Who Are You In Intimacy? Why So Few People Know — and How to Find Out

Most of us develop a way of being intimate and stop questioning it. This explores why — and what honest attention to that question can look like.

Most people have never seriously asked themselves this question.

What do I truly desire in an intimate relationship? Not what should I want — which most of us can answer quickly, because we've been told, not explicitly but much more subtly, by a slow but sure process of conditioning over the course of our formative years and well into our adult lives. It seeps into us as if by invisible osmosis, from popular culture, by the values our parents instil on us both consciously and unconsciously, our first relationships and the daily roles we build ourselves into and form our sense of personal identity around. But what genuinely feels true for you, makes you feel un-mistakenly alive and connected, with another person close.

It's a surprisingly rare thing to know, or rather to be consciously aware of. And the not-knowing tends to hide very well — underneath functioning relationships, busy lives, parenthood, career and the reasonable assumption that if something were really wrong, you'd be aware of it by now.

You may well feel, not particularly unhappy in any obvious way. You may be in a relationship that works. You may be single and fine with it, mostly. But somewhere — in the gap between what intimacy looks like from the outside and what it actually feels like on the inside — there's a question you haven't quite let yourself explore fully.

Most people develop a way of being intimate fairly early. Some of it comes from first relationships, some from family, some from what you absorbed about desire and closeness before you had the language to examine it. It shapes how you initiate, if you do at all, how you receive, what you allow yourself to want, how much of yourself you bring into the shared space with another person.

And then — because it more or less works, because life is full and it doesn't seem urgent — you stop questioning it.

Relationships shape you further. When you are with someone for years, the early years don’t quite count as the newness and excitement often prevent routine, but after several it slowly unfolds into this is just how it is. You defer, or you direct. You go quiet, or you may perform, some withdraw, some feel rejected. You've learned what creates harmony and what creates friction, and you navigate accordingly. Gradually, the person you are in intimacy and the person you actually are can drift quite far apart — without any single moment where it happened.

This isn't a crisis. It's just what tends to occur without deliberate attention. The gap is ordinary. What's less ordinary is noticing it.

There are a few reasons this kind of honest enquiry rarely happens.

One is that desire still carries shame. Not the dramatic kind — most adults would say they're fairly comfortable with their sexuality in the west, of course there are those who are not and may even feel unsafe letting their sexuality be known to everyone in their social network, but even in more liberal cultures, the arena of sexuality and intimacy is still quite a taboo. There’s a subtler discomfort around examining what you actually want up close and naming it, let alone sharing that with friends and not to mention sharing that with a new partner. In a society (Europe & USA) where Pornography websites sit as one of the highest-trafficked and most dominant categories on the entire internet, regularly competing with mainstream social media giants, major news outlets, and e-commerce platforms. It’s clear that this inner realm of intimate desire requires exploration, understanding & experience that is personally integrated with the whole, in a safe and consensual way, not hidden away in shame and attended to fleetingly.

Another is that relationships don't naturally create the space for it. To ask what do I really want in intimacy in the context of an existing relationship immediately raises stakes. It implies something might need to change. So the question doesn't get asked, or it gets asked sideways — through frustration, withdrawal, or a general feeling that something is missing but you can't quite put your finger on it. As young adults we’re still figuring out so many aspects of life, many of which may feel more pressing like ‘what do I want to be’ as a bright-eyed 18-year-old, and isn’t it telling that with that statement most of us will infer job/career choice first, possibly including relationships in there somewhere, but for the majority the question of how we yearn to relate to others in intimacy is an after thought at best.

Another reason is the assumption that what you've always done reflects who you are. If you've been intimate in a particular way for twenty years, it begins to feel like identity rather than habit. Speaking of habits too, by the very definition these are acquired patterns of behaviour we repeat regularly and that tend to occur subconsciously. The idea that it might be worth examining can feel like a challenge to yourself and your partner, rather than an act of care toward yourself.

None of these reasons are flaws. They're just patterns. And patterns, once you can see them, to examine them consciously, can begin to shift.

For most people it arrives because something changes.

A relationship ends — and in the quiet after, you realise you're not sure who you are without the shape of it. A significant birthday passes and brings with it an unexpected audit of how you've been living. A feeling of absence persists despite nothing being obviously wrong — a sense that you've been present in your life without quite inhabiting it. The kids leave home, for some the sudden loss of the role of caregiver can lead to a stark realisation that you haven’t put yourself at the top of your priority list for a long, long time, and for some you may have never featured on that list even before you had children.

For others, it isn't a rupture but a curiosity. A growing awareness that a wider range of experience is available than you've been allowing yourself. An interest in tantra, or in exploring aspects of desire you've kept at a theoretical and tolerable distance. The sense that the edges of your life could stand to be tested a little.

The form the question takes is less important than the fact that it's arrived. If you're reading this and something is resonating, the question is probably already here for you. It's worth taking that seriously.

I sit here writing this less than 2 years from turning 50, 18 months to be precise, and the well known ‘midlife crisis’ phenomenon is seemingly a clear manifestation of that inner self and enquiry bubbling up to the surface. Enough lived experience to gain significant perspective on life, elderly relatives start leaving the mortal plane at increasing frequency and we question our lives lived and yet to come. The Covid pandemic gave the entire globe a chance to reflect, as well as marinate in intimacy, whether it was a good or bad experience will be a matter of personal perspective and attitude. From my perspective I have had the opportunity to both explore myself and be witness to the questioning and exploration that many have shared with me on this very question - who am I and what do I desire?

It doesn't begin with reinventing yourself, or overhauling your relationship, or arriving at a new set of preferences to replace the old ones.

It begins with noticing.

What do you actually feel in your body when you're close to someone — before you've organised the experience into language, before you've decided how you're meant to feel? What relaxes? What contracts quietly and stays that way? Where do you go along with something out of habit, or politeness, or because it's easier than introducing tension or complexity?

What have you been performing — not dishonestly, just automatically — versus what you genuinely enjoy?

These aren't questions that get answered in one sitting. But the act of beginning to ask them, with some real curiosity rather than the intention to judge yourself, tends to be surprisingly informative. The body keeps a very accurate record. Most people find, when they actually stop to check, that they know more than they thought they did — they just haven't been in the habit of listening.

That's the start. Not revelation. Just attention.

My background in bodywork began in 2003 when I began a 4 year course in Osteopathy at the then named British School of Osteopathy in London. With a passion for movement and understanding how things work, I wanted to channel these interests into a career where I could move my body whilst working and ultimately help others in pain.

Sometime around 10 years into an established practice that I had co-created with my now wife Claire, and our family expanding to 4 with 2 sons, I started to notice a feeling I had that some of my patients needed more than what I could provide as an Osteopath. At first I barely paid attention to these feelings, but over the next few years those feelings grew stronger and I could no longer not be aware.

Sometimes it would be a sense that someone could really do with a hug, other times I may have been massaging someone’s back or sitting by their head, literally holding their neck and head in my hands and having this sense that they really lacked loving intimacy. Even though you develop a very trusting relationship with patients as a therapist, there are still professional boundaries, discussing love and intimacy felt too personal and inappropriate, we hadn’t been trained as counsellors and this was beyond our scope.

This wasn’t by any means a daily occurrence but they were definitely there. Sometimes with female clients I questioned whether I was picking up on their feelings or projecting my own, with male clients I questioned this less.

In 2017 we opened our gym in Gloucester, running the gym and teaching classes became the majority of my work. Whilst the number of patients I treated weekly declined dramatically, I still kept my hands warm in that arena so to speak. This all came at the same time I felt increasingly stifled by the profession, or rather the osteopathic governing body in the UK. Osteopathy gained statutory regulation in 1993 in the UK with passing of the Osteopathy Act in Parliament. Whilst this gave the profession a greater sense of recognition it appeared in my eyes to narrow the profession into a much narrower framework that it had previously expressed and was seemingly being pushed to fit into the traditional medical model and what that model decided we were able to treat and not. It was around this time I decided not to renew my registration as an Osteopath and instead offer my service as a massage therapist.

To honour that part of me that was picking up feelings around intimacy seemingly from others but also within myself, I decided to attend a Tantra massage training course in Berlin of February 2020. What a timely choice it was, the course was both so simple and yet profound, it came just a few months after the death of my father, in the midst of a big house renovation/extension project that spanned almost 18 months and where I was the major builder. I was steeped in responsibility, pressure of time felt immense and I was juggling many hats.

The course gave me the space to breathe, feel and explore. I felt alive, it challenged many personal beliefs I had acquired around intimacy, therapy, relationships and even love. The major theme was presence, fully conscious awareness in the moment, whether receiving or giving touch. This allowed for judgments to melt away, greater levels of empathy, and love in its broadest sense, caring for another unconditionally.

One month later and lockdown began. Fortunately we had a wonderful gym space to be and I was able to fully be present on finishing the house project. A few years passed and I had integrated my experience of Tantra massage into my personal life, next I wanted to be clear if I truly wished to offer this professionally and help others in a similar way as it helped me. A 10 day Tantra massage retreat in the Southern hills of Poland seemed appropriate and after this I was clear and ‘The Art of Sensuality’ flowed to me naturally.

You don't need a workshop to start this. You don't need a dramatic change in your life or a crisis to justify the enquiry.

What you need is a willingness to ask the question — genuinely, without rushing toward an answer — and to sit with the discomfort of not knowing immediately. That discomfort tends to feel like you're doing something wrong. You're not. It means you're actually asking rather than reaching for the nearest available answer.

Most people spend their whole intimate lives without asking this question at all. That's a significant thing to step away from, even quietly, even just for yourself.