The Wilderness of Intimacy: Control and Connection
by Kay Leigh Hagan
From her book Fugitive Information: Essays from a Feminist Hothead (1993, Pandora), pp. 47-54.
Intimacy is not a candlelit dinner for two. It cannot be contrived. Nor is it automatic, romantic, or necessarily even comfortable. Intimacy is a wilderness of sudden unpredictability, a dynamic of awareness, assertion, and courage. Intimacy occurs when I notice I am alive.
This essay explores some observations along a certain trail in Intimacy that I have marked Control and Connection. Please bring your compass, flashlight, calamine lotion, and trail mix.
My lover and I are walking by the bay after midnight. The moon is full. High over our heads, a tropical breeze pushes the palm trees around. We walk with our arms around each other's waists. The moment is precious. My lover is saying how much she values our relationship, how she misses me when we are apart, how she loves me. I am saying nothing. As I listen, I find I don't believe her. I remember recent hard words between us, how scared I felt. I do not trust her words now. I do not trust her. What does she mean by "love"? I notice she has fallen silent. She says, "What are you thinking?" Her question causes me, invisibly, to panic.
What is intimacy? Without my old unhealthy patterns, I barely recognize my intimate relationships. Dictionary open and romance aside, I find a clue in the root word intimus, meaning "innermost layer." Basically, then, intimacy means sharing from the innermost part, in a relationship marked by close association.
So if I am being intimate with you, I am sharing from my innermost part. I notice no qualifiers in this definition, nothing to say that this close association is necessarily good. Or healthy. Or secure. Or even voluntary. To know these things I need context. I need to find out how the power between us is disbursed. "Sharing from the innermost part" sounds important, though, certainly something I would want to do carefully, selectively, and well--whatever the context. Surely I had some kind of training for this profound activity. I scan my memory. Didn't I have intimacy lessons somewhere along the way, between basketball practice and piano lessons? Perhaps intimacy was part of my "higher" education.
No, like most people, my first close associations were with family, and here is where I learned to be intimate. This may not, however, be such a great setting for learning healthy intimacy skills. The nuclear family model under patriarchy, including the occasional benevolent version, institutionalizes sexism. Current laws are slight modifications of the assumption that the man is the "head," he owns the woman and children. We see this in states that do not recognize marital rape, and when fathers are awarded custody of children, even when evidence of sexual abuse is present. Family sex-role stereotyping and power abuse by parents are our first encounters with the principles of dominance and subordination. Our earliest intimate experiences prepare us to accept, create, and practice relationships of unequal power.1 I notice I have learned this lesson well.
If I tell her the truth about what I am thinking, we may argue again. There has been tension each time we've talked of the conflict. I could lie and say, "Nothing." Or say, "I was thinking of how much I've missed you." Say anything but the truth. The truth might hurt her. The truth hurts me. I'm afraid if I tell her the truth, she'll leave me. I'm afraid the truth will separate us.
Habits of dominance and subordination are instilled so perfectly into my psyche that I can detect them only with the most intentional, conscientious scrutiny, and even then, euphemistic terms like codependency keep me from seeing the context of my struggle. With the help of a feminist perspective, I can see the thorough precision of patriarchal conditioning, how it has infiltrated even my most private exchanges. There is a method to their madness. But why is the patriarchy even interested in this arena of my life? Why does patriarchy want to keep me from being intimate? As long as I conform to its values in my public actions, which can be achieved through intimidation, what difference does it make what I do in private with my beloved? Is nothing sacred?
Actually intimacy is not what patriarchy seeks to prohibit. Reflecting on the fact that intimacy is not necessarily positive or negative, that it is "close association" and "sharing from the innermost part," I note that it is also a prerequisite for access to the subordinate, and thus essential for the dominator's maintenance of control. Intimacy is necessary. Intimacy allows invasion. Incest. Brainwashing. Torture. Abuse. Violence can be extremely intimate. The patriarchy needs intimacy. What it must do is to dictate what happens in the intimate sphere, for this is also the context for connection. This possibility is threatening to patriarchal order, for connection can reveal the illusions that sustain domination.
Patriarchy, a worldview that advocates a dominant-subordinate caste system, depends on separation and estrangement for its survival. Obviously, in order to oppress properly, subordinate groups and individuals must be clearly identified so they can be separated from the dominators. After all, one neds to know whom to oppress. But the subtle levels of separation and estrangement are equally crucial to the maintenance of patriarchal control.
The dominator must separate different subordinate groups from each other to discourage unity and awareness. No networking allowed. In the late 1960s, for example, the potential connection between the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement posed a particular threat to the dominant regime. Steps were taken, in fact, to prevent this connection.
Further, individuals within subordinate groups must feel isolated as individuals. For instance, women are separated from one another by the societal insistence that to be valued a woman must be "with" a man, significantly minimizing her intimate contact with other women and encouraging her to devalue what contact she does have with women.
Finally, a successful patriarchy requires that each individual must feel estranged from one's self. This is accomplished by self-hatred, enforced by internalized oppression. We can expeirence this as alienation, low self-esteem, emptiness, lack of purpose, and futility, creating an internal receptivity to authoritarian rule. This last level of separation may be the most important, for when I hate myself, I will accept abuse and allow my subordination. When I love myself, my energy is no longer automatically available to the dominant culture. I claim it for myself.
The purpose of patriarchal interference in intimacy is to prohibit connection in our close associations. We have seen how "codependency" -- that intimate epidemic -- is an obsession with control. Under patriarchy the subordinate must control the dominator or die, while the dominator controls the subordinate for sport. Either way, authentic connection is impossible, and the patriarchal order is intact. In our intimacies, then, we have been taught to substitute control for connection.
If I lie to her, I can make sure we do not ruin this precious moment by arguing. I can wait until another time, a more appropriate time of my own choosing, to tell her of my fears, of my mistrust. Until then, I will know about my scared feelings and she will not. She will think nothing is wrong. If I lie to her, I am putting myself in a dominant position by choosing to withhold information that is influencing our relationship.
So here I am, in the privacy of my own relationships, apparently of my own volition, practicing oppression and calling it love. My learned "intimacy" skills actually prohibit me from connecting with others, and especially with myself. However, I am quite capable of creating complex illusions and constructing elaborate projections that keep us apart while I appear to be deeply and earnestly engaged. What does this look like in a typical relationship? I call it the Multiple Mask Syndrome (MMS).
I want you to love me. But because of my self-hatred, I am afraid if you really know me, you couldn't possibly love me. I imagine, then, the kind of person I believe you would love, and I create a mask of this idealized version of myself and always wear it around you.
I want to love you. I want to believe you are the one I've been waiting for all my life. I idealize you so that you will resemble this person, and I project this mask onto you. For a long time, I only notice things about you that resemble the mask.
In the meantime you are doing the same thing: You wear a mask that looks like the person you believe I would love, and you project an idealized mask onto me. Individually we begin to believe we are the masks, and the deceit extends to ourselves. We are many masks having a very intense relationship, but we are not connecting. Our intimacy skills help us create and sustain these illusions that keep us from knowing the truth about ourselves and each other.
This Multiple Mask Syndrome is based on self-hatred: I am afraid if I let you know my true self, you would hate her like I do. MMS is maintained by lying. I lie to you about who I am, I lie to myself about who you are. I begin to believe these lies, and the exchange gets ever more complex. This happens on an unconscious level. The masks go on automatically. The lies are much easier to tell than the truth, and sound more real. The energy of the lie directs our intimate path. (2)
Without my masks of lies, I feel like things are out of control. If I am not controlling you or being controlled by you, I don't feel like anything is happening between us. I don't know what is supposed to happen next, and I can't predict what will. Without the security of my old patterns formed by patriarchal conditioning, I feel awkward, scared, panicky. What happens if I take off my mask? What happens if I look at you without yours? What happens if we simply present ourselves in our truth? I believe this is the threshold to the wilderness of authentic, positive intimacy beyond even "equal" power, to a place where power simply is.
She is waiting for my answer. I have only a moment to decide, or my silence will decide for me. I breathe deeply, monitor my tone of voice, reach for gentleness, and say, "I was feeling scared. I was remembering the argument. I was thinking that I don't trust you right now. I feel sad about this."
Connection asks me to be alive in the moment, to come maskless and open. Connection asks me to know myself, and to be willing to know you. Anything might happen in this wilderness of truth. Windstorms, lightning, poison ivy, rapids, a rainbow, a deer. You might like me, just as I am. I might even like myself. I can come prepared to this wilderness, I can train and practice for it, I can stay alert, but I cannot control what will happen. Control prevents connection.
Connection to what? A fundamental principle of a feminist view is the belief that all of life is interconnected. What I do influences you. What you do influences me. When I choose to tell the truth, I create the opportunity for you to know me. I learn I am not alone, and I feel my power. I wake up. I feel the urge of loving change, and I choose to move with it. I am connected to life. I am life. I notice I am alive.
We stop walking. Our talk is tentative and tender. Painful. Suddenly we are intimate. We are sharing from our deepest selves. We are telling the truth. We see each other, know each other. We are connecting. We are loving. This is what happens next.
Notes
- bell hooks, "The Significance of Feminist Movement," in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (Boston: South End Press, 1984).
- Diana M. Grove, personal conversation with author, September 1989.
I'm unsure whether it is possible to have safe intimacies with those who are not working to change their patriarchal conditioning. Intimacy is a mutual awareness, a mutual act. You cannot have intimacy with someone who chooses not to be intimate with you. You can self-disclose, but you cannot achieve the empowerment and feelings, the sensation of intimacy. Self-disclosure can be safe, but self-disclosure doesn't necessarily have to be a sharing, as intimacy is. Intimacy involves a mutual openness: self-disclosure requires only one to act. The other can participate or not. Self-disclosure is potentially a vulnerable state to put yourself into if it is not coupled with intimacy. Vulnerability places safety in jeopardy.
...I agree that we must engage in positive forms of intimacy, to learn about each other, to connect, to create the bonds that will free us from domination and oppression. My problem is how to do this. every day we're confronted (that word chosen specifically) with control: others who try to control us. It is difficult to try to connect when the other is trying to control. It creates incredible vulnerability and the potential for a lot of negative emotional (or rational/irrational) engagements. I want intimacy. I have tasted it and know it to be sweet and warm. It is full of energy, of crisp air, brilliant skies, sudden excitement, peaceful contentment. But where to begin? Feminist dyke that I am, I believe the best place to start is with us, with our community.
Kate Morrow, East Falmouth, MA