Tamara, your essay did more than speaking to me, it saw me. It’s rare that I read something that feels like a mirror held not to the face but to the soul’s quieter corners. You write of intimacy with the precision of a scholar and the ache of someone who has waited for it, longed for it, and perhaps had to learn to live without it more than once.
There’s a line I keep rereading: “To be truly intimate is to be dangerously unarmed.” That sentence alone cracked something open in me. It reminds me of how we armor ourselves against our own depth—out of fear that to reveal our rawness is to risk being too much, or worse, not enough.
And yet, what you add, this radical, unmarketed, anti-spectacle kind of presence, is exactly the kind of human connection I think we are all secretly starving for. In a world that demands clarity and speed, you honor the ambiguous, the liminal, the slow burn. You remind me that intimacy isn’t symmetrical, and that doesn’t mean it isn’t sacred. That nuance alone feels like a balm for all the relationships I’ve grieved without permission.
If I may add a thread to your tapestry: intimacy also asks us to live with the unanswered… silence, and ambiguity. The friend who never explains their sudden distance. The text that is never replied to. The love that bloomed but never rooted. True intimacy doesn’t guarantee clarity bur it demands we stay present even in uncertainty.
Your writing is an act of reclamation. Thank you for putting words to what so many of us have only ever felt in fragments. I walk away from this humbled. And hungry for less performance, and more presence.
What a rare and resonant gift, Céline, to be recognised.
Yes, dangerously unarmed is not a metaphor I wrote lightly. It comes from the battlefield we all know but rarely name, the quiet war between our longing to be seen and our terror of being misinterpreted. We walk around sheathed in performance, mistaking caution for character, calling absence “independence,” and pretending that the ache for closeness is some vestigial weakness. But it isn’t. It’s the original hunger.
You’ve put your finger exactly on the pulse of what we’re not supposed to admit, that we grieve relationships not because they were failures, but because they were almost sacred. Almost safe. Almost enough. And the tragedy of almost is that there’s rarely a funeral for it.
Your thread about the unanswered, the friend gone quiet, the lover who ghosted not out of malice but mystery, the endings that never declared themselves as such, is vital. We often forget that intimacy includes a contract with uncertainty. It does not promise permanence. It promises presence. And that, in our hyper-clarified culture, is both deeply terrifying and wildly liberating.
Thank you for this incredible mirror you’ve held up, not just to me, but to all who read here. You’ve stitched another layer into the essay, and I’ll carry your words with me like an afterglow. Presence over performance, ambiguity over artifice. Always.
I would like to move into this essay and stay there forever. That’s not very realistic, though, so instead I send it to everyone I know. Maybe that brings the world slightly closer to intimacy.
If essays had front doors, I’d leave this one ajar just for you, with mismatched mugs, unread books, and soft lighting waiting inside. But since we live in the real world (unfortunately less well-written), I’m honoured that you’re letting it travel through your circles like a candle passed hand to hand.
Maybe that’s how intimacy actually spreads… not in declarations, but in these small acts of sharing what moved us. Not performative, not viral, only resonance. Like sending someone a pressed flower instead of a bouquet: less grand, more lasting.
And who knows, if enough people read it, feel it, and recognise themselves in its pages, perhaps we all edge just a little closer to living in that world you wanted to move into. Word by word, presence by presence, we might just write ourselves a better one.
I wonder if the difficulty of intimacy, specifically in the ways we've been trained to restrain it, is part of what makes it so special? Regardless of cultural contexts, we are primed to value what we perceive as scarce because the scarcity of some desired resource signals urgency to claim it, thus giving it a high price tag, literally and figuratively. We have an unfortunate tendency to take for granted things that are freely given, and so we are taught to restrain ourselves in order to keep the price high, and maintain that perception of value.
This speaks to one of your main points, I think, because commodification inevitably leads to a "race to the bottom", where the thing being commodified is cheapened for mass distribution. So even if it were possible to somehow distribute intimacy at scale, the process of scaling in and of itself would cheapen it, and we'd just take it for granted and ruin our ability to fully experience it.
Excellent and thought-provoking as always, Tamara.
You’ve struck at the paradox, the very moment we try to scale intimacy, we sever it from the slowness, mystery, and mutuality that give it worth. We crave intimacy but want it frictionless, infinite, available on demand, like a streaming service for the soul. But the truth is: intimacy doesn’t stream. It lingers. It demands presence, not just access.
Scarcity does inflate perceived value, yes, but the tragedy is that we confused engineered scarcity (withholding, strategic aloofness) for the kind that comes from genuine emotional risk. Intimacy’s real cost isn’t in effort, it’s in exposure. It’s expensive because it asks us to show up without armour, not because it’s locked behind performative restraint.
And you’re right, when intimacy becomes a mass commodity, it’s no longer intimacy, it’s spectacle. It’s why curated vulnerability online rarely nourishes. It imitates closeness while demanding no surrender. The audience claps, but no one is held.
Thank you, Andrew, for this rich thread of thought. You always echo a point by expanded it so beautifully!
Wow. That’s an extraordinary piece Tamara. Your powers are growing! What an exhilarating read. Thank you. I love your writing.
Technology is killing the ability to be intimate. Particularly for young people who seem in some cases strangely unable to connect in real person interactions. I overheard two mid-twenties girls discussing the fact they they were both in “situationships” with two guys.
Apparently that was a reference to a strange dynamic where there was no intimacy in the relationship. It sounded like they were stuck, searching on their phones for the answer. Strange times.
Thank you, Paul, that means a lot, knowing you were one of the first to believe in my talent! I agree, we are living through a strange social drought pretending to be hyperconnection. ”Situationship” might be the perfect neologism for our times… a placeholder for something we’re too afraid to name, too distracted to build, and too disoriented to exit.
Tragically ironic… being with someone, but not in anything. As if proximity could replace presence. And yes, the search for connection has shifted from soul to search bar. We outsource intimacy to algorithms and call it efficiency.
What you overheard is chillingly common, I do too, young people learning the grammar of relationships through the dialect of disconnection. It’s not their fault; it’s the environment we’ve engineered. The glitch isn’t in them, it’s in the design.
But conversations like this, and writing that insists on depth, can still plant seeds. Not to bring back the past, but to remind us that we’re not made for spectatorship. We are made to feel, falter, and be met. Even in strange times. Especially then.
This is a masterwork, conceptually rich, culturally nuanced, and emotionally astute. The way intimacy is traced from the primordial to the political, from gesture to grief, reveals your rare depth of understanding and respect for how different cultures embody connection. The inclusion of Japanese honne, Arabic uns, and Indian samskara illustrates that intimacy is never monolithic. It’s shaped by worldview, ritual, and language.
I loved the dismantling of the Western tendency to quantify closeness, to label and monetize what was once sacred. That insight is chillingly accurate. I would add this: perhaps our fear of intimacy isn't rooted in exposure, but in accountability because true closeness requires us not just to be seen, but to be changed by the seeing. It demands a softness we’re taught to equate with weakness.
And the art of choosing presence over proof? That’s no longer a lifestyle; it’s pure resistance.
Your response is so deeply aligned with the spirit in which I wrote the essay, it feels less like praise and more like communion. You saw the architecture beneath the words, the scaffolding of anthropology, philosophy, and ache, and elevated it even further.
Yes, yes, yes: accountability. That’s the word that lingers like flint. Intimacy witnesses and implicates. It alters. To be truly close is not only to be known, but to no longer hide behind knowing. It disrupts the fictions we tell ourselves, and that’s why it terrifies.
And your final line is everything, presence as résistance. Because we live obsessed with visibility, choosing to be deeply here, without packaging, performance, or proof, is the last remaining act of autonomy.
Thank you for meeting me here with such intellectual and emotional generosity. The conversation is the continuation of the essay, and this one, right here, glows.
The intimacy we cultivate with ourselves is incredibly important, yet probably the most overlooked form. We tend to shy away from looking too closely or opening the door to conversations that could reveal our true identity. We have locked it away, in some corner we now can’t remember how to find. This fear is disheartening, as embracing this self discovery can create space for deeper connections with those around us.
Beautifully said, and you’re right, self-intimacy is the foundation, the rehearsal space where all other forms of connection are refined. But what’s tragic is that modern culture doesn’t just neglect it, it actively distracts us from it. We scroll instead of sit with ourselves. We optimise instead of observe. We curate ourselves into strangers.
That forgotten corner you speak of, that’s the soul’s attic, where the unsorted boxes of memory, desire, shame, and joy are stored. And we fear going up there without a flashlight. But here’s the secret: the flashlight is curiosity, not judgment. The minute we enter with gentleness instead of critique, the whole room softens. And once we’ve spent enough time with ourselves, really spent it, not performed it, we stop needing to be seen to feel real. We become witnesses to our own lives.
And from that witnessing, connection with others transforms: no longer a search for completion, but a dialogue between two whole, self-knowing beings. That’s intimacy’s true power, it starts in solitude and ripples outward, one unlocked door at a time.
ugh. this just undid me. i have tried to say something similar but not nearly as eloquent and complete in my own post (unsent letter), but i think i can stop writing now and just fall into your words. they say exactly what i feel! can i please share your texts (of course with exact quotations)?
That “ugh” says more than a thesis ever could, and I’m honoured my words could hold what you were reaching for, Ivy!
Yes, of course, share whatever speaks to you, exactly as it is. That’s what intimacy in writing is for, to say what someone else couldn’t, until they read it and realise they had already felt it. Your unsent letter still matters, it was the prologue to this resonance.
So beautiful! I’ll join the group in praise of your words that resonate as they dive deep into the intimate beating of the heart and stays with it, like a soul companion, or a soft, blue shining moon on a journey, until the mind succumbs and gives way the heart’s presence— meeting the lyricism as a mirror that suddenly sees itself in it—like a Rumi poem.
Sumptuously written and experienced on my end as intensely erotic. I read first for the insightful thoughts and then again just to roll around in the luxuriant words evoking the very breath of intimacy. I feel sad for those who cannot allow themselves to get close, close enough to feel their edges melting away. So many edges, so little true intimacy.
What a beautiful response, thank you. You’ve captured something vital: that real intimacy is erotic, not in the narrow sense of sex, but in the expansive, life-drenched sense of being stirred, undone, and made permeable. The way you described it, edges melting, is exactly right. True intimacy softens the outlines of the self; it blurs the hard lines we draw to stay safe, and invites us to be felt rather than just seen.
And yes, so many edges…. Defences mistaken for identities, performances mistaken for personality. We live in this culture of containment, where nearness is often treated as a threat to autonomy instead of a portal to expansion.
But I believe some people do long for this closeness, you felt it, after all, and even if they can’t yet name that ache, writing like yours, reading like yours, makes space for the thaw to begin. May more of us learn to let our edges blur. That’s where the magic lives.
"To be truly intimate is to be dangerously unarmed.” I love this reading so much. Intimacy is the language of life. Everything is porous and long to be seen. To be touched at the soul level. To be intimate is to be alive. And people are scared to feel this closeness with life, either with another human being or with nature. Intimacy requires vulnerability. Thanks for this reading.
You captured it beautifully: intimacy is not just between people, it’s how we touch life itself. Trees, music, silence, breath…. everything becomes more vivid when we stop armouring ourselves against it. Yes, it’s risky. But numbness is the greater danger. Thank you for speaking the soul’s native tongue so fluently, Imène!
This essay unties the knot that's been dwelling inside the communal throat for too long — a knot tied around the fear of daring to long for the other and of committing in spite of potential tragedy.
The need to have another soul walk beside us on this treacherous road we call life is a primordial need where tenderness is needed both for survival and, mostly, for thriving in this time when everything seems to be set against us — I feel like we need true connection and intimacy now more than ever and you brilliantly placed a meaningful vote in the urn dedicated to the real.
Even though it is something deeply primal, intimacy is something that needs to be taken care of, to be nurtured everyday in every relationship we're engaged in. In return, it will water us and pay us back the light we need to grow upward towards the blooming life within us.
It's what draws us in, but also scares the devil out of us.
This is such a fiercely tender response, thank you for voicing what so many feel but hesitate to name. That knot in the communal throat you speak of…. yes. It’s the quiet strangulation of a culture that has forgotten how to need without shame, how to reach without branding the gesture as weakness.
You’re right, of course, intimacy is ancient and urgent. A necessity disguised as luxury. And like anything sacred, it demands tending. Not necessarily in the big declarations, but in the daily gestures: the text that says “I see you,” the silence held without filling, the willingness to stay when it’s easier to scroll away.
… “it’s what draws us in, but also scares the devil out of us” belongs stitched on the edge of every love letter and whispered into every terrified heart that still dares to hope.
Thank you for voting with your presence, for choosing the real, and saying it out loud. I’m all here for it too.
A tender essay for tender times (if we were all intimate enough to acknowledge and admit it!). I suspect one of the reasons why readers are resonating so strongly to this piece is because you stunningly capture the quietness of intimacy which is not a word we hear enough. It's a word which is weirdly missing - how often do you hear people speak the language, and show the gestures of intimacy? You're right - care has been commodified, to the extent that's lost its meaning and FEELING. I think the word intimacy will get people thinking about AI and what it can and can't do - whilst it may come to know us factually, it can never know us on an intimate level, through the small and big moments of our own revelation.
"Because the truest intimacy, for me, is mutual recognition. Not the echo of my words, but the harmony of another soul who speaks the same dialect of depth."
This is such a beautifully observed response, thank you, Joanna! You’re right, quietness is an endangered element in the discourse around connection. We speak of passion, chemistry, even compatibility but rarely of that tender hush where real intimacy dwells.
You’ve put your finger on something vital, we are fluent in performance but illiterate in intimacy. And care, once an embodied gesture, has been branded, optimised, and diluted until it’s little more than customer service with a halo.
And yes, when it comes to AI……ohhhh thank you for making that link. AI can simulate tone, predict preference, mirror back what we’ve given it. But it will never feel the tremor in our silence, never flinch with us, never recognise the soul’s dialect mid-sentence. That space, where no data can reach, is where intimacy begins.
You touched my senses in every way possible Tamara to reclaim and make sacred a part of me that recognizes we don't stand alone. Your sublime inclusion of the inheritance of cultural tradition, was an immediate insight, "In Japan, where public restraint conceals oceans of private emotion, intimacy is a choreography of nuance: the selection of the right tea cup..." where I began to linger in a memory of a tea ceremony I was privileged to participate in. The gentleman's first words were "We don't ask that you like it, we ask that you experience it." That is exactly what you offer, the experience of intimacy. Within our Western culture, as you brilliantly expose, "Reclaiming the sacred in an age obsessed with exposure - beyond, flesh, filters, and performance," it's as if we have to pull out the feeding tubes of our inherited dismantling of intimacy. So many feel that being "enmeshed" is an intimate experience, and yet, finding the balance between intimacy and sovereignty, breaking through the old agreements, necessitates the experience of entering into the deep story of soul, revealing "who am I," unfolding our own story, reclaiming our original voice, "to be dangerously unarmed." And most of all, the genius of this essay, has me reflecting on the mystery and the intimacy with our own disappearance, our own death. There's a rest and stillness inviting this intimacy into my experience. You offer this gift of intimacy that is beyond the beyond. Thank you Tamara.
What an extraordinary reflection, Susan, reading it felt like being ceremonially handed a bowl of meaning and asked to drink it slowly. Your memory of the tea ceremony is a perfect metaphor for what I hoped my essay might do: not persuade, not instruct, but offer an experience. And your quote, “we don’t ask that you like it, we ask that you experience it”, is intimacy distilled into invitation.
You articulate something crucial, how intimacy is so often mistaken for enmeshment, when in truth it’s the paradoxical space where sovereignty and surrender co-exist. It’s not merging into sameness, it’s being wholly oneself, while allowing another to see what most people will never touch.
And yes, the final intimacy is with our own disappearance. Our vanishing. Not in despair, but in mystery. In awe. If my words awakened even a whisper of that stillness in you, then I am deeply, wordlessly grateful. Thank you for meeting me with such reverence and depth!
Every ounce of this is a well, a pour, cascading from the eye of the heart. Beautiful and rich. A deep reminder to honor intimacy in all its forms… thank you.
What a beautiful image, a pour from the eye of the heart. That’s exactly the current I hoped my essay would carry. Thank you for feeling it so fully, Shelly, and for reminding me that true intimacy lies not just in the words, but in how deeply they are received.
That may be the highest compliment a writer can receive, thank you, Liana! I believe the most powerful truths live just beyond language, and the best we can do is trace their outline with care, hoping someone else recognises the shape. I’m so glad you did.
Tamara, your essay did more than speaking to me, it saw me. It’s rare that I read something that feels like a mirror held not to the face but to the soul’s quieter corners. You write of intimacy with the precision of a scholar and the ache of someone who has waited for it, longed for it, and perhaps had to learn to live without it more than once.
There’s a line I keep rereading: “To be truly intimate is to be dangerously unarmed.” That sentence alone cracked something open in me. It reminds me of how we armor ourselves against our own depth—out of fear that to reveal our rawness is to risk being too much, or worse, not enough.
And yet, what you add, this radical, unmarketed, anti-spectacle kind of presence, is exactly the kind of human connection I think we are all secretly starving for. In a world that demands clarity and speed, you honor the ambiguous, the liminal, the slow burn. You remind me that intimacy isn’t symmetrical, and that doesn’t mean it isn’t sacred. That nuance alone feels like a balm for all the relationships I’ve grieved without permission.
If I may add a thread to your tapestry: intimacy also asks us to live with the unanswered… silence, and ambiguity. The friend who never explains their sudden distance. The text that is never replied to. The love that bloomed but never rooted. True intimacy doesn’t guarantee clarity bur it demands we stay present even in uncertainty.
Your writing is an act of reclamation. Thank you for putting words to what so many of us have only ever felt in fragments. I walk away from this humbled. And hungry for less performance, and more presence.
What a rare and resonant gift, Céline, to be recognised.
Yes, dangerously unarmed is not a metaphor I wrote lightly. It comes from the battlefield we all know but rarely name, the quiet war between our longing to be seen and our terror of being misinterpreted. We walk around sheathed in performance, mistaking caution for character, calling absence “independence,” and pretending that the ache for closeness is some vestigial weakness. But it isn’t. It’s the original hunger.
You’ve put your finger exactly on the pulse of what we’re not supposed to admit, that we grieve relationships not because they were failures, but because they were almost sacred. Almost safe. Almost enough. And the tragedy of almost is that there’s rarely a funeral for it.
Your thread about the unanswered, the friend gone quiet, the lover who ghosted not out of malice but mystery, the endings that never declared themselves as such, is vital. We often forget that intimacy includes a contract with uncertainty. It does not promise permanence. It promises presence. And that, in our hyper-clarified culture, is both deeply terrifying and wildly liberating.
Thank you for this incredible mirror you’ve held up, not just to me, but to all who read here. You’ve stitched another layer into the essay, and I’ll carry your words with me like an afterglow. Presence over performance, ambiguity over artifice. Always.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the essays and notes you have been writing for months. Pure wisdom. Pure heart.
My imagination is limitless… more to come!
Looking forward!♥️
Of course :)
I would like to move into this essay and stay there forever. That’s not very realistic, though, so instead I send it to everyone I know. Maybe that brings the world slightly closer to intimacy.
If essays had front doors, I’d leave this one ajar just for you, with mismatched mugs, unread books, and soft lighting waiting inside. But since we live in the real world (unfortunately less well-written), I’m honoured that you’re letting it travel through your circles like a candle passed hand to hand.
Maybe that’s how intimacy actually spreads… not in declarations, but in these small acts of sharing what moved us. Not performative, not viral, only resonance. Like sending someone a pressed flower instead of a bouquet: less grand, more lasting.
And who knows, if enough people read it, feel it, and recognise themselves in its pages, perhaps we all edge just a little closer to living in that world you wanted to move into. Word by word, presence by presence, we might just write ourselves a better one.
Thank you, Jörgen!
I wonder if the difficulty of intimacy, specifically in the ways we've been trained to restrain it, is part of what makes it so special? Regardless of cultural contexts, we are primed to value what we perceive as scarce because the scarcity of some desired resource signals urgency to claim it, thus giving it a high price tag, literally and figuratively. We have an unfortunate tendency to take for granted things that are freely given, and so we are taught to restrain ourselves in order to keep the price high, and maintain that perception of value.
This speaks to one of your main points, I think, because commodification inevitably leads to a "race to the bottom", where the thing being commodified is cheapened for mass distribution. So even if it were possible to somehow distribute intimacy at scale, the process of scaling in and of itself would cheapen it, and we'd just take it for granted and ruin our ability to fully experience it.
Excellent and thought-provoking as always, Tamara.
You’ve struck at the paradox, the very moment we try to scale intimacy, we sever it from the slowness, mystery, and mutuality that give it worth. We crave intimacy but want it frictionless, infinite, available on demand, like a streaming service for the soul. But the truth is: intimacy doesn’t stream. It lingers. It demands presence, not just access.
Scarcity does inflate perceived value, yes, but the tragedy is that we confused engineered scarcity (withholding, strategic aloofness) for the kind that comes from genuine emotional risk. Intimacy’s real cost isn’t in effort, it’s in exposure. It’s expensive because it asks us to show up without armour, not because it’s locked behind performative restraint.
And you’re right, when intimacy becomes a mass commodity, it’s no longer intimacy, it’s spectacle. It’s why curated vulnerability online rarely nourishes. It imitates closeness while demanding no surrender. The audience claps, but no one is held.
Thank you, Andrew, for this rich thread of thought. You always echo a point by expanded it so beautifully!
Wow. That’s an extraordinary piece Tamara. Your powers are growing! What an exhilarating read. Thank you. I love your writing.
Technology is killing the ability to be intimate. Particularly for young people who seem in some cases strangely unable to connect in real person interactions. I overheard two mid-twenties girls discussing the fact they they were both in “situationships” with two guys.
Apparently that was a reference to a strange dynamic where there was no intimacy in the relationship. It sounded like they were stuck, searching on their phones for the answer. Strange times.
Thank you, Paul, that means a lot, knowing you were one of the first to believe in my talent! I agree, we are living through a strange social drought pretending to be hyperconnection. ”Situationship” might be the perfect neologism for our times… a placeholder for something we’re too afraid to name, too distracted to build, and too disoriented to exit.
Tragically ironic… being with someone, but not in anything. As if proximity could replace presence. And yes, the search for connection has shifted from soul to search bar. We outsource intimacy to algorithms and call it efficiency.
What you overheard is chillingly common, I do too, young people learning the grammar of relationships through the dialect of disconnection. It’s not their fault; it’s the environment we’ve engineered. The glitch isn’t in them, it’s in the design.
But conversations like this, and writing that insists on depth, can still plant seeds. Not to bring back the past, but to remind us that we’re not made for spectatorship. We are made to feel, falter, and be met. Even in strange times. Especially then.
This is a masterwork, conceptually rich, culturally nuanced, and emotionally astute. The way intimacy is traced from the primordial to the political, from gesture to grief, reveals your rare depth of understanding and respect for how different cultures embody connection. The inclusion of Japanese honne, Arabic uns, and Indian samskara illustrates that intimacy is never monolithic. It’s shaped by worldview, ritual, and language.
I loved the dismantling of the Western tendency to quantify closeness, to label and monetize what was once sacred. That insight is chillingly accurate. I would add this: perhaps our fear of intimacy isn't rooted in exposure, but in accountability because true closeness requires us not just to be seen, but to be changed by the seeing. It demands a softness we’re taught to equate with weakness.
And the art of choosing presence over proof? That’s no longer a lifestyle; it’s pure resistance.
Tamara, you strike again. Another masterpiece.
Your response is so deeply aligned with the spirit in which I wrote the essay, it feels less like praise and more like communion. You saw the architecture beneath the words, the scaffolding of anthropology, philosophy, and ache, and elevated it even further.
Yes, yes, yes: accountability. That’s the word that lingers like flint. Intimacy witnesses and implicates. It alters. To be truly close is not only to be known, but to no longer hide behind knowing. It disrupts the fictions we tell ourselves, and that’s why it terrifies.
And your final line is everything, presence as résistance. Because we live obsessed with visibility, choosing to be deeply here, without packaging, performance, or proof, is the last remaining act of autonomy.
Thank you for meeting me here with such intellectual and emotional generosity. The conversation is the continuation of the essay, and this one, right here, glows.
Blessed is the one who is intimate with you.
The intimacy we cultivate with ourselves is incredibly important, yet probably the most overlooked form. We tend to shy away from looking too closely or opening the door to conversations that could reveal our true identity. We have locked it away, in some corner we now can’t remember how to find. This fear is disheartening, as embracing this self discovery can create space for deeper connections with those around us.
Beautifully said, and you’re right, self-intimacy is the foundation, the rehearsal space where all other forms of connection are refined. But what’s tragic is that modern culture doesn’t just neglect it, it actively distracts us from it. We scroll instead of sit with ourselves. We optimise instead of observe. We curate ourselves into strangers.
That forgotten corner you speak of, that’s the soul’s attic, where the unsorted boxes of memory, desire, shame, and joy are stored. And we fear going up there without a flashlight. But here’s the secret: the flashlight is curiosity, not judgment. The minute we enter with gentleness instead of critique, the whole room softens. And once we’ve spent enough time with ourselves, really spent it, not performed it, we stop needing to be seen to feel real. We become witnesses to our own lives.
And from that witnessing, connection with others transforms: no longer a search for completion, but a dialogue between two whole, self-knowing beings. That’s intimacy’s true power, it starts in solitude and ripples outward, one unlocked door at a time.
I love this so very much! ❤️❤️❤️
ugh. this just undid me. i have tried to say something similar but not nearly as eloquent and complete in my own post (unsent letter), but i think i can stop writing now and just fall into your words. they say exactly what i feel! can i please share your texts (of course with exact quotations)?
That “ugh” says more than a thesis ever could, and I’m honoured my words could hold what you were reaching for, Ivy!
Yes, of course, share whatever speaks to you, exactly as it is. That’s what intimacy in writing is for, to say what someone else couldn’t, until they read it and realise they had already felt it. Your unsent letter still matters, it was the prologue to this resonance.
thank you
So beautiful! I’ll join the group in praise of your words that resonate as they dive deep into the intimate beating of the heart and stays with it, like a soul companion, or a soft, blue shining moon on a journey, until the mind succumbs and gives way the heart’s presence— meeting the lyricism as a mirror that suddenly sees itself in it—like a Rumi poem.
Sumptuously written and experienced on my end as intensely erotic. I read first for the insightful thoughts and then again just to roll around in the luxuriant words evoking the very breath of intimacy. I feel sad for those who cannot allow themselves to get close, close enough to feel their edges melting away. So many edges, so little true intimacy.
What a beautiful response, thank you. You’ve captured something vital: that real intimacy is erotic, not in the narrow sense of sex, but in the expansive, life-drenched sense of being stirred, undone, and made permeable. The way you described it, edges melting, is exactly right. True intimacy softens the outlines of the self; it blurs the hard lines we draw to stay safe, and invites us to be felt rather than just seen.
And yes, so many edges…. Defences mistaken for identities, performances mistaken for personality. We live in this culture of containment, where nearness is often treated as a threat to autonomy instead of a portal to expansion.
But I believe some people do long for this closeness, you felt it, after all, and even if they can’t yet name that ache, writing like yours, reading like yours, makes space for the thaw to begin. May more of us learn to let our edges blur. That’s where the magic lives.
"To be truly intimate is to be dangerously unarmed.” I love this reading so much. Intimacy is the language of life. Everything is porous and long to be seen. To be touched at the soul level. To be intimate is to be alive. And people are scared to feel this closeness with life, either with another human being or with nature. Intimacy requires vulnerability. Thanks for this reading.
You captured it beautifully: intimacy is not just between people, it’s how we touch life itself. Trees, music, silence, breath…. everything becomes more vivid when we stop armouring ourselves against it. Yes, it’s risky. But numbness is the greater danger. Thank you for speaking the soul’s native tongue so fluently, Imène!
This essay unties the knot that's been dwelling inside the communal throat for too long — a knot tied around the fear of daring to long for the other and of committing in spite of potential tragedy.
The need to have another soul walk beside us on this treacherous road we call life is a primordial need where tenderness is needed both for survival and, mostly, for thriving in this time when everything seems to be set against us — I feel like we need true connection and intimacy now more than ever and you brilliantly placed a meaningful vote in the urn dedicated to the real.
Even though it is something deeply primal, intimacy is something that needs to be taken care of, to be nurtured everyday in every relationship we're engaged in. In return, it will water us and pay us back the light we need to grow upward towards the blooming life within us.
It's what draws us in, but also scares the devil out of us.
And I'm all here for it!
This is such a fiercely tender response, thank you for voicing what so many feel but hesitate to name. That knot in the communal throat you speak of…. yes. It’s the quiet strangulation of a culture that has forgotten how to need without shame, how to reach without branding the gesture as weakness.
You’re right, of course, intimacy is ancient and urgent. A necessity disguised as luxury. And like anything sacred, it demands tending. Not necessarily in the big declarations, but in the daily gestures: the text that says “I see you,” the silence held without filling, the willingness to stay when it’s easier to scroll away.
… “it’s what draws us in, but also scares the devil out of us” belongs stitched on the edge of every love letter and whispered into every terrified heart that still dares to hope.
Thank you for voting with your presence, for choosing the real, and saying it out loud. I’m all here for it too.
A tender essay for tender times (if we were all intimate enough to acknowledge and admit it!). I suspect one of the reasons why readers are resonating so strongly to this piece is because you stunningly capture the quietness of intimacy which is not a word we hear enough. It's a word which is weirdly missing - how often do you hear people speak the language, and show the gestures of intimacy? You're right - care has been commodified, to the extent that's lost its meaning and FEELING. I think the word intimacy will get people thinking about AI and what it can and can't do - whilst it may come to know us factually, it can never know us on an intimate level, through the small and big moments of our own revelation.
"Because the truest intimacy, for me, is mutual recognition. Not the echo of my words, but the harmony of another soul who speaks the same dialect of depth."
Yes!
This is such a beautifully observed response, thank you, Joanna! You’re right, quietness is an endangered element in the discourse around connection. We speak of passion, chemistry, even compatibility but rarely of that tender hush where real intimacy dwells.
You’ve put your finger on something vital, we are fluent in performance but illiterate in intimacy. And care, once an embodied gesture, has been branded, optimised, and diluted until it’s little more than customer service with a halo.
And yes, when it comes to AI……ohhhh thank you for making that link. AI can simulate tone, predict preference, mirror back what we’ve given it. But it will never feel the tremor in our silence, never flinch with us, never recognise the soul’s dialect mid-sentence. That space, where no data can reach, is where intimacy begins.
Thank you again!
I have to read this over and over again to let it settle into the cracks and windows of my soul. Beautiful ❤️
You are a poet, Virginia! Thank you!
You touched my senses in every way possible Tamara to reclaim and make sacred a part of me that recognizes we don't stand alone. Your sublime inclusion of the inheritance of cultural tradition, was an immediate insight, "In Japan, where public restraint conceals oceans of private emotion, intimacy is a choreography of nuance: the selection of the right tea cup..." where I began to linger in a memory of a tea ceremony I was privileged to participate in. The gentleman's first words were "We don't ask that you like it, we ask that you experience it." That is exactly what you offer, the experience of intimacy. Within our Western culture, as you brilliantly expose, "Reclaiming the sacred in an age obsessed with exposure - beyond, flesh, filters, and performance," it's as if we have to pull out the feeding tubes of our inherited dismantling of intimacy. So many feel that being "enmeshed" is an intimate experience, and yet, finding the balance between intimacy and sovereignty, breaking through the old agreements, necessitates the experience of entering into the deep story of soul, revealing "who am I," unfolding our own story, reclaiming our original voice, "to be dangerously unarmed." And most of all, the genius of this essay, has me reflecting on the mystery and the intimacy with our own disappearance, our own death. There's a rest and stillness inviting this intimacy into my experience. You offer this gift of intimacy that is beyond the beyond. Thank you Tamara.
What an extraordinary reflection, Susan, reading it felt like being ceremonially handed a bowl of meaning and asked to drink it slowly. Your memory of the tea ceremony is a perfect metaphor for what I hoped my essay might do: not persuade, not instruct, but offer an experience. And your quote, “we don’t ask that you like it, we ask that you experience it”, is intimacy distilled into invitation.
You articulate something crucial, how intimacy is so often mistaken for enmeshment, when in truth it’s the paradoxical space where sovereignty and surrender co-exist. It’s not merging into sameness, it’s being wholly oneself, while allowing another to see what most people will never touch.
And yes, the final intimacy is with our own disappearance. Our vanishing. Not in despair, but in mystery. In awe. If my words awakened even a whisper of that stillness in you, then I am deeply, wordlessly grateful. Thank you for meeting me with such reverence and depth!
My hearts with your heart in the intimacy of friendship with freedom.
Always, Susan!
"If only I can know you're near,
the sound of your clothes fretting
on the phone, or through the wall
in that separate room, next door.
If only I can hear your voice
distending in the echoes of a song,
your conversation filled
with noises of surprise and joy.
If only I can sense your heart
may hear the fondling of my own,
the caress of a hand that glows
in forms never invented yet full-grown.
I will know you are there with me,
together still, in that embrace
you cannot feel but shows intense
in summons of privation and of void."
Thank you for this beautiful poem!
Thanks for singing true, that we may hear and agree.
Every ounce of this is a well, a pour, cascading from the eye of the heart. Beautiful and rich. A deep reminder to honor intimacy in all its forms… thank you.
What a beautiful image, a pour from the eye of the heart. That’s exactly the current I hoped my essay would carry. Thank you for feeling it so fully, Shelly, and for reminding me that true intimacy lies not just in the words, but in how deeply they are received.
You are so gracious… a beautiful scarf of intimacy…
You speak my heart. How you use words to allude to what transcends them is so beautiful.
That may be the highest compliment a writer can receive, thank you, Liana! I believe the most powerful truths live just beyond language, and the best we can do is trace their outline with care, hoping someone else recognises the shape. I’m so glad you did.