By Joseph Hellon

Intimacy is the degree of personal closeness in a relationship. Marriage and sexual unions are naturally more intimate than other relationships.

Students and teachers develop certain levels of intimacy and trust, as do counselors and counselees.

Knowing that men are naturally wired to focus on the end result of a relationship, they tend to expect the highest form of intimacy in relationships with women.

A woman takes time before they can feel secure with a man, and men must be patient. Photo/Courtesy

More often than not, women will have feelings of being owned and to a great extent, trapped in this prison of emotions and expectations.

Men will continue to put pressure on a woman to yield to love, failure to which the relationship begins to suffer tremendous damage.

It’s important to note that the greater the degree of intimacy, the greater the degree of pain in case a break up occurs.

Men tend to get hurt and disappointed a lot faster in relationships because they start the journey at the end.

They feel that women take too long to make important decisions and ‘loving him’ in this case is that significant decision the woman ought to make. More often than not, they never consult the woman to find out what she honestly feels.

Women, on the other hand, cannot honestly speak to men for fear of hurting them.

Different expectations of the degree of intimacy will, therefore, become a source of disagreements and unnecessary fights.

Men are often seen by women to be intrusive, controlling and demanding. Women on the other hand are seen by men to be distant and stand-offish due to their platonic approach to intimacy at the initial stages. This is where most men get frustrated.

He is usually left wondering if the woman is ‘serious’ and why she can’t see that "I love her so much".

For a woman, the word love, denotes commitment to a very high level of intimacy.

To a man, it denotes an admirable exclusivity that befits a queen.

He therefore continues to wonder why his love is so consistently unrequited by the woman.

The key issue here is the understanding that men and women express intimacy differently and since it’s women that seem to be on the receiving end on most relationships, what with pregnancy and negative social perceptions, they are more prone to self-preservation.

They have to take every detail into account before plunging into a relationship with a man.

This therefore, must not be misunderstood by men to mean that the women are probably ‘seeing someone else’ or are just not interested in a ‘villain like me.’

A man must take into account the fact that as a source of the life blood called love, his desire to give love away so fast must be tempered and interspersed with patience and prudence.

Gut feelings come into play here. Patience is the modus operandi. A man who waits for a woman to feel secure enough before advancing towards higher levels of intimacy is assured of a lasting and fulfilling relationship.

Women warm up slowly but surely towards relationships. Once they feel secure enough, they will jump in with utter abandonment.

Men therefore misunderstand intimacy because they fail to understand that women enjoy and subscribe to the process.

They will not skip one little step towards it.

Given to end results, a wise man waits.