The intimacy scale

[TigerLover]

So a recent post got me wondering how similar our ideas of intimacy are.

Can you please put these activities in order of how intimate you think they are?
Starting with the least intimate.

Public hand-holding
Penetrative/anal sex
Oral sex
Manual sex
Kissing
cuddling.

[TigerLover]

Guess I may as well go first. (Hopefully not last)

1.Manual sex
2.Kissing
3.Cuddling
4.Oral sex
5.Public hand holding
6.Penetrative sex

[Darius]

All of the things you list are about physical intimacy and can be done with complete strangers. That is not real intimacy to me. For me, intimacy more than body parts, it involves emotions, love, friendship and knowledge of the other person.

[knickerbuck]

i don't want to be intimate, i want to have fun, but any way:

3.Manual sex
5.Kissing
4.Cuddling
6.Oral sex
2. Public hand holding
1. Penetrative sex

[princealbertofb]

They say that ''familiarity breeds contempt'', which would indicate that being very familiar with something makes you inured to some of its aspects, maybe some of them would be commonality, recurrence, habit etc...

Anyway, to me intimacy can be physical but mostly it is how you are able to deal with another person's idiosyncracies and manage to put up with them.
So intimacy could be, for example, being comfortable if someone leaves the toilet door open while they do their business. This can be at different levels itself, if for example you have to watch a child do their business (not the same level of intimacy as with an adult doing the same thing.

Another thing that I would call intimate is managing to deal with more 'annoying' things such as farts, body odour, mannerisms etc... What would also count as intimate would be sharing data on my bank statement, or data stocked in my computer history.
I would also add that intimacy can occur on different levels of relationships, for example family, friends and lovers, where the intimacy leads to different behavioural patterns. I would not consider any form of sex appropriate with family apart from kissing and cuddling, and why not public hand holding.

Just to answer your question, since you ask.

I'd start with kissing being the least intimate (because in France we kiss everyone we meet, even for the first time, if they are the opposite gender, and we kiss our same gender friends too if we are comfortable with entering their personal space). So it's probably the least intimate. Kissing someone on the mouth would be more intimate, however.

Cuddling might come second, although as a proof of love and appreciation and comfort, I'd rate it almost one of the most intimate things to do. But I have cuddled my parents, I've cuddled my nephews and nieces, and other kids and that's perfectly ok, it's not going to be sexual, just human behaviour of safety and comfort.

Holding hands in public, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing this around here with my lover, to be honest, but I won't mind taking my lover by the arm when we're walking about. It shouldn't be such a shocker because some people need that kind of support. I would do it with a woman friend and I would do it with a parent, a young kid or an elderly person who needed to be propped up a bit. Holding hands can be very intimate, but it depends whose hand you're holding.

I wouldn't like to classify manual, oral or penetrative sex as particularly more or less intimate, as they are all intimate acts that I would reserve for a special person.

So how do we measure intimacy? I'd think it was how much you can invade another person's personal space, and that would be both a physical space, as a mental space or behavioural space. Intimacy arises from knowing what a person likes, what a person is like and what makes them tick. Knowing how to finish another person's sentences is intimate in my book.