Familiarity Breeds Contempt

And ways to prevent it.

Folio Society’s edition of Ian Fleming’s James Bond classic “Diamonds Are Forever”. By Fay Falton (X)

“Familiarity breeds contempt”, “Passion needs distance” or similar adages saturate our conversations about relationships, desire and intimacy. Much of these are rooted in our observations of reality — we all did observe couples who over time grew bored with one another and the relationship become more of a comfortable habit rather than any kind of enjoyable endeavour (it is often so that it deteriorates into something that is not even a pleasant or enjoyable friendship).

As human beings, we desire novelty — the existential boredom is often a sign that our reality has become too flat. Desiring novelty is often demonised in our culture, but the desire for novelty itself is not bad — if nothing it hides a more subtle desire for vitality, movement and experience. We do not have to deny ourselves this desire by telling ourselves that it is wrong — then we will go back to our flat reality, growing more frustrated and angry within, even if outwardly we maintain our composure.

Usually, when we desire novelty, our first is instinct is to get a quick, novel stimuli. However, very often, the novel stimuli also fades and we are bored again. If we find ourselves consistently bored, even if we consume more of the “new”, that is an invitation to go deeper into ourselves and into others — where the potential for true novelty actually “hides”.

It is also important to note that familiarity and intimacy are not the same, although they are often assumed to be so.

Familiarity operates through accumulation and pattern recognition. When we become familiar with something or someone, we develop predictive frameworks. This is fundamentally a process of domestication, where the other becomes incorporated into our existing mental architecture. It is through the predictable patterns that familiarity creates a sense of comfort and safety that we often need in our more serious and stable relationships. Intimacy, by contrast, is predicated on the recognition and preservation of otherness even when we are close True intimacy requires maintaining awareness of the irreducible mystery of the other person. We are aware that their autonomous inner life is fundamentally infinite and unknown to us.

Familiarity is cumulative and tends toward automation — this is why over time, our responses become habitual and interactions follow established patterns. Intimacy exists in the present where genuine sharing of one self with the other becomes possible. Each intimate moment contains the possibility of surprise, of discovering something previously unknown about the other or one’s own self.

Familiarity can also easily exist without vulnerability — we can become familiar with someone while maintaining complete emotional safety. Intimacy demands risk — the willingness to be seen, to be changed by the encounter, to allow the other to matter in ways that might destabilise our concept of ourselves. The risk and potential for destabilisation is where the “thrill” or movement is.

One may argue though that there is a beauty in familiarity too — for example, in knowing how someone likes their tea, their favourite music or colours, the little minutiae of their lives. This also, can make us feel truly seen and held. And this feeling, just like the thrill of the risk, is what we crave and need. So one may wonder — how do we reconcile familiarity and intimacy? How is the milk of comfort reconciled with the wine of communion? The reconciliation is found in the quality of the attention and the approach taken.

Knowing how someone takes their tea can remain intimate when our posture behind the act is held as a gesture of care rather than mere data. The intimacy itself isn’t in the knowledge of how they take their tea, but in the conscious choice to attend to this knowledge — then the preparation of tea is itself an act of love, of communion with the depths of the Other, not a routine. Here, the known details become doorways rather than destinations. Knowing they take two sugars becomes a window into their particular way of being in the world, their small rituals of comfort, their embodied preferences. Rather than simply storing data that allows you to manoeuvre and manipulate the other easier, you develop the curiosity about their habits — their habits and preferences become the source of the greatest fascination and a pointer towards their “infinite soul”. Their love of two sugars, or of certain styles becomes something you wish to explore, not merely catalogue. If we remember that their preference for two sugars is just one small expression of their vast, unknowable interiority, then familiarity becomes a form of reverence rather than reduction.

Familiarity begins to breed contempt when we begin to rely on the established heuristics. When we do so — both our own selves and the other person cease to be the unfathomable mystery, but are rather colonised by our own mental shortcuts and patterns. In a sort of divine comedy, the familiar patterns become the very wall between you and the other, creating more alienation and separation.

Generally, the advice given to women about this topic leans towards the performative “busyness”, distance or withholding. While withholding, distance or “hot and cold” can create excitement for a certain amount of time, it too, will fall flat at one point. We will eventually find out that withholding and distancing create contempt and resentment just the same.

The advice and techniques Volupta shall give you today will aim to give you more rooted and authentic ways towards the goal of fulfilling relationships.