Can Intimacy Defeat Instinct?

They say man can live without love, but not without water.

Yet what if that’s only true because we prioritise the urgent over the important. Our material tangible needs over our invisible, intangible ones?

In today’s world deep emotional connection is an extra topping – optional, available only once all other personal needs are met. Water is a metaphor for money, and love, once life’s highest purpose, is now a luxury most cannot afford.

Love comes with a price that money cannot buy.

This exchange between survival, love of self, and insistence on what’s right, versus love for the other, commitment and fulfilment, reflects a long, tangled history.

Early economic theories suggest the first form of ownership wasn’t land or livestock, but women - taken as trophies in war, absorbed into a man’s property, symbols of status, power, and control. From the start, love and relationships were entangled with possession, objectification, and the economics of dominance.

As a species, we carry a remarkable dual capacity - for nobility and cruelty, to honour the sacredness of personhood, or reduce others to objects. Perhaps we were once meant to die for each other; instead, we often find ourselves willing to kill, manipulate, or discard others for gain.

The institution of marriage emerged amid this dilemma. At its best, it promised the union of two souls, a shared life rooted in equality, unity, and mutual growth. It reinstated the dignity of personhood, a space where each could say: “I cannot live without you.” Where the other literally and tangibly became more important than the self.

At its worst, marriage became hollow - a social contract legitimising physical intimacy, securing mutual dependencies, economic partnership, and offering a sanctioned path to legacy through offspring. 

The spiritual ideal slowly collapsed into a civilised way of drifting through existence.

We aspired for much but settled for less. Love became both hero and villain in human history - our greatest promise and deepest failure.

Yet love is more than an emotion. It is our original nature. It lives in our desire to be good, just, and right; in our yearning to care, give, and remain faithful. Love is not something we do - it is who we are.

But we are not born fully formed and perfected. We are born weak, fragile, helpless, locked into the complicated mess of choosing between our two natures. We all learn too quickly that the only way to remain alive is to protect and  feed our physical nature. Killing someone else was always apparently more beneficial than dying for another. 

In a sense we are born with our original nature corrupted and love gone wrong or misdirected.

If love worked as it was meant to and we were all willing to die for each other, no one needed to be killed. Yet since we are corrupted, and love is misdirected, and we now need to protect ourselves from being killed, the physical powers of muscle in all its avatars rule. Money is king.

By nature, we inherit the impulses of our animal selves - hormones, instincts, and desires that often overpower us. Driven by bodily needs demanding immediate gratification, without awareness or discipline, these impulses govern our choices and distort judgment.

We can despair at this reality - or aspire to something greater.

What sets us uniquely apart from animals is not mere intellect, but our great potential for transformation.

We can evolve beyond our inherited, corrupt nature. We can train instincts, discipline desires, teach our bodies to follow something higher – a truly free self that is conscious and capable of love as sacrifice, not mere satisfaction.

But here lies the mystery, in two parts: How do we recognise that our nature is corrupted and restoration possible? And why do so many prefer their inherited nature even when it limits, robs, them of true satisfaction and joy?

Anything that is natural, like breathing, feels effortless. We all desire our natural selves. Transformation, growth, mastery, however, is hard work- and thus feels coerced and unnatural. If practised and mastered though, it becomes our new second nature and seems effortless once again. 

However for the weak of mind and will, for those brought up in toxic environments that robbed them of self-esteem, and other such causes, there is an automatic leaning, a preference for the effortlessness. Therefore if the physical life is passably comfortable there arises no particular reason to make effort to firstly grow as a person, and secondly to become more capable of love.

Doing just enough becomes the norm coupled with “try to have as much fun as possible”.

Learning to talk, and coming up with shallow ideas comes naturally and easily. Speaking with clarity, depth, and intention though requires deeper learning and hard work...something that has no immediate monetary benefit.

Lusting after someone or envying others is instinctive. But building meaningful relationships rooted in character and love, takes conscious effort. It’s always hard work.

Yet as a law, people who have refused to work on themselves and make the extra effort to become the best they can be are also unable to put in the hard work needed for a relationship to reach its potential.

Relationships too are either dragged down to the mundane of being taken for granted and “this much is enough”,  or raised to the ideal of  “ There’s so much more to experience and be, and lets work at it together.”

There is a gap, by nature, between who we are by default (or minimal effort) - and who we can become by consistent, conscious, untiring effort. 

In that gap, civilisation arises. But for all its sophistication, civilisation doesn’t offer transformation -only behaviour management. It teaches us how to act in public, appear decent, conform. It sets rules but offers no tools for inner renewal.

Marriage, as a mirror of civilisation, often became more about appearances than essence. A respectable stage for noblest virtues, while hiding the lowest human nature. People speak of love and vow it, but live in manipulation, resentment, and varying forms of abuse behind closed doors.

A marriage may drift between dull routine and fleeting excitement. Or worse, devolve into dysfunction, power imbalance, and lovelessness - held together by fear, dependency, or mere momentum. Many survive in quiet desperation, masking pain with distraction, hoping pleasure can substitute meaning.

Yet marriage still holds potential. At its highest, it can become a sacred temple - where two worship the Infinite by confronting the enemy within. A place where yesterday was good, today better, but tomorrow best.

 A space where love deepens and character refuses to rust in complacency, but creates work and grows.

This transformation seems magical when it happens, and its absence can feel like evil black magic.

Marriage is truly that place of a blessing or a curse.

At the heart lies a critical distinction: two kinds of people, two kinds of relationships.

The first is built on mutual avoidance of discomfort. We keep things pleasant, undemanding, safe. We don’t challenge ourselves or each other. We speak kindly face-to-face, refuse to find fault with self, but vent frustrations behind backs. These relationships aren’t harmful - but shallow. Built on niceness, not love.

The second kind roots in true love—desiring the best for the other, even when uncomfortable. Love that confronts, questions, demands, probes, seeks clarity. Love that insists on growth, even when it hurts. Like a doctor causing pain to heal, true love exposes contradictions, invites dialogue, challenges delusions.

Love comforts too - but it comforts the wounded in effort, not the complacent in delusion. It warms those trying, not those refusing to grow.

Some ask, “Who decides what is delusional?” or “Which reality is true?” The answer lies in intention. If I genuinely seek your good, and you mine, then no question is off-limits.

True love doesn’t impose - it invites open, even painful, dialogue. It seeks truth through mutual exploration, not manipulation.

We’re not called to love everyone this way - but in closest relationships, especially marriage, this is the love we must practice.

And even then, love knows when to be silent. Sometimes truths aren’t needed. Sometimes love steps back, giving space rather than poking, prodding, correcting. Silence, too, can be an act of love.

Still - no pain, no gain. Without friction, neither you nor your relationship grows. Complacency isn’t peace. It’s stagnation.

To believe we are ever fully grown is delusion.

Just as our parents once guided us to tame instincts and impulses, marriage is a space of mutual parenting - not of flaws, but of each other’s highest self. Where we fail and are forgiven. Where we succeed and are celebrated. Where love is both mirror and fire, reflection and transformation.

To escape the dilemma of our existence there is one rule worth following: never settle for less. Never say, “This is all I can be.” Never say, “This is all we are.” Be yourself 100%, courageously, without compromise.

And see what love can do.