Observations of a Newborn Grownup

Intimacy is the reward of commitment, or it should be, according to Joshua Harris. 

Let’s be honest and say that that’s just not the way things appear to be working lately.  Women and men are entering relationships for the purposes of being emotionally or physically intimate.  And it’s understandable to want that with someone.  But when someone is ready and willing to become that close to someone else just to alleviate boredom or loneliness, commitment is likely to become the burden of intimacy.  And burdens are never good.

In other words, this society’s prevailing willingness to be friends with benefits, and the sort of intimacy that some people share long before they should can create a strong attachment, naturally.  There’s nothing wrong with vulnerability, openness or the emotional and physical sharing of onesself with someone else in the appropriate context. 

When intimacy is shared outside of an appropriate context, or prematurely, an attachment will more than likely be born, creating a blindness to the things that just scream “this guy or this girl is not worth a minute of your time!” 

Appropriate contexts take time to take place, for lack of a better phrase, and thanks to a lack of patience and a desire to be close to other people, some can’t stand to wait.  And that’s when intimacy gets really good at jumping the gun.  It’s when there is no commitment but we’re intimate anyway.  It’s when ” ‘love’ comes down without devotion,” according to George Michael, and it’s the reason so many girls and guys eventually can’t tell whether they’re sticking around because they truly love someone, or because they’re just way too attached to that person because of the premature emotional or physical intimacy they’ve shared.

Sometimes bad manners, bad habits and just plain bad people are impossible to notice and simple to brush off when you’ve got a case of warm and fuzzies laced with hopeless attachment.  All you need is a little more intimacy-free time; a little more genuine communication; a little more effort to gather enough information to make or break your date.  When you come to these sorts of realizations before becoming intimate with someone and attached, it’s bound to be easy to walk away and easier to know when you should.  It will also feel a lot less like being shot through the heart.

I surprise myself when I say it, but I think George Michael (or whoever wrote Faith) was right.  You’ve got to think twice before you give your heart away.