The intimacy I believe we crave comes from that feeling of true connection, a mutual recognition that Margaret Schlegel analysed and understood even if she didn't find it with Henry (and which Helen aimed for more uncompromisingly but ultimately fruitlessly): what she called “the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches”.

We crave it because it promises to fulfil a deep need we have for being known and knowing in return. The social animal cannot live well in fragments with the thought of being as “irreducibly single” as Samuel Beckett described. We are connectors. Because the need we have runs so deep, we know we are vulnerable to disappointment; either because we shall never find a genuine connection, or because we shall fall for an illusion and get hurt. Often it feels better not to look for it in the first place than to try and fail. We may want to know and feel known in return, but the recognition must be of a certain kind. It must be genuine, benevolent and trusting. The undertow of intimacy unfulfilled is shame and humiliation.

But our disappointments do not stop there, for even when we achieve this type of connection with someone we know it is intrinsically short-lived, and must fade. Intimate moments cannot be trusted to endure.