The Seven Levels of Intimacy: The Art of Loving and the Joy of Being Loved (14 page)

 

 

 

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ELATIONSHIP A
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LICHÉ
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cliché is a trite phrase or expression, or the idea expressed by it; a hackneyed theme, characterization, or situation; something that has become overly familiar and commonplace (Webster’s Dictionary). Has your relationship become a cliché?

The first level of intimacy is the level of clichés. At this level we engage in casual interactions, encounters that reveal little about each person and rely on fleeting and superficial exchanges. If a social encounter doesn’t move beyond an exchange of clichés, it is not even worthy of being called a conversation. This style of communicating is very useful in becoming acquainted with a person and in the day-to-day transactions of our lives, but relationships are not transactions. Transactions are boring and monotonous, like clichés. Relationships should be dynamic collaborations. So, while the first level of intimacy is good for establishing a connection with people, and necessary for conducting the daily affairs of our lives, clichés can destroy the soul of a relationship. Thus they can prevent any true intimacy.

We all have relationships on the cliché level. The dialogue in these relationships tends to go something like this:

“How are you?”

“Fine.”

“How was your day?”

“Great.”

“What did you do?”

“Same as yesterday!”

Now, if you communicate with the man who bags your groceries only with clichés, that is one thing, but if cliché is the way you communicate with your spouse or your teenage child, that is something entirely different.

Is your primary relationship becoming a cliché? Is it becoming trite? Transactional? Has it become overly familiar, to the point of being disrespectful? Has it become commonplace? If it has, don’t despair.

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OMMUNICATE IN
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LICHÉS
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e communicate in clichés for a myriad of reasons. Some of these reasons are simple and valid, while others are tremendously complex.

The simplest and most valid reason is that clichés are powerful in helping us make initial connections with people and in helping us to maintain a connection with people at a certain level. Asking someone, “How are you?” is perhaps the simplest and most common way to begin a conversation. Making that person feel that you are actually interested in hearing the answer is the key to intimacy. Let’s face it, when most people ask, “How are you?” they are just being polite and they expect you to reply in cliché form by saying, “Fine!” or “Great!” Clichés are great conversation starters, but if they don’t lead anywhere over time they become shallow and superficial, and they fail to quench our thirst for intimacy.

At the same time, a cliché can be used to kill a conversation. Those who are indifferent, selfish, or afraid become experts at employing the cliché to destroy any chance of meaningful communication. For example, a wife may ask her husband, “What did you think of what happened in Europe today?” and he replies, “It is what it is!” Another example might be a father trying to begin a discussion with his teenage child by asking, “Do you still feel like you can come and talk to your mother and me?” The child replies, “Whatever!” On paper these conversations seem harsh and rude, but they are becoming commonplace in more and more relationships that are perceived by the outside world as being functioning, healthy, and normal. I assure you, such exchanges are anything but functioning, healthy, and normal. They are a sign of deeply fractured relationships that are desperately in need of attention.

The young people of today have perfected this form of communication and transmuted it into a form of noncommunication, with the creation of clichés such as “What’s up?” and “Whatever!” It is also interesting to note that teens usually use clichés to avoid deeper levels of communication with the adults in their lives, and that they communicate very differently with friends within their peer group.

Why do so many teenagers communicate in this way with most of the adults in their life? Sometimes it is because they feel that if they do communicate in any meaningful way they will be judged or criticized. They sense that they will not be accepted for who they are. Perhaps they communicate in this way because they feel that nobody understands them, and most are unwilling to try. Others may resort to the constant use of clichés to communicate because they believe (consciously or subconsciously) that everything within them is worthless and pathetic. Some are lazy and indifferent to others. Still others are so completely self-absorbed that they find communicating with others to be boring and a waste of time.

The reasons adults have are startlingly similar. We are afraid of being judged and criticized. We sense that we are not accepted and are afraid of being rejected. We feel that nobody understands us and that most people are more interested in being understood themselves than they are in trying to understand us. Secretly we all carry with us a shame, and at times believe that we are worthless and pathetic. We are lazy. We are indifferent. We are self-absorbed.

Clichés are safe. We cling to them for that reason. But when they are overused in a relationship that deserves to enjoy greater depth of intimacy, clichés keep us at arm’s length from the one thing we cannot live happily without.

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n other relationships, we encounter the opposite of this cliché-dominated communication. With everything that is good, abuses exist at both extremes. Some people abuse the first level of intimacy by using clichés too much, while others abuse it by using cliché communication too little or refusing to engage in small talk at all. This kind of behavior is equally harsh, abrupt, rude, and insensitive.

Imagine a person incapable of small talk. You probably don’t have to imagine; you probably know someone who fits this description. They seem incapable of being cordial and polite, incapable of regular social interactions. They may be abrupt and arrogant in their manner, quiet and distant to all onlookers, and when they do speak they come off as harsh, because they don’t ease into a conversation. They cut straight to the topics and big issues (or at least, what they consider to be the big issues), which usually revolve around their own area of expertise. If you try to call them on this, they will explain that they simply cannot “humor fools” and that nothing is gained from small talk.

We must ask: Does this attitude and approach encourage intimacy? The answer is, of course, a resounding no. In fact, such people in many ways resemble the teenager whose answer to everything is “Whatever.” These are often men and women of towering intellect, but they hide behind that intellect. Others who employ this tactic are not intellectual giants, but create some other mask to assert their superiority. Why? They have all the same reasons any of us do for avoiding intimacy, but mostly, they fear it, though it is the one thing they cannot live happily without. It is this fear that drives them from the world of others and into the world of self. And in that world of self they begin the narcissistic obsession and eventually convince themselves that others are boring and a waste of time. As the years pass in this world of self, they become indifferent to the interests and needs of others, and incapable of the simplest of human communications and considerations. They may claim that their genius prevents them from thinking about the trivial, because their minds are constantly occupied with grander and loftier ideas, but the truth is they lack the common decency to ask another human being: How are you? How was your day? What did you do? and the empathy to listen and care.

They will tell you that they are simply incapable of small talk, as if they were born this way. The truth is they have chosen to be incapable of small talk. The bottom line is that such people are scared to death. They may seem awkward in social situations, unable to engage with people, but this disposition is the fruit of years of effort. We are all able to make people feel welcome and accepted, by taking an interest in them. We become good at this the same way we become good at anything, with practice.

We all find ways to avoid intimacy. Some of those ways are highly sophisticated, while others are simple and transparent. But the effect is the same: we continue to yearn for our fill of intimacy.

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AREFREE
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IMELESSNESS

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ne thing can help you move beyond the tyranny of the cliché level more effectively than anything else:
carefree timelessness
. What is carefree timelessness? It is time together. Not five or ten minutes, but two hours or four hours, or a weekend away. And it
isn’t
just a lot of time together. Carefree timelessness is time together without an agenda.

All relationships thrive under the condition of carefree timelessness, but we don’t gift our relationships with carefree timelessness. We try to shove them into five minutes here and ten minutes there, a cell phone call here and an instant message there. Do we actually expect that our relationships can genuinely thrive under these conditions? Do we sincerely feel that this is enough to form a significant connection with another human being? Or have we simply failed to think about it, because we are distracted by the everyday insanity of our busy lives?

If you want your teenage child to open up to you a little more, spend an afternoon together without an agenda. Do something different together. Make this a regular part of your relationship. The first time, your teenager will be understandably suspicious, but once this becomes a normal part of your lives together he or she will sense your genuine interest and will begin to open up.

The same approach can be taken with any relationship. Simply add some carefree timelessness and watch it begin to grow and thrive.

Think back to when your primary relationship began. You probably spent a lot of time together, and when you weren’t together you probably spent a lot of time thinking about the next time you would be together. Was there spontaneity and carefree timelessness in your relationship at the beginning? How much energy did you put into trying to please each other?

You may think that you spend more time together today, but do you really, or are you simply in the same place together more of the time? The world is full of people living together alone. Is there always an agenda when you do spend time together? When was the last time you woke up with absolutely nothing planned and said to each other, “What would you like to do today?” Or perhaps you simply stopped trying to please each other somewhere along the way. Did you? When did you stop trying to please her? And why? Don’t you miss the happiness you found in making someone else happy?

We all want to have great relationships, but we get distracted. We all want to experience times of carefree timelessness, but we get preoccupied with and distracted by all the urgent things.

Every morning when you wake up, you face a list of urgent things to do. Your list of urgent things might be in your planner or on your desk; it might be on your fridge or on your computer. Your list of urgent things might be in your mind, it might be in your spouse’s mind! But every day there’s that list. We rush around endlessly doing all these urgent things, and if we are not careful we will rush around doing urgent things for the rest of our lives.

The problem is, the most important things are hardly ever urgent.

When was the last time you woke up and said to yourself, “I urgently have to work out today”? You don’t urgently have to work out; you have to skip your workout because you have urgent things to do. When was the last time you said to your assistant, “Cancel all my meetings. I urgently need to read a good book that will fuel my mind, expand my vision of myself and the world, and intellectually stimulate me”? When was the last time you thought, “What I really need to do urgently today is go down to Wild Oats and get myself some fresh organic fruits and vegetables and make myself a truly great meal that will genuinely fuel and energize my body”? You don’t urgently need to eat a good meal; you urgently need to go to the drive-through.

The most important things are hardly ever urgent.

In each of the four areas of life (physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual) we know what is most important, but we tell ourselves that we will attend to those matters later, when we have finished with the urgent things. “I’ll do it when I get caught up!” we tell others and ourselves. This might not be so much of a problem if we did actually do the most important things when we got caught up. But we don’t. Not because we don’t want to, but because we never get caught up. Seriously, when was the last time you sat down and you said to yourself, “I’m caught up now!”

It doesn’t happen. Your to-do list just gets longer and longer every day. You never get caught up; you just get more and more behind every day. Some days you feel as if your life has a momentum of its own, as if it would go on with or without you. “Caught up”! Who are we kidding?

Because the most important things are hardly ever urgent, that is why we have to place them at the center of our lives. We have to put them on our schedules, because if we don’t we simply won’t get around to them. “Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least” was Goethe’s advice.

We have to make carefree timelessness a priority.