Published May, 2024
There is no such thing as fear of intimacy. Yet fear of suffocation, fear of expectation, fear of demands, and fear of entitlement are palpable fears connected to the concept of intimacy. But intimacy is life-giving; it’s what we are built for. No aspect of self could fear itself. At the same time, there is no such thing as fear of abandonment. Fear of rejection, fear of removal of comfort or delusion, fear of feeling our feelings alone are common experiences we share. But at the root, we are always both alone and interconnected.
What we fear is the uncomfortable process of the prodigal mind returning home to our bodies. If we can remain in our true home, alone, interconnected, and intimate, we can always be courageous in our give and take.
We can throw everything into the ante, because nothing and no one can be taken from us, and the injunctions of suffocation, demands, and expectations will dissolve in the face of the real intimacy we bring to them.
Coming from another person, we recognize these dictates are merely the false, hungry version of intimacy and know that when we are rooted in connection they can feed back into themselves.
Instead, we can choose to develop the tendency to go toward what will bring us to a place where all finite fears resolve.
