In many ways, our lives are like an iceberg. Every iceberg has a smaller visible part that sits above the waterline and a much larger hidden part that lies underneath. In our lives, the surface part of who we are is visible for all to see, but the deepest, most vulnerable part is hidden.
The waterline represents how much we disclose about ourselves to others. Unlike an iceberg, we have total control over how high or low we set the waterline in our relationships. Lowering this barrier leads to greater intimacy, but it also increases our risk of being hurt.
We all long to be fully known and loved, especially in marriage, but intimacy ultimately depends on how much we’re willing to reveal below the surface. The more we reveal, the more intimacy we’ll be able to experience. To better understand how this works, let’s explore the waterlines we typically set in relationships.
The Image Waterline
The first waterline is your public image, the part of yourself that you work especially hard to make appealing to others. This demarcation represents the most visible parts of your life, including your job, the car you drive, the house you live in, and the smile you wear on your face on the way to church.
It also represents what your golfing buddies think about you, where you want your kids to go to school and the neighborhood you aspire to live in. The image waterline is the public persona you display for those you want to impress, the areas of your life that you try to make respectable, and what you allow most people to know about you. It’s the surface level of your life.
The Relationship Waterline
The second waterline is reserved for a select group of people you consider friends. At this level, you expose more of your heart, allowing your friends to know you better than the surface image you’ve cultivated. You choose to reveal your successes and failures, your hopes and dreams. You even allow your friends to see some of your dysfunctions and weaknesses.
This is where your relationship with your spouse likely started. While you were dating, you probably set this waterline high, choosing not to reveal too much about yourself, especially the unattractive things like your flaws. But as time passed, you realized you could trust this person. So you began to share the deeper parts of yourself, the vulnerable parts. Then, as your relationship grew, you made a decision to marry that person. You lowered the waterline and exposed even more of your heart.
The Marriage Waterline
This next waterline is the level reserved exclusively for your spouse. This is the level where you expose the deepest, most personal parts of yourself. When you stood at the altar and said, “I do,” you probably envisioned revealing the hidden depths of your heart, feeling totally safe and secure being fully known.
That is God’s design and vision for marriage, and it was likely your vision as well. But allowing your spouse to see and know so much about you can leave your heart exposed and vulnerable. The longer you’re married, the easier it is to allow the waterline to creep back up and cover more of your heart with all its uncomfortable secrets.
The Hidden Waterline
The final waterline is the deepest, most vulnerable part of your heart that you don’t allow anyone to see, not even your spouse. You want to share your life with your spouse, but you don’t want to fully share your heart because the cost is too steep.
If you allow your spouse to see who you are at the deepest level, the risk of being hurt increases exponentially. So you may withhold truth and say, “I could never tell my husband that,” or “If my wife ever knew that about me, it would be over.”
You might think you can hide your heart from God, too. Perhaps you tell yourself that if you go to church enough, if you’re spiritual enough, if you read your Bible enough, if you’re good enough, maybe God won’t notice what you’re trying so hard to hide from Him.
But when you hide the truth, you limit your ability to experience intimacy, preventing you from being fully known and loved. Partial truth will never lead to the closeness you long for with God or your spouse. God “delight[s] in truth in the inward being” (Psalm 51:6) and will honor your honesty with Him by revealing more of himself to you.
The Truth Waterline for Real Intimacy
Intimacy—being fully known—is built on a foundation of truth-telling. It’s easy to think that all we need to do to experience intimacy is “just tell the truth.” But it’s not that easy. If it were, we would all be better truth-tellers. The hard truth is that true closeness comes with a price, and that price is complete honesty with God, with ourselves, and with our spouses.
I’ve struggled with honesty my entire life. I’ve distorted truth, exaggerated truth, and withheld truth in ways that have caused immense damage to those I love the most. Even worse, my dishonesty has broken my nearness to God. Because truth-telling is a prerequisite for intimacy, it has become a nonnegotiable in my life. In 28 years of marriage, I’ve learned that being a person of truth is more about values than behavior.
Increasing the Level of Intimacy
If you want to increase the level of intimacy in your marriage, pursue these three values:
- Value truth-telling more than image-building. Building up your image and looking like you have it all together won’t improve the bond you have with your spouse. The only way to experience more intimacy is to be completely honest with your spouse. It’s OK not to have it all together. It’s OK not to have all the answers. It’s OK to ask for help. But to be OK, you need to value truth-telling more than image-building.
- Value transparency more than accountability. Accountability in relationships is essential, but it’s only as valuable and effective as the transparency you bring to the table. Do I think you have to be completely transparent with everyone? No. But you do need to be transparent with your spouse if you want to experience a closeness that you can’t achieve otherwise.
- Value vulnerability more than the absence of conflict. Being fully known can lead to conflict, but avoiding conflict won’t bring you any closer together. To experience true intimacy, you must travel the path of vulnerability.
God wants you to experience a deep personal relationship in your marriage and your relationship with Him. He longs to know you and be known by you.
Intimacy means living with no secrets, and that kind of honesty is risky. You may feel exposed and vulnerable and even hurt at times, but you’ll discover the deeper joy of being fully known and loved.
Truth Leads to God-Designed Intimacy with Your Spouse
God created us for intimacy. Often, we think of it in purely sexual terms. Yet this closeness, as God envisions it, is to be fully known emotionally, physically, and spiritually. In Genesis 2:25 (NIV), we see a beautiful picture of God-designed intimacy: “Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” God created us to be fully known and loved without shame.
If our greatest desire is to be known, our greatest fear is that we won’t be loved. Vulnerability (being exposed) feels risky. It means we can be hurt or, even worse, rejected. So, to stay safe and avoid pain in our marriages, we sacrifice being fully known on the altar of being loved.
Yet Jesus tells us that “‘the truth will set you free’” (John 8:32). But sometimes it will also make us miserable. Still, exchanging short-term misery for long-term intimacy is a trade worth making.
