Human relationships are beautiful, fun, weird, tiring, stressful etc. it’s a whole package of ups and downs. To sustain a healthy relationship, it is essential to build intimacy with whoever is involved. The higher the level of intimacy, the closer the person is to you. The level of intimacy shows whether the person is an acquaintance or a friend.
Intimacy is the closeness between people in relationships. There are a lot of types. Let's talk about a few
1. Physical intimacy: the most popular of them all. Intimacy between bodies...you knoww...sex🤷♀️.
2. Spiritual intimacy: Intimacy between spirits. This is when you feel a sense of closeness with this other person spiritually. Your stance on spiritual things align and this person spurs you on to do take your faith seriously.
3. Emotional intimacy: Intimacy between hearts. This is when you feel a sense of belonging. You feel heard, seen and noticed by this person. You don’t have to struggle to get your feelings and emotions across because they are acquainted with you.
4. Intellectual intimacy: Intimacy between minds. For brainy people this is important. They want someone who is on a similar wavelength intellectually. Someone they can talk hours upon hours about their nerdy stuff.
Each person has a bias. Some people are more spiritually biased than they are intellectually, they will choose preacher over a professor any day. That’s not a bad thing, preferences are sometimes- not all the time-a sign of a deep and valid need. The problem with this is that we are holistic beings no matter how “spiritual” you are you’ll need some emotional, intellectual and physical care along the way.
If you’ve noticed, the major way of building these blocks of intimacy (except physical intimacy) is by communication. You can only know how a person is spiritually, emotionally and intellectually when you have conversations.
Ever wondered why there are huge numbers of people being led on in christian romantic circles? This is why.
Okayyy for those who don’t get it? Being led on is defined as encourage romantic pursuit without the intent of returning romantic feelings.
It’s because you spend hours bonding with this people emotionally when there has not been
a clear statement of romantic intent. You guys are just friends but talk on the phone for hours about how your day went. Truth is, it might be a very platonic relationship but in the long run, on party might subconsciously start reading meanings into these “acts”.
As Christians, we must be particular about guarding our hearts, because all the issues of life flows from it (Prov. 4:23 ). It is essential to put in place boundaries to protect it.
Why fall in love when you can make a conscious decision to walk into it? The saying, “the heart wants what it wants” is not true, you have power to sieve and sort people who you will give your heart wholly to. After prayerfully assessing the person’s character, you open them up to your heart. Your heart is precious to God, you don’t have to go through every nasty situation to gain “experience”. With knowledge, you can preserve your innocence and sanity. If after assessing them you realize that you are unequally yoked, his/her character is not of worthy repute, he/she is leading you to sin or God just doesn’t approve of the romantic relationship, that will be the best time to bring in reinforcements(boundaries)-which you should have had in the beginning.
There’s a type of boundary for every type of intimacy there is. Physical boundaries to guard physical intimacy, spiritual boundaries to regulate spiritual intimacy, emotional boundaries to regulate emotional intimacy etc. And just as communication is the key to building most types of intimacy, wisdom in communication is also a boundary to be enforced.
If you get a green light, then you can try getting to know the person better. In this case, you’re well aware of what you're doing. You’re not only under the influence of some whimsical giddy feeling, your mind is very much part of the process and you can always back out when those boundaries are not being respected.
Just as building intimacy is the key to building relationships, neglecting them is also the hammer with which we break them down. If you neglect these, the relationships will disintegrate (literally).
Disclaimer: This is not to say that people who have effective boundaries are always successful when it comes to relationships and do not get heartbreaks at all. No! having boundaries is just one of the many ingredients to a having a relationship that honors God. if both parties are willing to put in all the work we can be assured of success.
It's helpful to have a series of boundaries written down in these spheres (physically, emotionally, spiritually and intellectually), what I call a boundary framework to guide you. As the CEO of your life, take responsibility for your love life, your heart and body are precious is God and to all of us, your siblings in Christ.
You're not doing too much, you're a fallible person who is well aware of your humanity and making efforts to honor God with the totality of your being.
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