Conflict and intimacy…

There is no intimacy without truth.  The problem is that truth comes out of conflict. 

Am I saying you can't have intimacy without conflict in a marriage?  That's exactly what I'm saying.  Conflict is the tunnel to intimacy. 

On one side you've got pseudo-community, as Scott Peck calls it in The Different Drum.  It's when you're superficial:  How you doing?  Fine, Great.  And you don't really deal with the gut issues.  You don't want a relationship there.  There is no meaning in that.  You want a relationship where you understand each other completely and you meet each other's needs because you understand each other's needs and you want intimacy.  How do you get from superficiality to intimacy?  You've got to go through the Tunnel of Conflict, or the Tunnel of Chaos.  You set down and have a face-to-face discussion of the issues that are keeping you from having intimacy.

When you're going through that tunnel, it's no fun.  It's dark, it's scary.  It's not a whole lot of fun.  When you're in the middle of it every bone in your body says, I think I'll just go back out the other way, superficiality is not so bad.  But if you will force yourself to stay in that tunnel, face the truth, you will eventually come out into intimacy. 

            

Just a thought from the front porch…