the archaeology of intimacy

on desire, control, and the ways we punish others when we haven’t made peace with our own histories

to love someone is to be curious about the sediment of their being. to kneel in the dirt of another person’s reality and be willing to dig. it is not just about the surface, not just about what is easy to admire. but about the way they exist in the world, the tiny and often messy mechanisms that make them who they are.

in doing so you will find quirks and patterns. half irritating habits that are also half endearing. you will brush dust from old bones. recognising the shape of what made them. what broke them. what they hide because they think no one will love it.

if you date someone attractive, anyone they walk past on the street will notice. attraction is obvious and easy. the real intimacy lives in the excavation. each person, a whole new dig site. skeletons, artefacts, strange objects you don’t immediately know how to label. what makes loving someone different is that you are allowed to go past the obvious. you get to dig. anyone can admire, few can excavate. even fewer will choose to keep digging once the discoveries aren’t as beautiful as they had hoped.

attachment theory tells us that when a person experiences safety in a relationship, they are able to reveal themselves. each layer shared strengthens intimacy in a process psychologists call self-disclosure. their hidden patterns, past traumas and vulnerabilities. the excavation is never instantaneous. it is a negotiation with time, with patience, and with attentiveness. and it begins with trust, the assurance that what is uncovered will not be weaponised or dismissed.

if you do not trust your partner to not meet you with fear or abandonment. and if you do not trust yourself. your feelings, your worth, your ability to be loved if the whole of you comes out. the layers will stay buried, the dig site will remain closed. love stays shallow.

the opposite of excavation is invention. invention is the art you paint over the sketch marks. the fantasy where nothing came before. where the person never faltered, never loved anyone else, never embarrassed themselves in public or begged someone not to leave. invention feels safer because it protects from vulnerability. but it is a false safety.

people arrive with stories already written, memories and experiences that have shaped their reflexes and fears. love does not erase this. it will simply lay itself gently on top. and yet so many still try to force love into a myth of purity. untouched, unsullied. beginning with me and ending with me. they see it as something romantic. and nothing seems to shake people more than the ghost of their partner’s past.

retroactive jealousy emerges when love is directed at an idea rather than a person. it is fuelled by obsessive rumination. the mental looping over who they loved before, what they did, who they kissed, and what they shared. research in relational psychology shows that this pattern is less a measure of the partner’s worth or fidelity, and more an internal mirror of the observer’s anxieties.

it is the refusal to acknowledge the dig site that already exists. the layers of their life that were unearthed long before you arrived. instead of curiosity, there is judgment. instead of seeing that history as a terrain to explore. a place to work alongside. you find yourself avoiding the acceptance of the site as it is, not as you wish it had been. it becomes a mark against you.

when you are unwilling to acknowledge let alone accept the history your partner carries alongside them, then you cannot really love them at all. it is their past that has shaped the very person you claim to love. you erase it, you erase them.

if your relationship with yourself is shallow. if you have spent your whole life sanding down your own edges, hiding your differences, avoiding your fears. you will approach others at that same shallow depth. those who cannot make peace with their own past, mistakes, or former partners. will punish their lover for theirs. love then becomes more like an accessory. a placeholder.

the other person’s presence reflects your own unprocessed experiences back to you. sometimes uncomfortably, sometimes painfully. inevitably whoever you are with will show you parts of yourself you didn’t want to see. the impatience. the jealousy. the wounds you thought were buried.

love digs those up too.

curiosity is the deepest form of love. it nourishes a relationship that lets you be childish. rediscovering the playful, unashamed part within. the tragedy is how quickly adulthood teaches you to bury that child. if you cannot tolerate your own childishness, you will project shame onto your partner. you will mock their hobbies, roll your eyes at the things that excite them. suffocating what keeps love alive. people do not just love others as they are. they love, or hate, the reflections of themselves that the other brings forth.

the healthiest love is where you protect each other’s inner child. where you make peace with yourself and therefore the other. developmental psychology shows that adults who maintain playful engagement with their partner experience higher relational satisfaction and resilience. when curiosity guides interaction, novelty and discovery activate the brain’s reward pathways. reinforcing closeness and deepening connection. mistakes are met with understanding, excitement is welcomed rather than dismissed, and unspoken histories are honoured. intimacy becomes exploration, and love an active, evolving practice.

love at its core is two people giving the other’s inner child permission to come outside. it does not adhere to the illusion of control. control will say: i wish none of that had happened, so i wouldn’t feel small, so we wouldn’t have to face it. curiosity will say: tell me about who you were, what you’ve been through, what shaped you. show me the parts of you that are afraid will make me leave. i want to know you.

but not all tunnels align forever. people grow. sometimes two people keep digging, but the site itself diverges. different landscapes, different depths, no longer meeting. you change, they change. and you hope ideally that your changes will sync. they won’t always. one person might start craving a slower life, the other feels most alive chasing intensity. one begins dreaming of children while the other imagines a life that never includes them. sometimes it’s simpler. the things that once felt fun together stop overlapping, or the ways you both cope with pain no longer fit side by side.

clinging to a relationship simply because it is old is a strange concept. it is like charging a phone that no longer turns on. many will stay in relationships even when they other has left love completely. but the sign to let go is not when the spark dims. or when the sex slows. or when schedules clash. the marker is when someone no longer wants to excavate. when they abandon curiosity.

we never stop layering. we are never finished sites. sometimes the digging will pause for work, for stress, for mental health. but the person leaves their tools at the edge, ready to pick them up again. that pause is not the end. the end is when the tools are abandoned altogether.

familiarity isn’t love. duration isn’t love. love is curiosity. when the curiosity ends the relationship does too. and if all of this sounds cynical, it is not meant to be.

love is not blind at all. it notices every crack, every scar, every stubborn insecurity. the contradictions, the habits that make no sense to anyone but you.

anyone can love the version of you that is easy to digest. but there are people who will take the whole plate. the sweetness, the leftovers, the burnt edges. the parts you thought no one could stomach let alone want to.

and if you do find that person. the one who wants to keep discovering you. the person you have been and the person you are becoming. someone who lingers in the layers most would skim past. who gives you the safety to open, to hand over the unseen parts of yourself. then you have found the kind of love people write entire books trying to describe.

to fall in love is a beautiful phrase.

it paints a picture of gamble. a leap of faith that love will often ask of us. beautiful and yet. incomplete.

but in mandarin the phrase is not, to fall in love. it is 爱上, ài shàng.

which means

to come to be in love.