Marriage and family minister, the late David Mace contended that marriages failed for one primary reason - a couple fails to achieve mutual love and intimacy. Ask anyone what they hope for their relationship in marriage. They will tell you that they want to get close to another in all ways: physically, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually. Their quest is for intimacy.

We often use the word "intimate" or "intimacy" as a synonym for sexual relationship. But intimacy is much more - it is to feel that you are heard...understood...valued...cared for. Intimacy has to do with sharing. It is the sharing of hopes, dreams, successes, fears, joys, failures, as well as sex. I like this definition of intimacy: "Being fully known and deeply loved by another."

Marriage provides the best setting for growth in intimacy. In marriage there is the security for moving close to another in vulnerability. It is only when we are able to be vulnerable...when we are able to be open and honest with another that we can experience intimacy. Most of us who are married find that intimacy fluctuates. We experience times of moving away from and moving toward one another.

Creating a loving, intimate relationship with another human being seems to be what the entire human race is drawn to. There was only one thing in all of creation that God pronounced to be "not good." He said that it was not good that man should be alone. God's solution to man's loneliness was the creation of a completing part - woman. And it is in the relationship of marriage that men and women have their best chance for banishing their loneliness.

HERE IS A PARADOX. We are drawn to intimacy. All of us have a need to feel close to another, but even though we crave intimacy, we also fear it. We have some anxiety about letting another person get too close to us. Closeness happens to the degree that we take off our masks...express who we really are. If we expose too much of our selves we may be rejected. For this reason, none of us achieve total intimacy with another. While something keeps telling us that we cannot live without intimacy, something else warns us about getting too close.

In addition to the fear of rejection, there may also be some anxiety about being swallowed by another when we get too close. We could lose our self. We could simply be enveloped by this other that keeps getting closer and closer. Our partner could become like the "Pac-man" in the old video game, and we could become like one of the many objects he consumes. While we want...need...maybe even crave intimacy, we don't want to lose our individuality. We want what Sarah Catron, in her 1989 publication, "Creating Intimacy," called "a cherished linking of two separate persons."

Some couple arguments can be explained as an attempt to avoid closeness. Marriage counselors know of the syndrome of starting a fight in order to avoid sexual closeness. And strangely, the fight often originates with the partner who is most verbal in declaring a desire for sex.

Over the next couple of weeks, I want us to think about creating healthy intimacy. Creating an intimate relationship with a loved one requires effort. Intimacy is worth the effort, because it is in those intimate moments that life seems most worth while.

Here is an exercise that can help you recognize closeness that you have already experienced and identify ways you might create more intimacy. Sit down together and share the following:

1. Recall together times you have felt very close. What were some of the factors that led up to the feeling of closeness?

2. What hinders or blocks these feelings of closeness?

3. What is one specific action you could take that would create more intimacy with your partner?