When relationships die for a lack of intimacy

What do you think of the following quote:

“If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.”
― Thomas Merton

For me, what Merton is getting to is there’s a banality in life, even most frustratingly in our closest and most intimate relationships, where there is little or next to no intimacy.

We may spend so much of our time talking to people about what our plans are or asking them what their plans are, or finding out what they like, how they’ll vote, whether they want tea or coffee or sugar with it, and we may miss an opportunity to explore the deeper connection that many of us just crave to unlock.  This is especially the case in marriages and deep friendships.

Many people are afraid of going to the deeper places for what they may be required to face.  For many it’s what it might cost them.  Many find it safer not to go there, to deny the deeper parts of themselves to themselves let alone to their partner or friend.  And relationships, and individuals, never grow as a result.

Then you get people who detest a lack of intimacy; people who find it so frustrating that people won’t open up and give more of themselves.

Usually it is one person who resists or refuses to open up who is partnered with someone who is frustrated by the lack of intimacy.  The one who refuses to open up may or may not realise that their relationship is dying for a lack of intimacy.  If they’re aware, they may feel incapable of going there, they may feel unsafe, or they may doggedly resist for other reasons.

Meanwhile, for that lack of intimacy, of not opening up, of withdrawing and repelling love, there is a soul who just wants to love who cannot.

The Merton quote shows us that when we desire to be known we want others to explore beneath the banality of surface-level questions.  People who crave deeper intimacy are ready to invest more of themselves in being known.  They seek their vital other to join that party.

Many people suffer loneliness in this life.  And it’s not always those who are alone.  There is such a thing as being lonely in a crowded room.  Loneliness also exists in relationships that should exemplify intimacy and don’t.

For those who will hear and read the cues, for those who have resisted or refused up until now, now could be the time to open up, to begin the process of risking vulnerability.