from the book: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Kama Sutra
by Johanina Wikoff, Ph.D. and Deborah S. Romaine

Most people want intimacy and closeness in their relationships. Couples whose relationships are coming apart often complain that they wish their partners would be more intimate. When couples come to the counseling office and the therapist asks what intimacy means to them, responses range from 'I want him to talk to me" to "I want her to watch me surf."

Perhaps, sadly, people fail to realize that it isn't the shared space that makes you feel intimate. It isn't what you do that creates an intimacy. It is the quality of your presence. It is how much of yourself you share with your partner when you are together. Do you offer your feelings and thoughts, share insights and tenderness through affectionate touching? Do you notice changes and compliment your partner?

Intimacy and closeness are not the same. A couple may tell the therapist that they have lots of closeness yet still don't feel intimate. When the therapist asks them to describe how they spend their time together, they rattle off a list of activities that puts most social calendars to shame. They share time going to movies, having dinner with friends, watching television, attending the kids' soccer games. Their favorite pastime, they may say, is to sit side-by-side on the sofa and read. Clearly this couple, like so many others, has plenty of closeness. They spend a lot of time in close proximity, sharing activities and spending quality time together. What they are missing, however, is intimacy.

"Into Me, You See"
Intimacy evolves in a relationship when we reveal ourselves to one another. Look at the word intimacy -"into me, you see." To be intimate with another person, we must reveal ourselves to one another. When a relationship is young, we share little bits of intimacy and take little risks. Saying "I love chocolate, too" establishes a common connection, but it isn't much of a risk. If one person says, "Your loving me makes me aware of how I sometimes don't feel like I deserve your love and don't always let you in," that is putting your heart out there in a vulnerable way that establishes an intimate connection.

To grow and feel more connected in an intimate relationship, partners need to reveal themselves in a vulnerable, undefended manner. When you expose your fears to one another, your hearts soften and you can continue to grow and evolve in an open, tender, and dynamic relationship. If couples harden, withdraw, and stop revealing themselves to each other, relationships stagnate. Couples that adopt a "let's not rock the boat" attitude and play it safe miss out on the growing intimacy that happens by revealing yourself to another. Those couples who find themselves dining in silence are often not at a loss for words, but rather they are unwilling to say the difficult things that would bring them back into an intimate connection. Rather than jeopardizing closeness, telling each other the truth and saying what might be the hard things usually brings couples closer because speaking of such things clears the air between them. There are no unspoken conversations.

This fear of saying something that would shake things up keeps couples locked out of real intimacy. Sure, this offers shelter from disturbance and vulnerability. But it also closes out passion and desire. In this 'no risk' zone, it's tempting to turn to an erotic text like the Kama Sutra in search of ways to revive faltering intimacy with exotic techniques of pleasure. This will almost certainly reinvigorate interest in sex. But each partner also must again be willing to take the risks true intimacy requires.

Reuniting Sexuality and Spirituality

It is easy to see how the Kama Sutra includes emotional intimacy as an important element of sexual loving. In Vatsyayana's view, sexuality and spirituality are also intertwined. Western perspectives are moving closer to this unity of body and soul. During the past 40 years we have begun to view sexual loving as a pleasurable way to cultivate intimacy. More recently, we have started to see that sexual loving is also a way to honor our longing for a deeper and more profound spiritual connection to life. Eastern writings such as the Kama Sutra, in which the divine extends to the human experience through sexual union, have encouraged Westerners to permit spirituality in the bedroom, too.

Still, we remain self-conscious in our treatment of spiritual intimacy and sexuality. We tend to think in terms of having better sex rather than viewing a loving relationship as a way to grow in self-knowing, acceptance, and compassion. It is these qualities that we can develop in loving another well that will allow us to bridge the differences that exist between us. We can be sexual without being intimate. We can have orgasmic, good-enough sex (which is all some of us feel we dare ask). But do we feel intimately, spiritually, connected in our lovemaking? Do we open our eyes and see who it is that we are sharing our bodies and our love with?

The intimacy that we long for can be found when we are fully, unconditionally present in our love play with our beloved. When we make love without a goal of "getting off or getting our beloved off" and focus on being present in our breath, in our touch, in our open-eyed meeting of the other, when we can share fear or joy during the height of pleasure, when we participate with all of our being, and when we risk being honest, then real intimacy is present in our lovemaking.