ABSTRACT
One of the diculties in thinking and writing about the recovery of intimacy is our collective vagueness in understanding what we mean by intimacy in the rst place. What is it that we have lost when we have “lost” intimacy, and what is it that we are hoping to recover when we attend to increasing intimacy in our own relationships and in the relationships of couples with whom we work? In couples, is intimacy synonymous with sexual intimacy, is it emotional connectedness, is it the yearning to be known by one’s partner in a fuller way than in other relationships, is it a skill set that allows couples to repair inevitable ruptures in their relationships, is it a capacity that an individual has for closeness or is it something that resides in the in-between of the relationship between the two partners, or is it some alchemy of all of these elements and more?
