Intimacy
A guest contribution by Patrick Morency
The Resonant Man is concluding a series of guest contributions, highlighting voices from our active members and the wider community. These conributions work to enrich our collective enquiry and exploration addressing ‘Masculinity in the Metacrisis’.
Today we include a piece by Patrick Morency, a brother who sat with us and contribute deeply to our circle for four months this year. Patrick is the author of ‘Somatic Heartfulness’ a publication exploring relational practices, soul initiation and community.
Vulnerability & Masculinity
You know the slight constriction in your chest, the half-second where you almost don’t say the thing and the weird relief when you finally do. That is vulnerability. The risk is in showing our hearts, the threat is to status, belonging, and fear of exile. The rush into the body can take the shape of a felt-sense contraction.
When the stakes seem too high, the contraction wins out. We swallow the truth and stuff it somewhere out of the way. Distraction and numbing options are easy ways out of life and everywhere like video games, cannabis, and pornography. These options can keep life at a safe distance. Being bullied, risk to status, and threat of exile can be too heavy. So, it makes sense why we choose the easy way out and avoid vulnerability.
To be embodied with a healthy masculinity is to hold a deep relationship with our inner world. To know our body and our mind. Masculinity, in essence is somatic. Touch and contact are essential for our health and well-being as men and sharing our inner world with vulnerability is essential for intimacy.
Double Binds
Today in America, men are starving for connection- isolated, frozen and in many cases unable to break beyond surface level connections. American men are lonely; 15% of American men report no close friends1 while two-thirds of men aged 18–23 agreed that “no one really knows me.”2Because of this, men take what they can get and live off the scraps often by way of commiserating and shared opposition, bonding by feeling better than others. This boosts both oxytocin through reinforcing in-and-out-group dynamics3 and serotonin, the neurochemical responsible for status.4
One of the double binds men find themselves in is that we need connection and we believe it’s too risky to be vulnerable with other men.
Sadly, if you’re a man in America, you probably learned that your body is either a tool or it is a threat. Most men are implicitly taught that touch is only for sex or violence. Platonic touch with other men is riddled with fear of being gay while the space to practice and capacity for platonic touch with women has vanished in a culture both hyper-sexualized and highly sensitized to boundary violation. Men 18-23 especially have no safe context to explore real touch and because of this, find it easier to push through sensitivity and boundaries with intoxication or to shrink away entirely.
The need for contact and touch can go underground, leaking out sideways in many cases. We can see them smuggled into roughhousing, extra firm handshakes, the hard slap on the back, and contact sports as outlets.
An Experience of Intimacy
The experience of intimacy happens at the threshold moment where life is no longer at arms length and we’ve allowed that deep interior of ours to come into ‘contact’ with another.
Maybe you’ve felt it or caught a hint- that sensation in your chest or belly; it’s melty, edgy and alive. You’re simultaneously at ease and uneasy. The experience is full of mystery.
“What’s going to happen next?”
It’s risky. It’s vulnerable. It’s so densely packed with life-force energy, it’s clear there’s something real happening.
We’re enculturated to believe intimacy is only physical touch, sex or disclosing your deepest fears with someone. It can be those things and the essence of intimacy is much more than this.
A Working Definition
Intimacy occurs as a felt sense of contact. Being either physical or non-physical, in mutual presence, it is characterized by a mutual vulnerability and permeability. (We let the other in). Something made possible through an unguarded state of closeness with one’s own interiority and another’s.
It’s the most inner, private, and core aspect of a man’s experience of aliveness and heart. A textured experience beyond descriptors.
Conditions for Intimacy
The conditions for intimacy include; connection, vulnerability, closeness, and contact. The kind of intimacy men can find nourishment in requires all three. They are capacities to develop both relationally and developmentally meaning we need to practice them and grow into them over time.
Connection is resonance and attunement. Connection is a broader category, less subtle than intimacy. A felt sense of togetherness and basic trust which can give rise to co-regulation.
Vulnerability is the exposure or revealing of our interior. Vulnerability is necessary but not sufficient to generate intimacy. Performative kinds of vulnerability or simple self-disclosure aren’t porous enough. They don’t melt us enough. Vulnerability must involve risk and a momentarily suspended, undefended sense of identity. It cannot come from adaptive self- meaning we must take our masks off and drop the armor to experience vulnerability.
Closeness means proximity; either physical, emotional or energetic. Closeness is necessary to intimacy but not sufficient on its own. The possibility of intimacy depends on the subtle intersubjective experience of those involved.
Contact is the moment of meeting in the subtle realm, in the energetic, emotional, in the felt sense. It’s when closeness becomes touching. It’s a moment of grace. It’s where vulnerability and connection generate the next level- intimacy.
Conclusion
At the point of contact we can often feel insecure, afraid, even blank or frozen. This is not a bad thing. It’s highlighting an edge. As men, leaning into our edges around intimacy is a surefire way to grow into mature masculinity.
When starting out on this path, it’s supportive to practice in a container designed for depth like a men’s group. You may want to find a mentor who can hold you in unconditional positive regard as well.
The value of leaning in becomes evident quickly. It can be messy and feel uncool. It can leave us feeling awkward and often times that’s what growth feels like at the deepest level. It’s worth the trade-off because if we don’t, the world remains incapable of meeting the challenges of our time. The capacity for intimacy is a cornerstone to healthy masculinity and healthy masculinity is a cornerstone for a healthy future.
References:
Daniel A. Cox., “American Men Suffer a Friendship Recession”, Survey Center for American Life, July 6 2021 https://www.americansurveycenter.org/commentary/american-men-suffer-a-friendship-recession/
“Equimundo’s State of American Men 2025”, Equimundo, 2025 https://www.equimundo.org/resources/state-of-american-men-2025/
Hejing Zhang, Jörg Gross, Carsten De Dreu, Yina Ma, “Oxytocin promotes coordinated out-group attack during intergroup conflict in humans”, eLife, 2019 https://elifesciences.org/articles/40698
anet, R., Ligneul, R., Losecaat-Vermeer, A.B. et al. “Regulation of social hierarchy learning by serotonin transporter availability”. Neuropsychopharmacol. 2022 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-022-01378-2