Do You Trust Me?

Several years ago, I interviewed my sister and her boyfriend about love. At the time, Marlena was 80 and Tony was 87. I recorded the conversation for a class that happened to fall on Valentine’s Day. They had been together for three and a half years.

I asked them if they were in love.

Tony immediately piped up, “Of course I love her.”

Then he said something that stayed with me. When you’re young, he explained, love is dreamy. It takes up all the space in your life. At their age, trust was more important.

The importance of trust was echoed in my sex education class. I asked my students what they thought were the most important factors contributing to long-term love. Their top three answers were communication, trust, and respect.

When I developed my Seven Principles of Intimacy model, it seemed obvious to me that the foundation of intimacy had to be trust.

Why?

Because intimacy requires vulnerability.

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Whenever we reveal something real about ourselves, we take a risk. We allow another person to see something that we could have kept hidden.

Curiously, sometimes it is easier to be authentic and vulnerable with a stranger on an airplane. You may find yourself telling someone you have never met things you have barely told people you know. Perhaps part of the reason is that you know you will probably never see that person again. There is a certain freedom in that. You can relax, drop some of your defenses, and reveal something real without worrying about how that revelation will affect an ongoing relationship.

But trust also requires discernment.

Most of us have had the experience of trusting too much or discovering that someone we believed was safe was not. We may have revealed something deeply personal only to have it dismissed, betrayed, used against us, or shared with someone else.

Vulnerability does not mean opening ourselves indiscriminately. Part of intimacy is learning whom we can trust, how much we can reveal, and when. Trust develops as we discover that another person can hold what we reveal with respect, kindness, and care.

Sexual intimacy requires us to surrender at least some control over our bodies. We lose our inhibitions. We grunt and groan. Our faces contort. We scream “yes, yes, yes,” and sometimes shout “Oh God!”

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None of this is particularly dignified. ®And maybe that is part of what makes sex so intimate.

For an authentic sexual experience to occur, we have to trust that revealing more of ourselves will not make us less lovable. We have to risk allowing ourselves to be seen.

There is a line in A Course in Miracles® that speaks to the fear that if another person ever saw who we really are, they would recoil from us as if we were a snake. It is a powerful image because intimacy asks us to challenge precisely that fear.

What if the opposite is true?

What if, when we stop trying so hard to manage how another person sees us, something more genuine begins to emerge?

Our essence.

I’ve written a lot about performance versus presence, particularly in sexuality. Performance asks: Am I doing this right? Do I look good? Am I pleasing you? What do you think of me?

Presence asks something very different:

Can I be here with you as I am?

Practicing the principles of intimacy counters the pressure to perform. It invites us to lead with the heart, because that is where intimacy resides.

True intimacy is not about presenting the most polished version of ourselves. Nor does it mean revealing everything to everyone.

It is the willingness to be open and vulnerable, combined with the discernment to know where that vulnerability is safe.

Perhaps Tony understood something that takes a lifetime to learn.

Love may begin with dreams and desire. But over time, one of its greatest gifts may be knowing that with this person, you can finally let down your guard.

You can be seen.

And you can trust that you will still be loved.

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If this piece resonated with you, you might also enjoy:

• Intimacy: The Sacred Space Between Us is available on Amazon in three formats: Hard cover, soft cover, and ebook. Find it here.

• Let’s Talk Sex: Birds, Bees & Beyond my podcast with Carolina Freire. Subscribe, share, comment.

• Work With Me individual coaching and workshops about intimacy and relationships including transcendent sexuality.