Hi Vineeto,
I will go in bits because there is a lot in your message which clicks.
I really like how you wrote this - “intimacy is not assertive but inclusive, enticing, friendly, benevolent”. And with authority ‘I’ am doing exactly that - asserting ‘myself’. Asserting ‘myself’ immediately cuts the possibility of intimacy at the root, this is exactly the ‘edge’ I was talking about.
This clicked in such an obvious way, I think it’s because of what you wrote about intimacy not being assertive. In that when I allow intimacy with another then I cannot help but take them into consideration, whereas when I assert myself there is an absence of caring and consideration. But I never saw this before, that by asserting myself I am getting in the way of intimacy and therefore peace and harmony. It can be such a small step too that I missed it in the past, where I assert myself and turn the situation into my way vs their way, now it’s a battle and peace and harmony is nowhere to be found.
I never thought to question assertiveness, in fact I even remember as a kid in school being taught how it is so very important…
Also to tie it into Richard’s quote about preference, if I am asserting myself it means that I have already made it serious, which means it is no longer a self-less inclination, it is now a self-centred urge. This is exactly how I have observed conversations turn into arguments too.
I can’t believe I’ve never seen this, that the very action of asserting myself is rotten. It makes sense now, there is a seriousness and a forcefulness to it, it has aggression at it’s root.