We can only be as intimate with another person as we are willing to be intimate with ourselves.
Life is triggering. Other people are triggering. The people closest to us trigger us the most.
What does it mean to get triggered?
It means that a sensitive spot of mine - one that I have tried long and hard to forget about and leave behind - has been activated.
This sensitive spot had been lying dormant a moment before the triggering event. And then the triggering thing happened, rudely shocking it out of its slumber.
We can say that this sensitive spot wakes up with a fright. Frazzled, frantic, startled.
Naturally, we want nothing to do with this frightened, frazzled, frantic, startled part of ourselves.
And so we get away from it as quick as possible.
The first step in our urgent escape is to focus on something else entirely. Instead of keeping our attention at the level of our sensitivity, we redirect it towards the event, or person, that triggered it.
The sensitive spot inside of us continues to reverberate, but we distract ourselves from it by zeroing in on "that thing out there."
We're not in conscious relationship with our sensitivity, which means we're not intimate with ourselves (the second part of Bruce's sentence). We've abandoned ourselves.
At this stage, we engage in an adversarial relationship with the triggering event/person. We rebel against that thing that startled our sensitivity into abrupt, agitated wakefulness.
We engage with them from the view - conscious or unconscious - that if only they would be different than they are, then we wouldn't have to feel the way that we do.
The ways we attempt to deal with our partner - to change them - are varied. To name just a few: we get angry with them, or we try to take care of them, or we withdraw from them in punitive silence, or we cajole them. The aim in each of these is that they stop doing what we don't like (what triggers us), and start doing what we do like (what doesn't trigger us).
The behaviors that we try on can be called many things: Control, retaliation, withdrawal, to name a few.
There is one thing they definitively are not: Intimacy.
We don't see our partner as an equally valid Other in this circumstance. We aren't softening into any degree of connection. We see them as an annoying, pestering thing that is making us feel bad. We don't relate to them. We just relate to the surface appearance of them that we find momentarily upsetting.
That is the meaning of Bruce's quote. When we aren't willing to be intimate with our own activation, with our own selves, we end up in a struggle with our partner (who triggered our activation). That is, when there is no intimacy "in here," there can be no intimacy "out there."
Let's look the alternative.
First, what does it look like to be intimate with myself?
It means that, when my sensitive spot gets rudely awakened, I stay with that activation. I participate with the frantic feeling inside.
All that really means is that I don't try to get away from myself. I don't distract myself (by focusing on my partner's shortcomings, for example).
Instead, I turn towards the sensitive spot inside of me and let myself burn up with it. I stay with myself in my moment of pain and panic. I allow myself to become aware of precisely what I wish I didn't have to.
Because I am willing to be with my sensitivity, I don't need to change the person - my partner - who activated it. I can be with them, as they are, because I am willing to be with myself, as I am.
So, my capacity to be intimate with my partner, is contingent upon my willingness to be intimate with myself.
My partner is going to trigger just about everything I've dedicated my life to avoiding. When I say "no" to those triggers, then I necessarily say "no" to the version of my partner who set them off.
When I say "yes" to those triggers, then I have the opportunity to say "yes" to my partner.
In the end, we might say that intimacy is the attitude of "yes."
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