Relationships
And then the next day dawns�and the two of you wake up. Dried drool is on your cheeks and chin, sleep crust is caked up on your eyes, spare change and other bits of debris are caught up in your hair, and half your face is covered in red marks from laying against the pillow. This is when real life intervenes.
At some point, no matter what you do, romance has to shove over to make room for real life. Does intimacy mean the death of mystery? As the two of you get closer and you learn more about each other, sometimes you wish you could put a few more secrets between you.
What, in an intimate relationship, is sacred? Is anything sacred? Should you keep secrets at all in an intimate relationship? The question is, just how much of yourself should you reveal?
Being intimate doesn’t have to automatically equal being bored. When the two of you get closer and as the relationship progresses, many boundaries will naturally collapse or be pushed back – but where is the limit? The person you are with will see you at your best and at your worst. They may hear strange noises you emit, see you with crap on your face, catch you dancing around to bad music while you vacuum, or learn that you harbor the secret, guilty pleasure of watching really bad Reality TV. Some of these things can’t be helped.
And on the other hand, some things are totally unnecessary. Do you honestly want to reveal to any person that you pick your nose, bite your toenails, talk to yourself about fashion? Do they have to see the strange, ungainly faces you make or positions you get into when you wax?
I say no, absolutely not. Many matters of personal grooming are best conducted behind closed doors, and any really disgusting habits you have should be guarded. There is such a thing as too close, and you can learn a little too much about each other. Obviously it’s a judgment call. If you’re a closet drinker or a secret junkie, absolutely tell someone close to you. But the fact that you have a secret crush on The Rock? – It’s probably better left unsaid.
Every relationship has shifting, changeable boundaries, even the relationship you have with yourself. No relationship should be without boundaries – regardless. Intimacy doesn’t have to squash mystery, kill romance. Getting close to a person can be a wonderful thingâÂ?¦until you find out he leaves his dirty socks in the living room, of course. Frankly, yes, some things will scare you – but we all do things that are at least strange and sometimes borderline scary. To keep a comfortable relationship from going stale, throw a wrench into the works every now and them. It doesn’t have to be boring just because you know each other so well. There are always surprises left to be had, but when you see each other on a daily basis those surprises come few and far-between.
The fact of the matter is, things like romance and mystery are pretty much out the window the first time you sleep together anyway. It is so exhausting to keep up appearances, to try to always look your best, to pretend you’ve never done a single nasty thing in your entire life – I prefer not bothering with it in the first place. Regardless of how much you hide away or what you do and do not say, the real you is going to come out anyway. It takes a little bit of time and a lot of peeling away layers to find out who the real person is – and once you do, it may in fact end the relationship. But if it doesn’t, if the two of you see each other with drool on your face and stuff hanging out of your nose and can still say you’re in love, that kind of intimacy beats romance any day.
Who needs romance when you can walk around naked and not have to worry about it? Being yourself, and only yourself, and finding someone who will love you anyway is the whole point of dating, isn’t it? So let the boundaries crumble and let the mystery be solved – up to a point. Knowing someone well doesn’t make them boring. It just makes them more real.
And remember this: everyone is hiding something from somebody. So there is always at least one more mystery waiting to be solved.
