Victor L. Brown - Human Intimacy: Illusion and Reality

1981 Victor L. Brown, Jr.

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First printing in hardbound 1981

First printing in paperbound 1990

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 81-80893

ISBN 978-0-88494-441-6 (hardbound)

ISBN 978-1-57008-309-6 (paperback)

Printed in the United States of America

Alexanders Print Advantage, Lindon, UT

JIT

Many friends and clients have contributed to this book by reading the manuscript and making valuable suggestions and by sharing with me their own struggles with illusion and reality. Their names cannot be printed because it might violate confidentiality. They know who they are and, I trust, also know of my gratitude.

My colleagues Elizabeth James and Ed Lauritzen generously shared their ideas and knowledge of the literature. Thanks also to research assistants Richard Anderson and Ronald Chapman.

Sandra Franck was tireless as typist, researcher, and coordinator of the myriad elements of such a task.

Allen Bergin, friend and colleague, has given crucial counsel and evaluation throughout this project.

My children, each unique, each someone I admire and love, are more a part of this book than they can perhaps know.

Finally, I am unable to express adequately the debt I owe to the inspiration and example of my wife, Mareen. Without her this book could not have been conceived or written.

Several years ago, Maria sought counseling from me for a very serious decision. Although her husband rarely failed at any thing, he was so troubled by insecurity and anxiety that his pessimism had alienated their children and friends and made life rather tense and difficult. Maria had become strongly attracted to a male friend who offered affection and acceptance. After thorough soul-searching and a rather objective assessment of the situation's pros and cons, Maria decided to repair her marriage and family rather than get a divorce or indulge in an affair, and after several years of difficult but steady effort, she now has seen her marriage bloom. As her husband gained more emotional securitylargely from her mature and unthreatening commitment to the marriagehe mellowed considerably. More than ten years later, their marriage is strong, rewarding, and intimate.

Another friend, Richard, had been married for over twenty years. He was skilled at his profession, earned a good income, and enjoyed several hobbies. At one point, due to his illness, his family had suffered fairly severe stress when a business venture failed. Although there were challenges they certainly seemed surmountable, yet he abruptly left his wife and moved in with another woman. Eventually he left this woman for a third. The last I knew he was living alone and isolated from both family and friends.

Both of these friends of mine found much encouragement from current views about marriage to "do their own thing" and leave their marriage in search of other loves. Yet Maria chose not to escape from her unpleasant marriage; by that crucial decision, she eventually found happiness, fulfillment, and intimacy in her marriage because she was in a position to change it. Richard es caped from his marriage only to lose intimacy altogether. Both of them needed intimacy. Both of them wanted it. Both of them struggled with decisions about how to find it. Only one of them succeeded.

This book is about intimacy. As a husband, father, and student of human behavior, I have learned that choosing intimacy is a complex and sometimes difficult process. It involves nothing less than choosing reality over illusion, not just in the spectacular watershed decisions of Maria and Richard but day after day, time after time.

While reality may seem difficult to define in every case, I believe that reality is determined by the consequences of our attitudes and behavior. Sometimes those consequences are not ap parent for years. Two young couples married the same day may appear equally in love, equally mature, equally happy; yet ten years later the contentment, peace, and pleasure in one home will proclaim the reality of their love while the bickering, mistrust, and exploitation in the other will reveal that their love was an illusion.

Professional experience has taught me to conclude that reality is the process of identifying consequences while illusion is the process of ignoring consequences, denying them, or misinterpreting them. Realities of human intimacy are love, trust, service, sacrifice, and discipline. Opposed to these realities are the glamorous illusions marketed by our society that equate intimacy with an obsession with self, an insistence that every appetite is legitimate and must be gratified, and, most tragic of all, the belief that the laws of human relations can be violated without damaging consequences.

These beliefs are an illusion, not reality. It is an illusion to believe that unkindness, infidelity, and dishonesty will not severely damage a relationship and that a damaged relationship does not cause pain. Many people cling to their illusions for a long timesome for their entire lifetimebut their ability to deny consequences does not prevent the existence of those consequences. Reality demands that we acknowledge the pain and learn from it, but reality also rewards us with consistent access to pleasure as we gain more skill in living effectively.

I do not consider myself a crusader, but I have become increasingly concerned in the last decade as a teacher working with students, as a counselor working with clients, as a bishop in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) working with my congregation, and as a father with growing childrenand now a grandfatherabout the cynical values I see washing over people who try hard but sometimes seem helpless in the tidal wave. There is a need to affirm in some way that certain crucial values are still there, unmoved by the waves.

To the many people of varying religious or moral beliefs who have chosen values of love, self-respect, and self-discipline already, this volume may help show the magnitude of that choice and the enormous consequences that depend on maintaining it. To those who have chosen other valuesor who have accepted the permissive and self-indulgent values that seem prevalent in American society todaythis book may help raise some questions or focus some unformed restlessness they may have already felt.

Because of my respect for the earnest searching of ethical people of every persuasion, this book tries to avoid talking about values in specifically religious or scriptural terms, even though my feeling for a loving God is my ultimate foundation and hope for success for every human love and every worthwhile human value. The reader is invited to consider the social trends, research evidence, and clinical experience that have given rise to those feelings, then evaluate their logic and coherence.

The realities of my experiences as a clinical social worker have led me to focus on the nature of human intimacy. My studies of the scholarly and the popular literature on the subject have demanded that I reexamine my own values and education. Much of what I have read has saddened me; much has reaffirmed my hopeful feelings about the resilience and health of human beings.