Circle of Sexuality: Intimacy
Sexual intimacy is the ability to be emotionally close to another human being and to accept closeness in return. Several aspects of intimacy include:
Sharing
Sharing intimacy is what makes personal relationships rich. While sensuality is about physical closeness, intimacy focuses on emotional closeness.
Caring
Caring about others means feeling their joy and their pain. It means being open to emotions that may not be comfortable or convenient. Nevertheless, an intimate relationship is possible only when we care about another person.
Liking or loving another person
Having emotional attachment or connection to others is a manifestation of intimacy.
Emotional risk-taking
To have true intimacy with others, a person must open up and share feelings and personal information. Sharing personal thoughts and feelings with someone else is risky, because the other person may not feel the same way. But it is not possible to be really close with another person without being honest and open with her/him.
Vulnerability
To have intimacy means that we share and care, like or love, and take emotional risks. That makes us vulnerable—the person with whom we share, about whom we care, and whom we like or love, has the power to hurt us emotionally. Intimacy requires vulnerability, on the part of each person in the relationship.
Additional Resources
- Resource Library
The Resource Library at Health Services is available to all UNH students, faculty and staff. The library is packed with books and videos on sexual health. - Sexual Health at UNH
Learn more about being sexually healthy at UNH. Great resources on safer sex, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), sexual pleasure, abstinence, and more!
Additional Circles of Sexuality
Material adapted from: Life Planning Education, a comprehensive sex education curriculum. Washington, DC: Advocates for Youth in press.
