Barriers to intimacy, to achieving healthy, satisfying connections, are as close as our own hearts and histories. Surmounting those barriers can be formidable, yet not surmounting them will almost certainly mean lost relationships, ruined trust, broken marriages, weakened parenting.

Marriage counselors, therapists and spiritual directors agree that faith and our church communities can play an important role in mending relationships and in maintaining solid bonds. No matter the hazards -- and there are plenty, they say -- faith can support couples, families and friends through devastating problems, even serious psychological ailment. But it means serious work and real commitment.

"We all have a great desire to be known and to be loved," says Mary Meader, a spiritual director at the Bethany House of Prayer in the Diocese of Massachusetts. Such intimacy can occur, not just between lovers, but also with children, parents and siblings; with co-workers and friends; between congregations and clergy; and with God. But always, she says, "there's a mutuality; each must know and love the other. You can't have intimacy without mutuality and without mutual self-revelation."

That means we need to learn to share ourselves openly, despite fears of rejection or loss, say Don and Patricia Richmond, who serve as the national lay executive couple for Episcopal Marriage Encounter. "Open sharing may require us to overcome our personal views of our own inadequacy or failures."

How we were raised, cultural differences, familial attitudes toward self-revelation, fear of rejection or loss, a weak or false self-image -- all can affect our ability to risk vulnerability.

Barriers we bring with us

"The hurts that are carried into the marriage from the family of origin or childhood and teen years ... especially unresolved issues with the parent of the opposite sex ... can prove troublesome in intimate relationships, says Constance Cox, a mental health counselor with the Episcopal Counseling Center in Orlando, Fla.

"If not healed, those issues can definitely affect the couple's interactions," she says. Anger over past hurts can get in the way, especially if we find forgiveness difficult. Past hurts that left us with an unresolved sense of woundedness can lead to insatiable demands for compensation, even if the person who originally hurt us is long gone.

The important thing, says Cox, is to know that those issues can be addressed through counseling and through prayer. "It's only through the Lord that we can be 'transformed by the renewing of our mind'," she says, quoting Romans.

Coping with these issues, says marriage and family therapist Lynn Busch, is an inevitable challenge in a long-term relationship. "People connect for many reasons they're not aware of. We all have issues to work out, and we tend to pick the perfect person to do that with. We need to do that work, to get down into the depths of sorrow, grief and sadness. But we can't stand the pain, the loneliness and discomfort."

Of course, that's not how relationships seem at the start, says Busch, director of the Episcopal Counseling Center of the Diocese of Fort Worth. "When we fall in love, we believe we have found it! Suddenly, we see life in Technicolor. We nibble each other's ears and tell each other everything (or so it seems).

"There may be problems, but we love each other and that is enough. You feel good about yourself. You are even able to give up substitute forms of gratification, such as overeating or drugs or watching TV or working overtime. Life has meaning and substance. You feel more loving and accepting of everyone else. You may even be blessed with a heightened spiritual awareness. Life is good."

Facing disillusionment

But then the mask starts to slip. Disillusionment sets in. Typical reactions, say the Richmonds, can be as simple as feeling taken for granted. "The wedding is over, why work on being romantic?"

Silence is another response, they say; it may be a cover for anger against the partner or against oneself. Moodiness is a common reaction, because "the one who feels injured or hurt may not know exactly how to respond without blaming the other."

The end of illusion, however, need not mean the end of the relationship. "Parker Palmer says that when we are disillusioned, we should rejoice because it means we were 'illusioned' in the first place and have come to a firmer truth," says Dr. Frank Wade, rector of St. Alban's, Washington, D.C., and author of the audiobook "The Art of Being Together: Common Sense for Lifelong Relationship."

Busch says she believes this is where the relationship has an opportunity to reach its fullest potential.

"Of course there is a disillusionment phase. That's where you're bonding," she says. "It's the place where you see who your mate really is and let [your mate] see who you really are. 'You're not the person I married' is a very normal stage of development. Of course you don't love him any more; you married a mask."

It is here, in the disillusionment phase, Busch says, that you build the real love, the solid love. "'I don't love my husband' is a normal part of marriage, but it's not a reason for divorce -- though our culture names it so. We have to have commitment to get through that stage."

Better than the thrill

For some relationships, conflict gets intense at this point. For others, the response is not conflict but boredom. Wade points out that one of the challenges of long-term intimacy is that "many people do not know how to celebrate the routine and the ordinary in a relationship, and begin to get bored or simply ignore the opportunities for joy.

"As a Christian," he argues, "it is important to know that the reason the ordinary is ordinary is that God likes it and made a lot of it. There are wonderful treasures hidden in a healthy routine of married life. It is not like the thrill of the chase or the first blush of romance, but in many ways it is much better."

This is where society lets us down, Busch says. "We have so romanticized marriage and love. ... We don't have much of a sense about commitment to marriage in our culture. We're so concerned about the individual, we won't go into the place where real union can happen.

"Face it," she says, "when people go through a war, it's when we're in the foxholes together that the real bonding takes place. But we have to have commitment to get through that stage. We need to be able to say 'We'll see that through.' But in our culture, we don't tend to do that. The commitment isn't there."

Too many choices

Wade suggests that our lack of commitment, our reluctance to wrestle with the deeper struggles of relationship, may be rooted in our prosperity.

"Jesus warned over and over about the spiritual dangers of wealth," he says. "One of those dangers is selfishness. I think that as we have more toys, more choices, more places to go and things to do, we are less inclined to enter the seemingly restricted realm of a lifelong commitment and to exercise the discipline required to explore the wonderful depths of such commitment. In other words, the surface of life is so intriguing to us that we ignore the depths."

Busch names the same problem. "People here move in with a new partner as soon as they separate from the old one; they don't even wait until the divorce is final. Anyone leaving a marriage ought to wait at least a year after the divorce is final before they find a new partner, because there's just so much work that needs to be done."

Her own marriage, says Busch, is a good example of what can go wrong if you don't finish the process. "I had been single for eight years when we married, but he had only been divorced for six months. He and his wife had many things to work out with themselves and with the children. Frankly, our marriage interfered tremendously, and many things went wrong that wouldn't have if he had done his closure work. We were married 25 years and, at the end, we were still dealing with things that could -- and should -- have been settled before we married."

The root of longing

The urgency for connection is rooted in a longing for wholeness, total acceptance, completion. "It's a search for the beloved," says Meader. "We come with the expectation of being known and loved. I mean known in the biblical sense, not just carnal, known as in, 'I knew you in your mother's womb.'

"That's all we want. And the ultimate sadness and sorrow of life is that we're not going to ever get it completely from our partners.

"We get glimpses," she says, "like the Kingdom of God. But that's all, And it never lasts. Even at the height of ecstasy, we'll ask, 'Is that all there is?' and 'Why can't I be here forever?'"

"As humans," Meader says, "we are created to have intimate personal relationships with God; that relationship is then manifested in how we are with people. But never completely. So we are yearners. As St. Augustine says, our souls are restless until we rest in God.

"But if we take this yearning and this seeking and desire for God and put that intensity onto a human, then we blow them out of the water. We put our displaced longing for the divine onto a human, and it doesn't work."

Intimacy is never easy, says Meader. "Within any couple, any intimate relationship, we have to deal with society and gender expectations and our own familial expression of that. What we really need is to look at who we are created to be by God, away from what family and society tell us. We need to get rid of the false self, discover the true, God-created self.

"When we get in touch with the power within, the power that comes from the spiritual dimension, then we acquire a more positive self-image, and we are better equipped to work at knowing the other. And it is work: you have to pay attention, be mindful, and then love what you find."

Listening is basic

"Probably the most basic work in relationship is listening," say the Richmonds. "As individuals, we are poor listeners, always wanting to state our point, to convince the other of our point of view, to change the other's behavior. To listen objectively and empathetically takes a setting aside of one's self, seeing and accepting the other person as they are."

Being willing to really hear and to be really known, to be vulnerable and self-revealing, is hard. "The hardest job in an intimate relationship is talking when you would rather not talk and listening when you would rather not listen," Wade says. "It requires courage, confidence, trust, vulnerability and patience."

According to spiritual director Mary Jane Francis, "Without trust and mutual respect, intimacy is not possible, and the relationship can only be a very polite, surface one."

"Trust and mutual respect provide safety in a relationship: without them we don't risk sharing who we really are, what's really important to us, much less our brokenness and pain," says Francis, interim dean of the Diocesan School of Ministry and Theology in the Diocese of Olympia.

The decision to work at intimacy in marriage means going deeper than most people find comfortable -- which may explain our high divorce rate. We could alleviate that somewhat, says Busch, if the community provided more support before and after marriage.

"But people in this society tend to operate as individuals rather than communities," she says. "We need to prepare people for it, to help them make decisions based on reality rather than romance. But everyone thinks, 'That won't happen to me.' We are constantly overlooking the problem areas and focusing on the good, and then we are surprised by the bad."

 The congregation can help

Busch says she believes that our needs for affirmation, recognition and a sense of belonging -- needs traditionally met within a church congregation or by the community in more rural societies -- are being projected onto primary relationships, loading them with expectations impossible for one person to meet.

The Rev. Fred Jessett learned to counter that trend in a suburb east of Seattle. The former archdeacon of the Diocese of Spokane started a mission church, and there he found congregational involvement easing tensions in marriages.

"In many families, the husband was working long hours, and the wife was home with the kids. Sometimes they'd just start to feel disconnected," said Jessett.

"Again and again we'd find the couple would get involved in things that needed to be done in a new congregation -- setting up in the school cafeteria, hosting small groups, organizing activities, singing in the choir, teaching, making banners and vestments, designing publicity. " As a result, the men found a life and friends they could share with their wives. The women made connections, shared child care, found outlets for their creativity and talents that the whole church rewarded and appreciated. And problems or feelings of unhappiness that might have been there no longer seemed insurmountable."

Being part of a congregation can make a huge difference in other ways, says Dr. Harold G. Koenig, director of Duke University's Center for the Study of Religion/Spirituality and Health and author of "The Healing Power of Faith."

"People involved in a community that supports and advocates 'love thy neighbor' tend to be less self-centered, more flexible and more motivated to forgive," he says, "because the community recognizes and encourages these values."

That involvement can help surmount challenges to intimacy, says Koenig. "I see a lot of examples, both in clinical practice and in research. Research shows that relationships in which there are devout religious beliefs -- especially if both spouses are actively involved in a worship community -- are consistently stronger, more satisfying and more stable."

"Grounded in faith," says Peter Minucci, director of the Episcopal Counseling Center in the Diocese of Albany, ""we can more fruitfully complete our soul-work. If we witness the presence of God in our partners, even for fleeting moments, it can help create a deep sense of kinship."

"Knowing we are God's beloved," Francis says, "allows us to glimpse our essential oneness with one another and hence gifts us with the ability to honor one another with regard and dignity. If we can accept ourselves, love ourselves, it really is much easier to accept and love another. And being secure in God's love can help us let go of fear and defensiveness."

Learning to accept God's unconditional love allows couples to "love each other in a totally accepting way," says Busch. "You realize that your relationship is a gift from God to bring healing to you and also to your partner. You let go of the illusions and see your partner more clearly, not as a savior but as another wounded human being, struggling to be healed. You take responsibility for communicating your needs and desires and learn to behave in a constructive and positive manner. You embrace the negative side of yourself with unconditional love, and you also love your partner with unconditional love.

"You no longer need to force your partner to behave in a certain way," she says. "You can respect their abilities and realize that they are a resource for you without expecting them to satisfy every need."

Love is always "a conscious path of spiritual transformation," writes the Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, Episcopal priest, contemplative and author of "Love is Stronger than Death."

"The path of love is a powerful spiritual path. ... If you live it well ... it will transform your lives and reach out to touch the world."