Intimacy as Growing-Closer

Intimacy as Growing-Closer names a principle Valentine Michael Smith is still learning: physical human love can be a profound act of closeness in its own right, rather than simply a means of reproduction or a ceremony that symbolizes a bond. The idea changes how he understands intimacy, shaping his choices with Jill and Patricia and linking physical love to sharing, trust, and the discernment of when a relationship is ready to deepen.

Definition and Development

Smith’s understanding begins with a distinction between what physical love does and what it is. He recognizes that it is not merely a necessary quickening of eggs, nor only a ritual through which people grow closer. The act itself, he comes to believe, is a growing-closer and a great good. Because he does not know this understanding among the Old Ones who raised him, he sees the insight as a distinctive depth in human life rather than simply a Martian custom carried over to Earth.

His realization remains in progress. Smith continues trying to understand the fullness of the experience, approaching it without the guilt or hesitation that might have accompanied his childhood. The account presents learning not as mastery achieved once and for all, but as an active effort to discover what human intimacy means through experience. His teachers have helped him learn without bruising his innocence, making his openness part of the conditions under which this unusually personal understanding can develop.

Sharing Water and the Cusp

The principle becomes concrete in Smith’s bond with Patricia Paiwonski. Jill understands that Patricia accepts the connection between sharing water in an ancient Martian ceremony and sharing physical intimacy: for her, one follows naturally and fully from the other. Their relationship is not treated as a private act detached from their prior bond. The water-sharing establishes a relationship in which intimacy can mean further sharing and a movement toward greater closeness.

Jill interprets the moment through the Martian idea of a cusp: a threshold that can be reached and passed through right action. She is happy that this threshold has been crossed, and her understanding of what has happened is shaped by a way of thinking that she experiences in Martian terms. The emphasis is therefore not on intimacy as an automatic consequence of a ritual. The relationship reaches a decision point, and the choice matters because it moves the people involved into a closer bond.

Jill is somewhat surprised by Patricia’s continued composure when she learns that Smith can perform more extraordinary acts than he had previously disclosed. Yet Patricia’s calm has its own background: she has encountered a holy man before and expects more from holy men. This detail distinguishes her response from Jill’s. Patricia’s acceptance is not simply a reaction to Smith’s abilities, while Jill’s happiness centers on the rightness of reaching and passing the cusp together.

Sharing, Consent, and Limits

Smith’s own account of sex makes sharing and growing closer its governing conditions. He tells Jill that sex is a helpful goodness only when it is shared and brings the participants closer; without that movement, he is uncertain what the act would mean. This uncertainty is significant. His principle is not a license to treat intimacy as valuable in every circumstance simply because it is physical. Its goodness depends on the relationship and on whether the people involved are genuinely growing closer.

That standard also explains why Smith waits until he and Patricia are water brothers before he can welcome her into this form of intimacy. He had recognized that Jill knew Patricia’s symbolic interest in tattooing and snakes, and had hoped Jill would find a way for that interest to be met. But he says he could not act before the water-brother bond existed. The sequence makes prior relationship a condition of action: physical intimacy follows an established connection rather than substituting for one.

Jill sees this restraint as part of what she loves about Smith. She understands that he would have learned he could not act without growing closer, and presents that self-limitation as one of many reasons for her love. Smith, however, admits that he still does not fully understand either love or people, including Jill. He did not want to send Patricia away, but his care does not rest on a claim that he has already mastered human feeling. The scene holds together affection, uncertainty, and a developing ethical sense of when intimacy is right.

Continuing Closeness

The idea returns in Smith’s relationship with Jill as an ongoing practice rather than a single discovery. After helping her dress, he considers setting aside the clothes again in order to give her a massage of the growing-closer kind. Jill answers with playful affection, but also invokes his lesson in waiting: before proceeding, he must take her to the zoo and buy her peanuts. Smith accepts the condition, and Jill agrees to buy the peanuts.

This exchange makes waiting part of intimacy’s meaning. The desire to grow closer is present, but Jill directs its timing toward a shared outing first. Smith’s acceptance shows the principle operating as a mutual relation, not a unilateral impulse: closeness involves attention to the other person’s wishes and the sequence in which they are fulfilled. Across his experiences with Jill and Patricia, physical love is consequently presented as one possible expression of a larger bond—one that develops through sharing, discernment, and respect for the moment when greater closeness is appropriate.