Vulnerability to intimacy

The fourth promise of ACOA says, "Our ability to share intimacy will grow inside us."

Intimacy. A powerful word. A word that can be perceived as love. But it is more then that. Intimacy doesn't just mean being in love with a significant other but others as well. It means being vulnerable enough to share personally, intimately, with your sponsor.

It means to also realize that when others share personally with me that I need to respect that relationship by keeping it to myself.

Intimacy doesn't just mean making love... or falling in love... or being in love. It is being with someone who you are comfortable with. You can find peace with that person. And the only way that it can happen is by being vulnerable enough to let others in.

But intimacy doesn't happen overnight. First, for me, I need to be intimate with myself. I need to accept myself. In short, I need to love myself.

And for me, the only way I could do that was by working the Steps. By living the Steps. By doing that I found a Higher Power, whom I chose to call Love. And with Love I could become intimate with myself.

By building a relationship with my Higher Power, I was able to build a relationship with myself. With this new found relationship I was able to build trust and become intimate when I did the fifth step.

As things progressed, I was even more willing and able to be intimate with others. Along the way I learned that my intimacy couldn't be taken for granted. I gave it away freely and got burned more then once. But I can't give up. I've got to keep trying. It's what my Higher Power wants from me.

And the ultimate goal? To be physically intimate and in love with another human being. And it will happen if I keep working the steps.