Intimacy is a human state that occurs when people engage in intimate behaviours. As a verb "intimate" means "to state or make known". The activity of intimating (making known) underpins the meanings of "intimate" when used as a noun and adjective. As a noun, an "intimate" is a person with whom we have a particularly close relationship. This was clarified by Dalton (1959) who discusses how anthropologists and ethnographic researchers access 'inside information' from within a particular cultural setting by establishing networks of intimates capable (and willing) to provide information unobtainable through formal channels. As an adjective, "intimate" indicates detailed knowledge of a thing or person (e.g. "an intimate knowledge of engineering" and "an intimate relationship between two people")Ridley-Duff, R. J. (2007) Emotion, Seduction and Intimacy: Alternative Perspectives on Organisation Behaviour, Bracknell: Men's Hour Books, ISBN 978-0975430019. The product of an intimate relationship is the experience of intimacy.
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Intimacy is a human state that occurs when people engage in intimate behaviours. As a verb "intimate" means "to state or make known". The activity of intimating (making known) underpins the meanings of "intimate" when used as a noun and adjective. As a noun, an "intimate" is a person with whom we have a particularly close relationship. This was clarified by Dalton (1959) who discusses how anthropologists and ethnographic researchers access 'inside information' from within a particular cultural setting by establishing networks of intimates capable (and willing) to provide information unobtainable through formal channels. As an adjective, "intimate" indicates detailed knowledge of a thing or person (e.g. "an intimate knowledge of engineering" and "an intimate relationship between two people")Ridley-Duff, R. J. (2007) Emotion, Seduction and Intimacy: Alternative Perspectives on Organisation Behaviour, Bracknell: Men's Hour Books, ISBN 978-0975430019. The product of an intimate relationship is the experience of intimacy.
Introduction
In human relationships, the meaning and level of intimacy varies from relationship to relationship. In anthropological research, intimacy is considered the product of a successful seduction, a process of rapport building that enables parties to confidently disclose previously hidden thoughts and feelings. Intimate conversations become the basis for 'confidences' (secret knowledge) that bind people together.. Developing an intimate relationship typically takes a considerable amount of time (months and years, rather than days or weeks) and both anthropologists and zoologists have tracked the subliminal changes in body language as rapport develops between two or more people.
Intimacy is both the ability and the choice to be close, loving, and vulnerable, and typically requires well developed emotional awareness to sustain for any length of time. Knowing yourself makes it possible to stand up for yourself in an intimate relationship without taking over the other or losing yourself to the other, resulting in a relationship in which there is a greater emotional range (involving both robust conflict, and intense loyalty). This ability to be separate and together in an intimate relationship is called self-differentiation. Lacking the ability to differentiate one self from the other is a form of symbiosis, a state that is different from intimacy, even if feelings of closeness are similar.
From a center of self knowledge and self differentiation intimate behaviour joins family, close friends as well as those with whom one is in love. It evolves through reciprocal self-disclosure and candour. However, poor skills in developing of intimacy can lead to getting too close too quickly; struggling to find the boundary and to sustain connection; being poorly skilled as a friend, rejecting self-disclosure or even rejecting friendships and those who have them.
