Guidelines for Living Well: Intimacy Requires Privacy

Intimacy requires privacy. Intimacy typically occurs between two people, as they share details of their personal lives and feelings which are not intended to be aired in public. Intimacy is a mutual sharing; thus, when I am counseling someone who is revealing private, not to be made public sentiments, it is not professionally appropriate that I reciprocate in kind. Therefore, counseling does not generate true intimacy, since that requires a two-way self-disclosure.

One of the strange developments in our current culture of cell phone cameras, the World-Wide Web, Facebook and Twitter, is that there is a kind of inverse relationship between increasing openness and waning intimacy. The more people share of themselves, the less they are actually in connection with this or that person.

You have to be very careful about what you put out there on the Internet; once it is there, it is there forever. Whether it is a picture of private body parts sent to a boy or girlfriend, or some comments made on your Facebook page, it could cost you untold damage. Two examples within the last few years: a football player suspended from his team for part of the season due to derogatory remarks made about his team and coach on his “private” Facebook page. Second, a teacher out East who was fired two hours after she made some remarks on Twitter regarding her students and their parents. On being discovered and fired, she said in shock, “What I said was supposed to be private between me and another person.”

Sure, put it out there and then try to control what happens to it – and to you. A very wise woman told me many years ago: “Be very careful what you put into print. Whatever you say or write could come back to haunt you.” Think of all the politicians and public figures who have lost their careers due to a careless remark.

Such a well-known figure as Dr. Ruth, the renowned “sexologist,” has rendered wise warnings about what is happening on and due to, the Internet. She cautioned that “virtual” social networking and other online avenues of communication are replacing actual intimacy. She said,

“It is a catastrophe, all of this virtual being together…. I think there are people who get hooked on the Internet…. I am worried that the next generation will not be able to have a real conversation.”

She said that this constituted a disastrous trend toward “more openness but less intimacy.” That is, readily revealing, disclosing deeply personal realities, when there is not a safe, private relational pipeline between you and a trusted other, is not intimacy. Call it a psychic “strip-tease,” and a potentially dangerous one at that.

I have difficulty watching the weekday “Dr. Phil” program. He is of course an excellent expert, and the show is often most provocative, even informative. My problem is this: I cringe at what the participants readily divulge to the world. I am embarrassed for them. I wonder how they can lay bare their hearts and relationships in front of a national audience, all on tape, there forever. It is incongruous to hear marital partners disclosing some of their most personal, private issues to Dr. Phil – and the watching audience. I question whether they can they ever recover their prior intimacy. Make that their sense of mutual, trusting and safe privacy.