Intimacy Mirrors

Relationship Reflectivity (7m read)

Despite how open, peaceful, and loving you attempt to be, people can only meet you as deeply as they've met themselves. ~Matt Kahn

She slipped into a fantasy before my eyes in my arms, cuddling close on a supple, mahogany-colored leather couch, the sounds of a romantic film playing faintly in the background like a reflection of our own unfolding story.

I began to caress her, tracing long, feather-light strokes from the tender spot just behind her ear down to the nape of her neck. With each pass, she shivered ever so slightly.

She turned and nestled her head in my lap, gazing at me with her face tilted at a precise angle, as if coyly posing for the perfect seductive selfie. She exuded class and intelligence, wrapped in an old-world sophistication, softened by a disarming innocence tinged with spiritual eroticism.

Her chestnut hair, smooth and straight, shimmered with honey caramel tones as a few loose strands brushed the tip of her nose. With a delicate motion, she tucked it back, her fingertip glided along the same tender path my fingers had traced just moments ago. Her eyes pulsed behind full flickering lashes—electric blue flashing like lightning behind silk curtains.

I exposed her face and lay a kiss on her forehead.

I saw it then, just as I had a few nights, before bodies intertwined basking in the bliss of ecstasy: the rapture in her gaze, the silent rebellion, the need to flee life’s ordinary entrapments. I’d seen this glint before: the thrill of something new, something adventurous, something reckless. In her eyes, I saw myself as a hero, a romantic relief, an erotic escapade.

Her shy, sidelong glances were anything but innocent, they were hypnotic. Each demure bite of her shimmering lower lip, she lured me closer—pulling me deeper into the gravity of her desire. Each stare slipped under my skin, unraveling restraint, conjuring fevered glimpses of what was about to unfold next: pinning her body, as I slithered off the couch, lifting her skirt inch by inch as my fingers traced the tender path along her thighs as her body arched, writhing with agonizing anticipation of climaxing passion and pleasure.

My hands floated over her, reverent and slow, tracing the soft rise of her ribs and settling gently over her chest—where her heart fluttered like a caged thing aching to be set free.

The raw sounds she made reverberated—sultry vocal incantations as if she were calling forth something wild, something primal. She started moaning with increasing intensity, one hand grasping and tugging my arm to brace herself, the other aggressively tousling my hair as if anchoring herself to her own unraveling.

Lying tangled in the afterglow, our bodies bare, floating atop white sheets, I turned to look at her. She lay still, eyes fixated skyward. Then she said something that shattered the spell, fractured the future fantasy, and pulled me back into the here and now.

Blinded By Desire

“I’m not a good person,” she confessed, eyes glossed, tears welling in the corners of her eyes. “I got pregnant years ago and didn’t keep it because I knew my ex wasn’t going to be a good father. I never told him.” Her cheeks, flushed and trembling, shimmered with cascading tears. “I’m such a bad person.” She raised her right hand to hide her crumpled face.

For a moment, I felt the familiar swell of empathy rise in my chest. That aching urge to hold, to comfort, to prove that I could be her forever safe space. I wanted to tell her she wasn’t a bad person, that we all carry pasts shaped by impossible choices. I wanted to wrap her in my arms and let her just melt.

But something in me paused.

I’m usually quick to talk about past relationships, but after rushing intimacy in the past, I wanted to allow this connection to deepen naturally, like molasses slowly thickening into a dense, sweet, rich smoked caramel syrup.

Then something protective took hold of me, overriding the emotional riptide I was caught in, stopping me from trauma bonding. My tone shifted from playful to serious and straightforward, stripped of innocent curiosity. I began to ask questions about her past relationships.

Her stories unfolded like carefully choreographed social media skits, each ex an avoidant archetype: the narcissist, the ghoster, the man-child clinging to his console, the charming cheater, all emotionally defunct.

At first, her vulnerability felt reassuring. But as her story unfolded, I sensed something else underneath, a carefully restrained tone of resentment and simmering anger that left me feeling unsafe.

Now firmly in my head, reason began to take over. A cacophony of questions started to rise slowly like sirens in the distance that are rapidly approaching: Why is she telling me this? Did her ex want kids? Should she have told him? What is she not sharing?

If someone is emotionally available and desires intimacy why do they keep choosing emotionally unavailable partners?

I started to imagine a few of my exes confessing the same secret to their new lovers. Me as an unworthy father, a disappointing partner incapable of meeting their emotionally needs.

Girl before a Mirror by Pablo Picasso

Mirror, Mirror

Then came a shift, not in her, but in me. For once, I caught myself before the fall. Before I wrapped my heart around a projection. Before I mistook intensity for intimacy. Before I believed that rescuing her might save me from myself.

She seemed so self-aware, fluent in affection, in touch with her sexuality, glowing with spiritual energy and therapeutic lingo. But for all her emotional fluency, something didn’t land. There was a thick layer of resistance, like hardened clay, making it impossible for deep intimacy to flourish.

I sensed she was starting to feel the slow disintegration of our connection, the lustful look had faded as well as her fall from grace. Having been replaced with a discerning reluctance and internal struggle to make sense of this new insight.

Still I yearned to put her back on the pedestal. I wanted to resume my fantasy. I felt the compulsion to rush intimacy. My mind began rationalizing, convincing me that yet again this time would be different, that I could save her.

Then came the revelatory epiphany that broke something open inside me. I saw something I couldn’t unsee. Felt something I couldn’t deny, something I couldn’t suppress.

I finally felt it in my marrow: I can only meet someone as deeply as they’ve met themselves. And someone can only meet me as deeply as I’ve met myself. True intimacy with others is a reflection of intimacy within.

Into Me I See.

All my closest relationships were mirrors, and now I can no longer look away from what they reflect.

Thank you for reading.