Physical and Emotional Intimacy
Love is an important factor in physical and emotional intimate relationships. Love is qualitatively and quantitatively different to liking, and the difference is not merely in the presence or absence of sexual attraction. There are two types of love in a relationship; passionate love and companionate love. Companionate love involves diminished potent feelings of attachment, an authentic and enduring bond, a sense of mutual commitment, the profound feeling of mutual caring, feeling proud of a mate's accomplishment, and the satisfaction that comes from sharing goals and perspective. In contrast, passionate love is marked by infatuation, intense preoccupation with the partner, throes of ecstasy, and feelings of exhilaration that come from being reunited with the partner.
| Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms.... So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle gently entwist; the female ivy so enrings the barky fingers of the elm. O, how I love thee! How I dote on thee! |
| – Titania, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 4, Scene 1 |
Two people who are in an intimate relationship with one another are often called a couple, especially if the members of that couple have placed some degree of permanency to their relationship. These couples often provide the emotional security that is necessary for them to accomplish other tasks, particularly forms of labor or work.
Read more about this topic: Intimate Relationship
Famous quotes containing the words physical and, physical, emotional and/or intimacy:
“Self-esteem is as important to our well-being as legs are to a table. It is essential for physical and mental health and for happiness.”
—Louise Hart (20th century)
“The physical world is meaningless tonight
And there is no other.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“[How] the young . . . can grow from the primitive to the civilized, from emotional anarchy to the disciplined freedom of maturity without losing the joy of spontaneity and the peace of self-honesty is a problem of education that no school and no culture have ever solved.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)
“It was a very lonely spirit that looked out from under those shaggy brows and comprehended men without fully communicating with them, as if, in spite of all its genial efforts at comradeship, it dwelt apart, saw its visions of duty where no man looked on.... This strange child of the cabin kept company with invisible things, was born into no intimacy but that its own silently assembling and deploying thoughts.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)