Tim Lott's family columnFamilyFamily closeness springs from conflict as much as anything else – it allows freedom to argue, even yell, without fearing the consequencesWhat is it we think about when we think about intimacy? Often, it seems, we may get it confused with physical joy because intimacy is joyful, in its quiet way, and often tactile. The couple cleaving to one another’s warmth under the bedclothes. The spontaneous embrace of a child. The holding of hands on the way to school.
Lately, it has occurred to me that intimacy’s manifestations are far more quotidian. This understanding arrived in the aftermath of spending several weeks in my children’s company over Christmas and New Year, freed from the strictures of work, doing nothing in particular.
Intimacy, whatever its source, implies the absence of effort. Every meeting with a stranger, even a close friend, tends to be circumvented by unwritten rules – particularly that the conversation be kept aloft, that the wine be kept flowing, that a level of performance is maintained. In the intimacy of the family home, behind secret walls, these strictures dissolve.
Closeness emerges, ironically, from conflict as much as anything else. The freedom to argue, even yell at one another, without fearing that the consequences will be catastrophic. Children’s threats of eternal estrangements – the “I hate you”s, the tantrums and angry silences – all are possible only because of (as well as being symptoms of) intimacy.
Intimacy is the product of clearing the family table together, of watching TV together, of sweeping the floor or making the supper. It is thousands of repeated, tedious acts, taking place within an arena of assumed safety. It is in some ways the product of confinement, of necessity – we grow together because we have to rub shoulders, like it or not. This closeness is durable – family members of my age I was close to when I was a child still feel easy to be around, whatever the gaps in time and in our personalities. Likewise old school friends, forced into intimacy by a different kind of structure – as anyone who has been to a school reunion will be surprised to find out.
What a frightening thing absolute freedom would be. To not have to take part in any of the necessary collective activities that, clumped together, force you to share, to reach out from inside yourself and interact with another. How intimidating to wake up every morning to do exactly what you want, in the way that you want, when you want. To be, in other words, alone.
Intimacy is shared history, memories, running jokes, even bad ones – especially bad ones. It is a climate, a way of being that is enviable just as it is complained about and railed against. All your limitations are your intimacies. All the ambitions and hopes you sacrificed for the sake of family are repaid with intimacy.
This is one of the hardest things about watching your children leave home. Things will never be quite the same, not because you love them any less or they love you any less, but because it is so much harder just to sit there to no purpose doing nothing in particular. You have to catch up on news, see “how they are doing”, exchange gossip and information. Real intimacy requires none of these things. Of course, thankfully, it can be recaptured – on a holiday, or a long stay – but it is a loss anyway. The loss of “just to be”.
Michael Chabon wrote about intimacy in his excellent collection of essays Manhood for Amateurs. In the piece William and I he highlighted the ludicrously low standards of fatherhood that male parents can find themselves complimented on so casually, compared with the (traditionally) much harder labours of mothers. His view was that such work is a privilege.
He concluded his essay thus: “The daily work you put into rearing your children is a kind of intimacy, tedious and invisible as mothering itself … lucky me that I should be permitted the luxury of choosing to find the intimacy inherent in the work that is thrust upon so many women. Lucky me.”
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