Many of us have someone like this in our lives; we should remember itâs not necessarily a sign that they donât care. But Olivia, at least, felt a sense of incompleteness, because the keystone of intimacy is the feeling of knowing someone and of being known. In fact, the word intimacy comes from the Latin intimare: to make known. Intimate knowledge of another person is a feature of romantic love, but itâs also more than that. Itâs a quintessential piece of the human experience, and it begins long before our first kiss, long before we consider marriage, in the very earliest days of life.
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When I have done couples therapy in the past, on occasion I asked one partner to sit in a chair off to the side while I worked with the dreams and life stories of the other. My idea was that the people did not really know each other. Maybe by listening to each other and exploring their psyches they might have more empathy and a deeper appreciation for what the other was dealing with. As couples share their lives, they may come to think that they really know the other well. But that kind of intimacy can be misleading. Familiarity is not knowledge, and, in fact, it may be a block to really knowing the partner as a separate person. Some distance is necessary, hence my practice of attending to one person at a time. I encourage the one partner to be a close observer, perhaps gaining some empathy for the other. By listening to the soul I mean hearing the story that canât be told.
Weâre becoming comfortable with each other, and comfort is no small thing. Nothing can be heard in the mind until the situation feels safe and familiar to the body. Small talk and just casually being around someone is a vastly underappreciated stage in the process of getting to know someone. Sometimes you can learn more about a person by watching how they talk to a waiter than by asking some profound question about their philosophy of life.
Even when you know someone well, I find that if you donât talk about the little things on a regular basis, itâs hard to talk about the big things.
Accompaniment is a necessary stage in getting to know a person precisely because it is
so gentle and measured. As D. H. Lawrence put it:
Whoever wants life must go softly towards life, softly as one would go towards a deer and fawn that are nestling under a tree. One gesture of violence, one violent assertion of self- will and life is gone But with quietness, with an abandon of self-assertion and a fullness
of the deep true self one can approach another human being, and know the delicate best
of life, the touch.
Suggestion #3: Radical CuriosityâŚ
It can be a real joy to lose ourselves in the experience of another person. It can also feel strange at first, if youâre not used to it, and it might take some effort. Curiosityâreal, deep curiosity about what others are experiencingâgoes a long way in important relationships. It opens up avenues of conversation and knowledge that we never knew were there. It helps others feel understood and appreciated. Itâs important even in less significant relationships, where it can set a precedent of caring and increase the strength of new, fragile bondsâŚ
The crucial point is that being curious helps us connect to others, and this connection makes us more engaged with life. Genuine curiosity invites people to share more of themselves with us, and this in turn helps us understand them. This process enlivens everyone involved. The âstrangers on a trainâ experiment points to these cascading benefits, which weâll discuss much more in Chapter Ten. Even a small interest in another person, a brief word, can create new excitements, new avenues of connection, and new pathways for life to flow.
Like generosity, curiosity is an upward spiral.
These findings, along with our findings about the importance of empathic effort (discussed in Chapter 5), point to an important idea about intimate relationships: if a couple can cultivate a bedrock of affection and empathy (meaning curiosity and the willingness to listen), their bond will be more stable and enduring.