Today I recognize that enmeshment isn’t closeness. Enmeshment is born out of fear of separation, not desire to be intimate. Intimacy requires that I allow you to be you and me to be me. It means that I am willing to learn how to hang onto a sense of self in your presence and allow you to do the same. Intimacy isn’t caving into your insides because I can’t stand on my own. I can lean on you but I cannot hang on you without both of us falling down. I will do the work I need to do today, to be able to stand on my own and to be willing to allow you to do the same.

I want to feel good inside

Games are a compromise between intimacy and keeping intimacy away.

Eric Berne

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Viktor Frankl