What Is Intimacy?

A few weeks ago I received an article about intimacy written by a man who stated that sharing meaningful story about self – past and present, as well as dreams for the future – creates closeness.  The more we learn about one another’s inner workings, the more intimacy we experience.  Of course he went on to say that this is something most men find very difficult.  I read the same thesis years ago by McGill, who called his thesis  ‘The McGill Study of Male Intimacy”, which came down to ‘what intimacy?’  None of this was new to me.  But as I age, something has emerged that has been very unexpected.  I have two old friends, both women, both women I have known for over forty years, who decided they no longer wanted to share.  Both seemed angry at me because I wanted to curl up on a couch and talk about our lives the way we always had, with both physical and emotional detail.  It wasn’t me who had changed; it was them.  One of these women still emails me, for which I am grateful actually, although rarely with very personal comments. The other has ceased all communication.  Since she didn’t seem terribly interested in my work life, my relationship life, or my grandchildren, and wouldn’t talk about any of her internal struggles or joys, in the day-to-day, it wasn’t a terrible loss.  But the loss of both these friendships, at least in the way I define friendship, has been huge because I never thought any of us would stop delving into the meaning of our lives with one another.  There might be breaks, but we would resume.  In the past, like the author of the article I read on the internet,  I have believed that women were different from men: that we crave intimacy and easily talk about everything. Nothing is off-limits.  Now I am not so sure.  Maybe some women crave intimacy and do what they need to do to attain it, but others are as afraid of what they might reveal, or someone else might reveal to them, as many men.  This makes me very sad.  And then I remember that I have found a man who is willing to share deeply, though sometimes he asks if we ‘can stop now’.  Of course I could go on for hours, but I smile and stop.  Because of who I am, I have found new women friends who also view intimate friendship as essential to their lives.  One of them said to me that we change as we age, and if we change in ways that take us in different directions, friendships, even old ones, fade away.  For some reason I found her words comforting. I imagine my sadness will fade away as well.