What Does It Mean to Be Intimate When I Am Very Unreserved?

It seems to me that when most people talk about intimate relationships, there is an element of exclusive knowledge. In this view, the people with whom one is intimate know secret things about you, understand you in a way outsiders don't. It seems like it is about knowledge exhange; one's intimates get more knowledge, as well as restricted kinds of knowledge.

This seems to work well as a definition for my Slytherin primary friends, people who have very clearly defined inner circles. The people inside really know the Slytherin, and the people outside don't have access to the private thoughts and feelings.

But for a person like me who is very unreserved, what does intimacy mean? I really like to be very open and talk about some of my most important thoughts and feelings publically. Or artists: don't they reveal a lot of their inner lives to others? Is privacy the only currency of intimacy? If I am not private, are all my relationships the same?

Obviously, they aren't. I can see that I have some relationships that are much closer, more important, and more intimate. For example, though I have written on my blog about my problems with over-Hufflepuffing (caretaking in an unhealthy way) for anyone to read, there are some people with whom I have discussed it again and again, giving examples that I didn't give publicly, asking for feedback.

So for me, intimacy seems to have these characteristics:

My intimates are the people who hear my ideas and stories and thoughts again and again, as I process them in real time. They are present for the gathering and sorting of the data, which is repetitive and not always coherent. I might share my generalizations in a public way and I might even narrate the process, but even that narrative will have been processed into a coherent format.

Connected to that, my intimates get all the data and examples. For one thing, I am convinced they want that much information about me and my ideas. For another, I trust them to be responsible with information that involves others. So if the data that I am working with to form my thoughts involves interactions with others, I know that I can trust my intimates not to share that data in ways that will be harmful to me or to the others. I can trust that they will be considerate and circumspect.

The third thing that is different about my intimate relationships is my desire for and reliance on feedback from those closer people. As I am thinking and figuring things out, I either actively seek or welcome their thoughts when given. They have credibility when it comes to thinking about me; their models of me are good because they have all that extra raw data and experience with my processing methods. In general, I don't mind kind feedback from anyone, but my intimates are people whose feedback is especially valuable and sought after.

Aside from these three characteristics, which seem solid to me, I am also wondering about a less solid lead I'm following in my head. When I think of the people with whom I am very intimate, I notice that my feeling of security is higher. I feel certain that they value me for the qualities I most want to be valued for. I feel certain that, though they see my flaws, they are not disgusted by them. I feel certain that their model of me is at once accurate and positive. (As an aside, I am talking about intellectual certainty; I am still working on feeling this certainty all the time.) I'm not sure if this feeling of security is a result of intimacy or something that I feel first and then that makes us intimate.

I'm still very uncertain, even after writing this post and understanding some better, about what intimacy looks like for a very unreserved person. There is obviously some privileged information involved, but there are other factors at play as well, and I'm not sure exactly what all of them are. I'd welcome comments on this from anyone, intimate or not.