For a long time, I thought caring for someone meant protecting them from wants that might feel like too much, needs that might be inconvenient, and desires that might change things between us. I told myself that keeping those quiet was a kind of care.
I learned that it wasn't.
What I'm still learning, imperfectly, is that caring for someone doesn't have to mean shielding them from my wants and needs. In relationships where it's safe to, it can mean giving them a fuller picture of who I am, so they can make their own choices too. I've noticed that when I hold something back to protect someone, I'm also quietly deciding for them. I'm taking away information they might want in order to have their own agency in the relationship. And I'm setting aside my own authenticity, too.
This is different from holding back to stay safe. Sometimes staying quiet is how people protect themselves, and that makes sense. What I'm writing about here is the quieter habit of editing myself to manage someone else's feelings, even when I'm not actually in danger.
Getting Honest With Myself First
Before I could share any of this with someone else, I needed to get honest with myself. I learned that it had to start with a small question turned inward: what do I actually want here? Not what's reasonable. Not what I've gone silent about to avoid conflict. Not what I've already decided I can't have. Knowing what I wanted didn't mean I had to explain it to anyone right away.
The question got easier once I stopped thinking of intimacy as one thing you either have or don't. I've come to see it as several different pathways of connection. I was better at some than others without realizing it, and there were a few I'd quietly stopped wanting because wanting them hurt too much.
Emotional: sharing feelings and feeling understood
Intellectual: exchanging ideas and staying curious together
Experiential: bonding through shared activities and memories
Physical: non-sexual touch, presence, and closeness
Sexual: desire, pleasure, and sexual connection
Spiritual: shared meaning, values, and/or a sense of purpose
Romantic: affection, attraction, and devotion
Creative: making or building something together
Naming them separately helped me be honest in a more specific way. A vague sense that something's missing was hard for me to work with. Being able to say, “this is the kind of closeness I've been longing for, and grieving” gave me somewhere to start.
Where the Grief Comes In
The part I wasn't prepared for is that when I give someone a fuller picture of me, they get to respond with a fuller picture of them. Sometimes their answer is no, or not like that, or not right now. Honesty doesn't guarantee I get what I want. What it does seem to do is give everyone in the relationship a real choice. That's a big part of what makes it caring, and a big part of what makes it hurt.
What I didn't expect was how much grief would surface. Grief for wants I'd never let myself name out loud. Grief for relationships that weren't going to become what I'd hoped, no matter how much honesty we brought to them. Grief for versions of intimacy I'd assumed I'd have by now, that just weren't there.
Honesty asked me to see all of that more clearly. Radical acceptance was the much slower, much harder practice of not looking away from it once I had a clearer view, and it's still the one I'm slowest at. I have learned that acceptance isn't resignation. It isn't deciding I didn't really want the thing after all. It's letting the want and the loss sit in the same place without rushing to fix, minimize, or explain either one away. It's also respecting the other person's choice as theirs, even when I wish it were different.
I've come to understand that this is most of what grief is for me. It isn't moving on from what I wanted. It's making room for both the wanting and the not-having at the same time, without one canceling out the other. And it hasn't seemed to happen on any kind of schedule.
What Keeps Coming Up
Underneath all of this, I keep running into the same few things that allow me to engaged with connection with myself and others that feels good — the elements of intimacy. This isn’t a checklist I've finished. They're commitments I keep making:
Safety: trust, consistency, validation. For me, this comes first, underneath everything else.
Curiosity: asking questions and staying open to someone's inner world, including my own.
Presence: being here, now, without the phone or the mental to-do list.
Honesty: saying the true thing, and observing and being curious about the response.
Radical acceptance: noticing my own biases and letting go of how things "should" be.
Reflection: getting curious about my feelings instead of just reacting to them.
There's no finish line here, no "completed" version of myself waiting at the end of any of this. I know I keep changing, and what's true for me about intimacy today may not be true in five years.
If any of this feels familiar, we offer workshops on exploring intimacy, or you're welcome to reach out about therapy with us.
Cat Bishop, LPC, is the founder of Here We Are Therapy, where we offer individual and systems therapy, sex and relationship counseling, and support for grief, depression, anxiety, trauma, neurodivergent experiences and more.
