Too Much Closeness
We live very structured lives and almost everything around us is structured, such as our workplace, our schools, our churches, even our homes. We play many roles within these structures. We are employees, employers, students, parishioners, wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, and many more.
As a result of this structure and our varied roles, we are losing the ability to connect to each other as persons. While we are close (as in near) to those around us within these structures, we do not often connect with them as other persons.
This is especially true to those closest to us: our wives, husbands and children. Have you ever said or thought 'I don't feel close to you?' And yet it is impossible to not be close to those you share a house with, a bathroom or a bed. So the issue is not being close. The issue is a lack of intimacy, or the ability to connect as people. When we are intimate we experience others as people. We feel connected to them.
Love is the proper balance of both closeness and intimacy, but because there is too much closeness we may be losing the ability to really connect to each other.
We connect to people not by our roles or what we do. We connect to people by experiencing with them what we have most in common. As Carl Rogers said, "What is most general is most common."
Let me give you a simple example. At a family gathering I asked each of my children if they would each share one of their fears. It was a little awkward at first, but as we got into it, one shared that his greatest fear was that he would always be short. He was small for his age, but had never said anything to us, so when he shared it we all connected to him as a person, not just a son or brother. And we loved him more. Why? Because fears are something we all have in common.
Over long periods of time, too much closeness actually blocks our ability to be intimate with each other. The key to becoming more intimate is learning to accept the other as he/she is, not as what we want or expect him/her to be.
I am not sure where this comes from, but I love it:
This is especially true to those closest to us: our wives, husbands and children. Have you ever said or thought 'I don't feel close to you?' And yet it is impossible to not be close to those you share a house with, a bathroom or a bed. So the issue is not being close. The issue is a lack of intimacy, or the ability to connect as people. When we are intimate we experience others as people. We feel connected to them.
Love is the proper balance of both closeness and intimacy, but because there is too much closeness we may be losing the ability to really connect to each other.
We connect to people not by our roles or what we do. We connect to people by experiencing with them what we have most in common. As Carl Rogers said, "What is most general is most common."
Let me give you a simple example. At a family gathering I asked each of my children if they would each share one of their fears. It was a little awkward at first, but as we got into it, one shared that his greatest fear was that he would always be short. He was small for his age, but had never said anything to us, so when he shared it we all connected to him as a person, not just a son or brother. And we loved him more. Why? Because fears are something we all have in common.
Over long periods of time, too much closeness actually blocks our ability to be intimate with each other. The key to becoming more intimate is learning to accept the other as he/she is, not as what we want or expect him/her to be.
I am not sure where this comes from, but I love it:
Do We Dare To Be Lovers (Again)?
The question is whether we can develop a future-oriented preventive approach, or whether we will forever be identified with a past-oriented remedial function.
In other words, will we be content to diagnose the ills and remedy them in ways we have become accustomed?
Or will we insist on designing together an opportunity for love in which 'our' imagination can be unleashed, and in which the joy of love replaces the unpleasant tasks of trying to fix the old?
Failure has become the daily experience because he have seen our tasks in such degrading ways.
Can we lift our view enough to see what we might attain?
Why have we stooped so low as to have seen our tasks in such degrading ways?
We should be at the heart of designing our lives, our home, our family, our friends in ways that enhance rather than degrade.
Do we see our love as putting each other at the heart of all that we do and are?
So real as to enhance our spirits and enrich our lives?
Or have we concentrated all our efforts on the recent past and attempted to 'fix' what is wrong?
Where is the imagination, the creativity, the curiosity, the love?
Lost in failure?
Sitting in dusty closets as 'old' love letters to be read by others after we are gone because we failed to see that the old is the new?
Looked at failure as the end, instead of the beginning?
Too much closeness causes us to want to 'fix' what is broken, while intimacy allows us to see as we really are, and love what we see.
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