we often hear the word intimacy

and when it is spoken, it seems to connote
something that is: desireable, difficult to achieve
and often missing in a relationship

author Dick Purnell writes,

"Dr. Henry Brandt, in the Collegiate Challenge
magazine, said that there is a syndrome, a pattern,
when couples come to him. They say, 'At first, sex
was exciting. Then I started feeling funny about myself,
and then I started feeling funny about my partner. We
argued and fought and finally we broke up. Now we
are enemies.'

This syndrome is what I call the morning-after
syndrome. We wake up and find that intimacy is
not really there. The sexual relationship does not
satisfy us anymore, and what we end up with is
not what we really wanted in the first place.
All you have is two self-centered people seeking
self-satisfaction."

so what then is this elusive phenomenon
referred to as intimacy?

in his The Seven Levels of Intimacy (2005),
author Matthew Kelly describes intimacy as
a kind of mutual self-revelation that two people
work at in order to help each other address
their personal needs

the audio track of the clip below is an excerpt
from the Simon Says Podast of 11/03/05

here the author discusses his reasons for writing
about intimacy

in future posts, each of the Kelly's seven levels
will be presented in detail