Time and Intimacy: A New Science of Personal Relationships

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Nature has linked her kinds into a net, not into a chain; men are incapable of following anything but a chain, since they cannot express in words more than one thing at a time. — Haller (cited in Margulis & Sagan, 1991, p. 146)

This chapter attempts to bridge the gap between two widely disparate perspectives. The first perspective deals with our common, personal views of time as we experience it and also how spirituality (our notions of paradise, timelessness, or eternity) plays a role within these personal views. The second perspective deals with the scientific view of time as researchers, who study personal relationships, continually construct it and as they develop ideas and methods for studying time's role within personal relationships. I seek to formulate a language that will convey meanings for both those who seek a personal understanding of time and intimacy and students of personal relationships who seek a scientific understanding of temporality. This bridge or language rests on the relatively complex concept of temporal context. Although this concept has been described previously, this chapter builds a more complete definition. In its essence, the concept attempts to “express in words more than one thing at a time.”

This chapter also follows through with the transpersonal theme outlined earlier. Previous chapters described transpersonal intimacy almost as a possibility or contingency. It is a type of intimacy (into my sea), a feature of time in relationships (time transcendence), the latent structure of our relationship stories (holoscript), and the outcome of partners transacting meanings that move them beyond their projective texts (textual transcendence). This chapter assumes

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