Intimate Other {v2}
At this point in my life, I’m most interested in intimacy — not as a role or a structure, but as a quality of presence. In the past, connection often became shaped by inherited expectations about what a relationship was supposed to look like. Now, I’m more curious about what happens when intimacy is allowed to remain fluid, responsive, and alive.
I’m less interested in being in a relationship and more interested in relating — meeting someone as they are, where they are, without pressure for the connection to immediately take on a particular shape. Relating feels expansive. It allows closeness without collapse, movement without avoidance, and depth without definition.
In Buddhist thought, there’s an emphasis on beingness — on presence without grasping, on meeting reality as it is rather than as we wish to secure it. That sensibility has been quietly reshaping how I approach connection. Instead of tightening around outcomes or identities, I’m practicing staying with what’s actually here: the felt experience of contact, curiosity, care.
There’s something inherently creative in that kind of relating — allowing form to emerge rather than insisting on it.
These days, dating feels less like following a script and more like dating in the wild — meeting people without trying to guide the connection toward a predetermined outcome. There’s a gentleness in that. A way of staying present without asking the moment to be anything other than what it is.
At the same time, fluidity doesn’t mean carelessness. Intention still matters deeply to me. I value attentiveness, honesty, and consistency. Commitment, as I understand it now, isn’t about locking something into place or promising a future in advance. It’s about how we show up while a connection is alive — choosing presence, respect, and care without forcing the form to harden too soon.
I’m also aware of how much we tend to concentrate all meaning and expectation into one bond. For much of human history, intimacy lived inside wider circles of community, friendship, and shared life. When connection is allowed to exist within a broader ecosystem, it can breathe more freely — less burdened, more resilient.
Somewhere between solitude and traditional partnership, there’s a middle space — one that doesn’t reject commitment, but loosens its grip on structure. A space where two people tend to themselves and the connection at the same time, allowing what’s real to shape itself naturally.
I think of this way of relating as an Intimate Other.
An Intimate Other is someone with whom there is emotional, intellectual, spiritual — and sometimes physical — closeness, without pressure for the connection to fit into a predefined box. The same goes for the person themselves: the relating isn’t about a category or a role, but about a shared presence. It’s a way of being close that values presence over possession, depth over definition, and mutual respect over expectation.
For now, I’m allowing connection to remain open and responsive — letting it move at its own pace and find its own form. Not resisting direction, but not insisting on it either. Trusting that what’s real doesn’t need to be rushed or forced.
That feels like the truest place for me to begin.
