Transparency leads to intimacy.

“Search me, Oh God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts” – Psalm 139:23.

Transparency in a relationship is defined as being open by sharing our thoughts and feelings honestly without fear of judgement or repercussions. Any relationship or Marriage without transparency lacks intimacy, well I guess it is safe to say for intimacy between a husband and a wife to happen , there has to be stripping of clothes until they are both bare. My quest to pursue and surround myself with authentic relationships has led me to be vulnerable to a fault. When I interact with people, for me “what you see is what you get”. I try to avoid pretentious relations, with the hope of not hurting other people and in return hurting myself. So I always choose transparency at the beginning of every relationship I start, I reveal who I am, to allow intimacy and the authenticity of the relationship to blossom. If for example I am transparent with the fact that I am unemployment, I am hoping the other person to understand my financial standpoint and if the respect they give people gauge according to their economic status then already, I have eliminated dealing with such a person in my life, that is the power of transparency. It allows you to be bare, and honest and to be true to yourself without fear of judgement, and that will bring the right people, that will love you despite everything.

When it comes to Marriage, people think transparency is phone passwords and bank card pins, well all of it, is a result of transparency. However transparency goes beyond all of that, it is more to do with revealing yourself to your spouse and unmasking the unattractive parts about yourself so that your spouse will have a deeper understanding of you so as to break into layer of walls build around you in order to build intimacy. A lot of relationships are built on the idea of the best version of us, we show our partners the best side of us, the parts we love about ourselves and not the unattractive side, as the relationship progresses we fight hard to maintain the pretense but the real us keeps slipping up, sometimes it leads to gaslighting our partners because we are embarrassed that our ugly side is sticking out for them to see, we end up denying the truth even when we are confronted with the evidence because we are desperate to control the narrative we have presented from the onset. Unfortunately emotional abuse prevails. The way I see it rather reveal yourself at the beginning, be transparent, so as to know whether this person standing in-front of you truly loves you beyond your imperfections rather than playing Russians roulette with your heart, because the entire relationship its either you will gaslight your partner or you will be wearing a mask the entire relationship. In the process the relationship loses intimacy, the emotional part and the sexual part of it.

When I started dating my husband , I laid it all on the table, my fears, my traumas, my craziness, my loud laughter, my short temper, everything. I didn’t want him to have a certain version of me, It was very important for me he knew what he was getting himself into. What I didn’t want to do is pretend I am something that I am not, I wanted to be loved as I am, beyond my imperfections. I remember at some point I asked him, “If you can not handle me with my past traumas, then we might as well stop the relationship because this is me, I can not promise to mask it or pretend to be something I am not”. I also did this because I understood the power of vulnerability or transparency that it has the power to create a beautiful intimacy between two people that choose to love each other despite the ugly side. When I told my husband my traumas and triggers, it was with the hope that we will progressively go through the traumas together and he will learn and understand my triggers better and we will work around them together. It is with my bareness I was enabling my husband to build intimacy with me and understand me better.

I compare any relationship on Earth with that of God and his children, without being transparent with God it is not possible to be close with him, because what is standing in between us and God is honesty and being vulnerable. A lot of us as Christians we wear masks in front of God, and pretend everything is okay when we are barely surviving and are burdened with sin. 1 John 1 :9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”. Our God is Sovereign and all knowing, even before we could come to him he already knows what is bothering us. Remember when he called Adam and asked where he is?Or When he asked Cain where Abel was? He is always inviting us to transparency and he pleads with us to confess our sins because he knows that sin will create a barrier between us, he knows that we will live in condemnation and fear of judgement, which will lead us to hide from him. Live a life different from what we present at the church. God wants to hear us in our vulnerability and talk to him even when we feel resentment towards him without fear of judgement, because it is when we trust him with our hearts fully, without holding back, we are able to build intimacy with him. God knows it is through his intimacy with us restoration can take place, healing can take place, abundance can take place. The same applies in relationships, marriages that build intimacy from transparency are able to allow restoration, healing and abundance to take place, but as long as we hold back from one another, and mask ourselves and pretend to be people we are not , it will also become easy to live a life separate to our marriage lives or try manipulate (emotionally abuse) our spouses.

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