herself. He is full of desire, but the desire may not be sexually toned. If you asked him what he wanted, the true reply would often be, ‘To go on thinking of her.’ ”
DIALOGUE
You talk. Dialogue is the third state of intimacy. It is the dance of mutual unveiling. When couples get together for dinner or a date, they are on their best behavior, hoping that something comes of this. As they talk, their breathing begins to synchronize, the words come out at a similar speed. They are unconsciously taking in each other’s pheromones. (Smell is a surprisingly powerful way of knowing.) Before long they are smiling. People are unconsciously good at discerning sincere smiles from fake, I’m-just-being-polite smiles. The so-called Duchenne-Smile involves the lift of an eyebrow muscle that we can’t control consciously. So when a person gives you a D-Smile it feels like heaven. Then they are laughing together. We think of laughter as the way we respond to jokes, but only about 15 percent of the comments that trigger laughter are funny in any way. Instead, laughter is a language that people use to bond. It is what bubbles up when some social incongruity has been resolved or when people find themselves reacting in the same way to some emotionally positive circumstance. Laughter is the reward for shared understanding.
At the early stages of dialogue, couples are looking for similarity. When intimacy is happening, couples find commonalities that feel like destiny. You don’t like foie gras? Neither do I! It’s a miracle! You find those six-dollar cupcakes ridiculous? So do I! We’re soul mates! Their constant delicious refrain is, You, too? I thought I was the only one! We Are the Same! WATS!
One key ground for similarity is in your senses of humor; you better laugh at the same things. As time goes by, the dialogue goes deeper. The couple starts flirting, little inside jokes and sly sideways glances. Then, people start sharing their life goals. They begin subtly feeling out the other person’s conception of marriage and how they feel about kids. People begin looking for vulnerability, the process of the slow, step-by-step unveiling. This is part of the inevitable effort to get to know the person’s fragile places. But it’s also the phase of moral testing. You want to know, If I unveil, will you protect? If I proceed cautiously, will you understand me and match my pace? If I pause, will you respect my pause and wait for me? If I reveal the scariest of my dark monsters, will you hold me? Will you reveal yours? Politeness is at the core of morality.
We’ve all been in restaurants where just one table over, an atrocious date is under way. Most of the time the woman is making conversational volleys to establish intimacy and similarity, but the guy is intent on establishing dominance. He’s barreling forth with all his supposed knowledge, with the stories he tells in which he’s his own hero. Her eyes glaze over, but his torrent never stops. You want to take your fork and stab it in the guy’s neck and cry out, “For the love of God! Ask her a question!”
The biggest problem in the dialogue phase is fear. Intimacy happens when somebody shares something emotionally meaningful, and the other person receives it and shares back. One obvious fear is that you’ll expose your tender flesh and the other person will trample it and then leave. Another obvious fear is that you’ll discover that the other person seeks a future you cannot provide. The deeper and more potent fear is that in exposing yourself to others you will actually understand yourself.
“Those of us who wish to pride ourselves on autonomy, on the self-made life, on freedom of choice, are often humbled by the recognition that archaic patterns are playing through us. Who is in charge of our lives if we are not?” James Hollis writes. Down in the unconscious layer of our minds, there are complexes and wounds that lead us to act in the same self-destructive ways again and again. Your personality is the hidden history of the places where love entered your life or was withdrawn from your life. It is shaped by the ways your parents loved you, the ways they did not love you. All of us have certain attachment patterns lodged deep in our minds. Some people provoke a crisis because they are scared of intimacy. Some withdraw at exactly the moment things are getting close.