Naked Desire

Often we do not say the hungers and desires we have or the expressions of love and even helplessness we feel in another’s presence. However, when we do so, we empty out our backlog, allowing the energy of connection to flow. We can put the ante up first. What we offer may be, and hopefully is, entirely inappropriate. They may be married or we may fear they will hold us to it forever. However, we remember adults play in the here and now. We may, in this moment, want to be with someone for the rest of our lives and in the next moment not want it at all. True connection is built when we say both, speaking what is true in each moment. This is an honest relationship versus an attached relationship. The result of this type of honest communication is we may not have an institutionalized relationship where we are both obligated to respond to the form rather than each other. We may, however, have more life in one moment of true connection than other people have in a lifetime of relationship. We may not want to act on it but we may have more intimacy than someone who does. We may say a truth so true that they are touched in a way they have never been by their partner yet we do not have to violate any rules they operate by. We own each other through truth, not through rules. Rules make people fake, accommodating, and full of resentment. Honestly leaving someone or hating them may be far more intimate than being the perfect partner with whom they will remain for a lifetime.

Emergent behavior is evident here more than in any other way of relating. Most people are likely to reveal what they would otherwise hide when in attraction—the aloof person who grips and loses it or gets obsessed, the mesmerized person who is repulsed by a positive stroke, the connection that seems entirely unlikely or impossible but pulses with such electricity and power that “impossible” melts away and we have no idea how we did not see it. This can occur in a long-term relationship where something totally new arises, or in a brand-new encounter.