LOVE /

Apairofloversloveeachotherandtheir relationshipiscommonlyreferredtoasintimate.

At first glance, there seems to be a similar meaning between love and intimacy, as they describe similar natures of relationships. But there should be differences between these two, because if not, there would be no need for one to exist as separate.

So, my first question about intimacy is: how is it different from love?

There are specific feelings we associate with something in order for us to describe them as intimate. Your bedroom, where you may have lived your entire life, can be an intimate space, in the sense that it creates comfort and peace within you. In this way, intimacy can be said to be the familiar feeling you have about something, or as the Greeks called it: ‘storge’, but to them, this was just another species of Love. So, we are still missing something; or rather, intimacy may not be synonymous with familiarity. I can feel comfortable with a friend without it being an intimate relationship. It is not intimate if I don’t truly care about them and if their life barely affects mine. The relationship can only be said to be intimate when our lives are intertwined, when I know everything about them, when they take part in my thoughts and when their life deeply affects mine. It is only then that we are intimate.

Intimacy is not about familiarity at all, it is about how close our lives are to merging into one. Close in the sense of how a pair of lovers’ lives unite; one suffers, the other does too; one succeeds, the other rejoices; their soul unites because they experience life as one. Now we might have arrived at a definition of intimacy which is distinct from Love; it is a description of how close souls are to each other.