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The fear of intimacy

“Beloved Osho, I am a hit and run driver in my relationships with people. Could you speak about my fear of intimacy?”

Osho: “Rama Prem, everbody is afraid of intimacy.

It is another thing, whether you are aware of it or not. Intimacy means: exposing yourself before a stranger. We are all strangers. Nobody knows anybody. We are even strangers to ourselves, because we don't know who we are.

Intimacy brings you close to a stranger. You have to drop all your defenses, only then intimacy is possible. And the fear is, that if you drop your all defenses, all your masks, who knows what the stranger is going to do with you?

We are all hiding thousand and one things, not only for others but for ourselves. Because we have been brought up by a sick humanity. With all kinds of repressions, inhibitions, taboos, and the fear is for somebody who is a stranger. And it does not matter, you may have lived with the person thirty years, fourty years; the strangeness never disappears.

It feels safer to keep a little defense, a little distance, because somebody can take advantage of your weaknesses, of your fragilities, of your vulnerability.

Everybody is afraid of intimacy. The problem becomes more complicated, because everybody wants intimacy.

Everybody wants intimacy because otherwise you are alone in this universe. Without a friend, without a lover, without anybody you can trust, without anybody to whom you can open all your wounds.

And the wounds can not heal unless they are opened. The more you hide them, the more dangerous they become. They can become cancer in you.

Intimacy is an essential need on the one hand, so everybody longs for it. But he wants the other person to be intimate, so that the other person drops his defenses, becomes vulnerable, opens all his wounds to you, drops all his masks and false personality, stands naked as he is.

And on the other hand everybody is afraid of intimacy. The óther person you want to be intimate: you are not dropping your defenses. This is one of the conflicts between friends, between lovers, nobody wants to drop the defenses. And nobody wants to come in utter nudity and sincerity, open.

And both need intimacy.

Unless you drop all your repressions, inhibitions - which are the gifts of your religions, your cultures, your societies, your parents, your education - you will never be able to be intimate with someone.

And you will have to take the initiative.

But if you don't have any repressions, any inhibitions, you don't have any wounds either. If you have lived a simple, natural life, there will be no fear of intimacy, but tremendous joy of two flames, coming so close that they become almost one flame. This meeting is tremendously gratifying, satisfying, fulfilling.

But before you can attain intimacy, you have to clean your house completely. Only a man of meditation can allow intimacy to happen. He has nothing to hide. All that was making him afraid that somebody may know, he has dropped it himself. He has only a silence and a loving heart. You have to accept yourself in its totality. If you cannot accept yourself in your totality, how can you expect somebody else to accept you.”

Osho, The Hidden Splendor