Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

by Donald Miller

Here are two things I found taking the long road, though: Applause is a quick fix. And love is an acquired taste.

The writing life is only romantic on paper. The reality is, what writers write and the way they live can be as different as a lump of coal and a diamond. The written life is shined to a deceptive gloss.

I was going to have to either learn to be healthy or I'd spend the rest of my life pretending. It was either intimacy or public isolation.

I was drawn to girls who played the victim because girls who play the victim make you feel like a hero. Until you resent them. And after I couldn’t stand them, I’d get mean. I’d say mean things. Then I’d feel bad and make up and then resent them again. My dating life was a death spiral of codependency and resentment.

He said acknowledging those early memories of shame and rewriting the story from a more gracious, adult perspective could help us heal.

“They all think people are out to get them. It’s causing me to wonder if distrust doesn’t bring out the worst in us. I know it’s a complicated issue, because nearly everybody I put in prison has been tragically abused and so it’s natural they don’t trust others and they see life as a kill-or-be-killed drama.

Am I willing to be hurt occasionally and turn the other cheek in order to have a long-term, healthy relationship?”

a healthy person coupled with an unhealthy person will still result in an unhealthy relationship.

They never tell you when you get born a control freak it will cost you a healthy love life. But it’s true. You can’t control somebody and have intimacy with them at the same time. They may stay because they fear you, but true love casts out fear.

The struggle in my relationship with Betsy was all about sharing agency. Was I willing to go into this thing having no idea what the finished product would look like? Could I give up my dream to merge it with hers and settle and perhaps be surprised by what could happen in a shared life?

It all reminded me of what my friend Henry Cloud told me, that when two people are entirely and completely separate they are finally compatible to be one. Nobody’s self-worth lives inside of another person. Intimacy means we are independently together.

Perhaps that’s another reason true intimacy is so frightening. It’s the one thing we all want, and must give up control to get.

ONE OF THE THINGS HENRY CLOUD AND JOHN Townsend convinced me of in Safe People is that deception in any form kills intimacy. Because intimacy is based on trust, any form of manipulation will eventually break that trust. Manipulation, then, became the enemy.

The truth is, they don’t believe they are wrong at all. To be wrong is to give up control, and manipulators don’t give up control.

you can’t have a true, intimate relationship with people you control. Control is about fear. Intimacy is about risk.

Floppers assume the role of victim whenever they can. This is a powerful and destructive form of manipulation. In order to be a victim, a person needs an oppressor. If you enter into a relationship with a Flopper, sooner or later that oppressor will be you.

The people who lose out because of Floppers are legitimate victims. There are people in this world who are taken advantage of every day, and Floppers steal needed resources from them by faking emotional injuries in order to gain control of the people around them. A Flopper’s internal mantra goes something like this: If people hurt me they’re in my debt, and I can hold it over them to get what I want.

They seek control by making you feel guilty about what you’ve done. They don’t want to reconcile, they want control. And again, this takes needed attention from people who are truly hurting and helpless.

A Flopper has plenty of ways out of their circumstances but chooses to stay for the power it brings them. If you consistently feel responsible for somebody else’s pain, but you can’t figure out how you caused it, you’re likely in a relationship with a Flopper.

IN THE BOOK SAFE PEOPLE, HENRY CLOUD AND John Townsend define what a safe person is. They say it’s somebody who speaks the truth in grace.

I think a lot of the shame-based religious and political methodology has more to do with keeping people contained than with setting them free.

My hope is such a fierce pruning will help create a strong and tender man who understands himself and people and the nature of love better than he ever could have before he made his mistakes.

I realized that one of the reasons I’d been so isolated was because I’d subconsciously believed I wasn’t all that good for people.

If our identity gets broken, it affects our ability to connect.

The risk of being known is also the decision to be criticized by some.

I wrote as though God thought my voice mattered. I wrote because I believed a human story was beautiful, no matter how small the human was. I wrote because I didn’t make myself, God did. And I wrote like he’d invited me to share my true “self” with the world.

I learned to preemptively forgive.

The greatest leaders, the ones who impact the world the most, are somehow able to turn the other cheek. It’s as though they believe so solidly in love, so robustly in forgiveness, they have the ability to forgive and even love those who attack them.

I made a list of new freedoms. It looked like this: I am willing to sound dumb. I am willing to be wrong. I am willing to be passionate about something that isn’t perceived as cool. I am willing to express a theory. I am willing to admit I’m afraid. I’m willing to contradict something I’ve said before. I’m willing to have a knee-jerk reaction, even a wrong one. I’m willing to apologize. I’m perfectly willing to be perfectly human.

William Blake said about Jesus that he was “all virtue and acted from impulse, not from rules.”

I’M NOTICING A COMMON CHARACTERISTIC OF healthy families, though. The characteristic is this: kids with parents who are honest about their shortcomings seem to do better in life.

Environments in which we are encouraged to hide our faults are toxic.

Relationships are teleological. They’re all going somewhere and they’re turning us into something, hopefully something better, something new.

I no longer believe love works like a fairy tale but like farming. Most of it is just getting up early and tilling the soil and then praying for rain. But if we do the work, we just might wake up one day to find an endless field of crops rolling into the horizon. In my opinion, that’s even better than a miracle.

It’s encouraging to watch what people will do to contribute to a love story. It’s as though we universally recognize the union of souls is worth sacrificing for.