Intimacy

Many people have internal barriers that keep them from truly intimate relationships. Intimacy encompasses a closeness at all levels, not merely at a physical one. True intimacy between two people means that all pretenses are suspended and that genuine honesty is shared and is never abandoned or sacrificed. The raw emotions and fears of one another in such a relationship are exposed with no chance of judgment or rebuke. The spirit and the soul are able to flourish with no worries of betrayal or belittlement.

Francesca is suffering in a relationship with Richard who was raised in a conservative and strict environment in which the expression of one's private thoughts and hopes and dreams is not appropriate. Richard was taught that speaking of emotions was wrong and effeminate as was reading poetry and admiring art. Perhaps there was a fundamental and profound difference in Francesca and Richard that...