Intimate Counterfeit: Indulgent

Maslow discussed “intimate personal relations” as a character that values closeness to fewer friends rather than shallow relationships with many. I focus on the intimacy term in Maslow’s phrase to isolate and expand on the deep trust relationship that it describes.

The counterfeit of intimate is indulgent. As an indulgent character, you offer too much of yourself. You are unaware of the full set of options that communicate and sustain intimacy. Often, you have problems with sexualizing individual relationships with interactions that misrepresent trust. In groups, you tend toward discussions that are too personal, revealing information that most feel should be kept private.

You want people to perceive you as engaged and engaging, but you perceive a false duality. You think that the only options are to be an open book with no secrets or to be a stuffy social derelict. Trust is thwarted because the core of your interaction is to fulfill your own emptiness. It is more precise to term your behavior as chatty. You often lack appropriate boundaries to the point of over sharing.

To be truly intimate is to engage seeking a deeper knowledge of the choice behavior of others. A genuine interest in why people do the things they do. Intimacy involves less talking and more listening. Truly intimate relationships take many forms based in conversations in which an understanding of the other is increased. Intimacy is not just sex. In fact, true intimacy does not have to be related to sexuality or discussed in sexual terms.