personal values. But how do you encompass such a dramatic change in values within an intimate, loving personal relationship?
I was curious what others may have thought about this so I put the words "sustaining intimacy" and "sustaining loving relationships" into 'Google' and it returned so much rubbish that I wanted to reach for the bottle marked "despair".
It caused me to reflect on another random thought that was triggered by an everyday event. I had received a bill for something I had bought at a store. At the bottom of the bill, there were the letters "E&OE" in small print that I learned subsequently meant 'Errors and Omissions Excepted'. What a wonderful idea, I thought! Perhaps I might stamp letters on my forehead to signify how I would wish to feel about loving relationships. Why not 'A w/o E' meaning 'acceptance without exception'? What a great notion!
It was an important clue to me. I suspect finally, at the ripe old age I am now, I may at last be getting close to the answer. Love is certainly not about the narcissistic reflection of some idealised image of the other, or a contra-sexual playback of one's self-image. Perhaps it's not a state of mind at all, but an act, an act or activity of the soul, the psyche.
I found myself earlier trying to remember what C. S. Lewis had written about love, four kinds of love. There was "storge, eros, caritas/ philia, agape, and Love as I remember; Love being spiritual love or, in his case, the love of God. Oops! That's five kinds of love! I must have added one in there somewhere. Who cares anyway? But that's familial, erotic, friendship, altruistic and spiritual love. I'm not really sure that any such academic categorisation of love helps us in understanding what love is or how to do it anyway!
So what of love then? I'll skip around for a while longer but I do believe that love follows a progression like Maslow's hierarchy of needs where human development progresses from its subsistence level and its need for survival at the base of the triangle to self-actualisation at its apex. Similarly, I believe that love progresses through needs, wants and desire where needs correspond with a state of infantile dependency and desire to the self-actualisation of love in emotional maturity. But I'll finish here with a poem, which for me summarises the feelings of the ordinary man in a state of desire. It's called "Feeling Fucked Up" by Etheridge Knight.
Feeling Fucked Up
Lord she's gone done left me done packed / up and split
and I with no way to make her
come back and everywhere the world is bare
bright bone white crystal sand glistens
dope death dead dying and jiving drove
her away made her take her laughter and her smiles
and her softness and her midnight sighs--
Fuck Coltrane and music and clouds drifting in the sky
fuck the sea and trees and the sky and birds
and alligators and all the animals that roam the earth
fuck marx and mao fuck fidel and nkrumah and
democracy and communism fuck smack and pot
and red ripe tomatoes fuck joseph fuck mary fuck
god jesus and all the disciples fuck fanon nixon
and malcom fuck the revolution fuck freedom fuck
the whole muthafucking thing
all i want now is my woman back
so my soul can sing
Etheridge Knight