Quotes About Intimacy

I don't know if there's a healthier way for two people to stay in love than to stop using each other to resolve their unfulfilled longings and, instead, start holding each other closely as they experience them.

God is going to reveal me as a flawed human being as fast as he can and he's going to enjoy it because it will force me to grapple with real intimacy.

I DON'T KNOW WHY IT IS, EXACTLY, BUT THE PEOPLE with the healthiest self-esteem are also the greatest at intimacy. I'm not talking about arrogant people. I'm talking about people who know they are both good and bad yet believe at the deepest level they are really good for people. It's a beautiful moment when somebody wakes up to this reality, when they realize God created them so other people could enjoy them, not just endure them.

Love can't be earned, it can only be given. And it can only be exchanged by people who are completely true with each other.

They never tell you when you get born a control freak it will cost you a healthy love life. But it's true. You can't control somebody and have intimacy with them at the same time. They may stay because they fear you, but true love casts out fear.

Right, but you know, what would any of us lose by losing our possessions. Maybe we would gain something, like relationships, like the beauty of good friends, intimacy, you know what I mean, man? Like we wouldn't be losing anything if we lost our stuff, we'd be gaining everything.

The thing I loved about her was that I never felt like she was selling anything. She would talk to God as if she knew Him, as if she had talked to Him on the phone that day. She was never ashamed which is the thing with some Christians I had encountered.

Perhaps that's another reason true intimacy is so frightening. It's the one thing we all want, and must give up control to get.

It's true: if we live behind a mask we can impress but we can't connect.

But it's better when you have somebody to go home to and talk about it with, somebody who is more in love with you than impressed by you.

We both have our independence and freedom, but we have those things with each other. It's a paradox, but it works. It all reminded me of what my friend Henry Cloud told me, that when two people are entirely and completely separate they are finally compatible to be one. Nobody's self-worth lives inside of another person. Intimacy means we are independently together.

THE STUFF IT TAKES TO BE INTIMATE IS AUTHENTICITY, vulnerability, and a belief that other people are about as good and bad as we are.

But true intimacy is just like that: it's the food you grow from well-tilled ground. And like most things good for us, it's an acquired taste.

If the Gospel of Jesus is relational, that is, if our brokenness will be fixed not by our understanding of theology but by God telling us who we are, then this would require a kind of intimacy of which only Heaven knows.

If honesty is the key to intimacy, it means we don't have to be perfect and, moreover, we don't have to pretend to be perfect.

When two people are entirely and completely separate they are finally compatible to be one. Nobody's self-worth lives inside of another person. Intimacy means we are independently together.

Paul was terribly personal. The books I like are the ones that make you feel like you are with a person who is being quite vulnerable, telling you all sorts of stuff that is personal, and that's the thing Paul did that makes me like him.

Because the more we hide, the harder it is to be known. And we have to be known to connect.

What if some of the most successful people in the world got that way because their success was fueled by a misappropriated need for love? What if the people we consider to be great are actually the most broken? And what if the whole time they're seeking applause they are missing out on true intimacy because they've never learned how to receive it?

It's true the manipulator is the loneliest person in the world. And the second loneliest is the person being manipulated. Unless we're honest with each other, we can't connect. We can't be intimate. Only God can penetrate a manipulative person's heart, and even then, he sits quietly, waiting for them to stop running their con.

WHENEVER SOMEBODY STARTS KEEPING SCORE IN a relationship the relationship begins to die.

I don't know why it is, exactly, but the people with the healthiest self-esteem, are also the greatest at intimacy. I'm not talking about arrogant people. I'm talking about people who know they are both good and bad yet believe at the deepest level they are really good for people.

Sometimes the real bonding happens in conversations about nothing, Don," she said. "Sometimes being willing to talk about nothing shows how much we want to be with each other. And that's a powerful thing.

You are wired like you and I am wired like me. The more fully we live into ourselves, the more impact we will have. Acting may get us the applause we want, but taking a risk on being ourselves is the only path toward true intimacy. And true intimacy, the exchange of affection between two people who are not lying, is transforming.