21 Intimacy is always shared

---

“To say that Madame Merle improved on acquaintance states meagrely the impression she made on her friend, who had found her from the first so ample and so easy.
At the end of an intimacy of three months Isabel felt she knew her better; her character had revealed itself, and the admirable woman had also at last redeemed her promise of relating her history from her own point of view-a consummation the more desirable as Isabel had already heard it related from the point of view of others”
(Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady).

The shared aspect of intimacy means simply that this must be reciprocal, otherwise it becomes a simple confession. The priest listening to the confessions of the sinner does so through a screen and makes no confessions himself. The paid sex worker goes through the motions of emotion and physical intimacy without giving sharing in what is really a sexual confession, and not intimate at all.

The moment of sharing is the performance of intimacy. Where the skilling in the body is its rehearsal, intimacy is performed only as a shared action. This means too that artists, musicians, etc., do share the intimacy of their art with those who appreciate this (but it does not mean that they share a personal intimacy with their audience).

It is this sharing that brings to the front the notion of trust.

The pure relationship is focused on intimacy, which is a major condition of any long-term stability the partners might achieve. Intimacy has to be distinguished from the more negative phenomenon of lack of privacy, characteristic of most circumstances of life in pre-modern Europe and in many non-modern cultures generally (Giddens 1991, 94).