Someone explained it to me this way, and it made perfect sense: Intimacy means "into-me-see" -- It allows openness, vulnerability, honesty, compassion, and genuine communication. It can exist in any relationship -- with a romantic partner, a platonic friendship, a family connection, anyone you feel close to -- allowing someone to see inside of us and vice-versa. Intimacy makes us feel connected and appreciated, and in some relationships, loved.

I don't know how to play any instruments but sharing music woth someone who has similar tastes can feel intimate to me. When I find a good song that makes me think of a special person, and I send it to them. Intimacy has many levels, holding hands, cuddling, having a deep conversation, sharing a laugh or moment. Just telling someone you love them can be intimate. I think it just depends on how it makes you feel.

I make an effort to avoid it. I enjoy my cat, my space and my podcasts and coffee. I don’t want to compromise or haven’t met anyone that makes me want to give up my independence. Some family people really might find this sad, but I am very happy with my situation. I have a great wardrobe, a lovely apartment, friends I hang out with when I wish to, and lots of shiny baubles I have bought for myself. I have had really great moments with family and friends, but I wouldn’t class that as intimacy. Intimacy is something I have had in romantic relationships, before, but now I find it too much effort and too costly on the soul. I’m a bit old and jaded now.

I sure understand the kind of intimacy you speak of when making music. Nothing quite like it in my mind.

One of the deepest connections I've ever experienced, was with someone who was not only a lover, but we sang together as a professional duo for awhile. That was the best of all worlds ! wow ...

Playing music with someone... or practicing jiu-jitsu or sparring can be very intimate... some ways doing those things with someone means they understand things about me beyond what a sexual partner would.

What confuses me is that sometimes the first time two people are together, there is a tremendous sense of sharing and caring and being very in tune with the other person, but along about session number 25-30 it is more like humdrum routine, which is not a good progression. It seems like as familiarity increases, so would understanding and closeness and sense of connection.

For me is being able to look at another person and know what they are thinking, or feeling.

Having spent most of my life making a living playing music l agree, but there are levels of intamcy in a band. If everyone in the band is really listening to each other, ( The most important thing you do in a band ) It is the best. If you have a couple or even one just playing the 'look at me' game, it loses some of that intamcy. What do you play?

I understand. sitting quietly with someone or someone's. maybe in the dark watching stars, watching TV with the sound off, sharing popcorn or the box of ice cream.....or .....throwing frisbee, and walking in an autumn drizzle smiling.....

I find playing guitar for others to be wonderfully intimate. Anytime you connect to someone by sharing with them something important to you is intimate.

I think making music with other people is an incredibly intimate thing to do. And, given the lack of intimacy in my life at the moment, it's really taught me how varied intimacy can be - and how unpredictable, too. There are musicians I have "clicked" with, and with whom it seems really easy to make great music with, and others where....just meh.

I think there are a lot of parallels with physical intimacy, though. At the risk of sounding a bit like Swiss Toni (UK comedy sketch character), making good music really is like, uh, "making love to a beautiful woman" (or perhaps I mean the other way around!). There's that same gentle exploration of what the other party does and likes, and what works well when you do it together, not to mention the almost-spiritual sense of something transcendent that can come from the partnership.

I think the mistake a lot of people (including me, in the past) make is in assuming that all intimacy lies on the same spectrum - that non-sexual intimacy can't be intimacy, because sex isn't involved. Which can cause us to seek sexual intimacy when what we really needed was some other kind, or to reject non-sexual intimacy because we didn't think of it as intimacy.

Intimacy is not sex. Intimacy does include sex but it goes beyond that. Intimacy is knowing and understanding your partner. Doing things for them without them asking.Taking care of them when they are sick.

Intimacy, to me, isn't about sex. But I think to a lot of folks, at least the ones my age or younger, that's all it is anymore. To me, if I allowed someone to watch me draw it was because I was comfortable with them. It was an unspoken glimpse into my mind and it was a private thing while I was working on it. Another example is when I am comfortable with someone, I am more hands on. I will get in full blown tickle fights with my dear friends but if I am not close to someone I don't care for being touched. Both of these things feel intimate to me without being sexual.

Skin to skin

I feel that 'intimacy' has a bonding theme, that we get connected to others who are interesting to us. I am not talking in the least about sexual intimacy here as that seems to belong in a different arena - I think of it as something that holds everything together so that each person is equally dependent on all the others for something to happen like, dance or music or singing or just playfulness or good conversations.

Intimacy is a need of the inner self. Those needs come in endless varieties. Everyone looks for and often struggles to find the just right provider of it. As important as intimacy is to each of us we bury the need under inhabitions and emotional baggage, making the search difficult at best. It's an odd part of the human condition. We can see happiness in our fantasies yet stumble about lamely in reality and communicate our needs so poorly.

Intimacy

noun

1. close familiarity or friendship; closeness: "the intimacy between a husband and wife."

synonyms: closeness, togetherness, affinity, rapport, attachment, familiarity, friendliness, friendship, amity, affection, warmth, confidence; informal chumminess.

"the sisters reestablished their old intimacy"

2. a private cozy atmosphere: "the room had a peaceful sense of intimacy about it"

3. an intimate act, especially sexual intercourse.

synonyms: sexual relations, (sexual) intercourse, sex, lovemaking.

That sounds like metronomic and a sense of taste, which does sound sexual but really being into someone is much more than that i feel and think.

It's not just knowing what notes to play, but why those notes need to be played to begin with.

I do agree with you, there are bonds (intimacy) that are beyond the confines of love or sex.

I find it to be the same for people that share my same sense of humor. That person who you can just look at and they seem to get exactly what you're thinking in that moment as they try and hold their laughter or let it fly.

I read that the Greeks had four words for the different types of love we could experience. Sexual love was just one of them. I think intimacy is like that. Sexual closeness is just one of the types of intimacy. I don't know if anyone has articulated the different types of intimacy but I would be surprised if nobody ever did. Being complicated, humans can experience different types of love and/or intimacy at the same time. I can't help thinking too of the old meaning of intercourse, where sexual intercourse was only one sense of the word.I think playing music with other musicians is definitely a form of intercourse.

Sure..intimacy is when you allow energy to merge with you, as you do during meditation.

I get that when in nature, riding my horses without saddles or bridles, jamming with other musicians, looking at art in a gallery, etc.

Music is definitely up there among a mountaintop with one or two likeminded people enjoying a fire and good conversation.

Pillow talk.

Music is an Aphrodiciac in several cultures.... take it from there! You Play... I will Dance!