The word intimacy is always thrown around like it is one easily definable thing. Either you are intimate with someone or you are not. Relationships succeed or fail based on some metric that no one seems to agree on.

Intimacy to me is based on so many different things. Part of it depends on how I feel about myself with another person. I can share more of myself with the people I feel confident with and the intimacy flows. Those who I don’t for whatever reason? Not so much.

And sure there are times when the self-confidence isn’t there because of how I feel about myself. I think it was much more common when I was younger. It’s so easy to get caught up in what you should look like based on media images.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that my body type is my body type. I’m not going to change it. No matter how “in” it is to have small boobs and a waif-like appearance, I will never look that way. And that’s OK. I like myself and I am comfortable in my own skin.

That, realistically, is a lot easier when I am in a relationship with someone who tells me often how beautiful I am. I am completely aware of that. But I also know that I risk losing intimacy if I withdraw into myself and feel bad. It makes sex and play so much less fun if I’m worried about how I look.

It goes beyond sex, though. If I can’t be my goofy, nerdy self with people then I tend to withdraw. I can listen, I can respond, but not with my whole self. Reciting lyrics from Broadway musicals, singing, or randomly quoting movies or TV can be incredibly awkward when the audience stares at you, clueless.

And that’s why, when I found this quote, I realized that it fits within everything that embodies intimacy to me. The weird. I have to embrace my weird–yes, I’m borrowing that from Felicia Day who happens to be an amazing nerd.

“Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone — and finding that that’s ok with them.”

Alain de Botton