Another type of disgust refers to a too intimate bodily contact with other persons. Certain things that are not really disgusting by themselves may, as possible vehicles or symbols of such an intimate contact, become vicarious objects of disgust. Here, again, sensibility as such is by no means a defect: it is right to be aware of the fact that things of this order belong to man’s corporeal sphere of privacy, and to shrink from penetrating into that sphere.

Take, for instance, the case of conjugal love. Here the intentio unionis is a predominant theme and can legitimately unfold itself; accordingly, the bodily sphere of privacy is itself translucent with the precious radiance that pervades and represents the being (in its totality, comprising also the outward aspects) of the beloved person. The feeling of embarrassment otherwise evoked by all intimate proximity with a strange body yields its place here, normally, to a feeling of joy—not devoid of, but on the contrary, based upon reverence—at being allowed to participate, in a sense, in the other person’s corporeal privacy. It is as though the negative note otherwise attached to this whole sphere were transformed, here, into a positive one.

Whoever is so imprisoned by his general disgust at contacts that, even though united to another person by such a bond of love, he still feels repelled by the nearness of that person’s bodily sphere of intimacy, gives proof of a kind of cramped egocentrism in his character. More explicitly, he gives proof of the exaggerated stress he lays on his distinctness from others, owing to his overvaluation of his own self. This attitude of a too anxious isolation of self from strange humanity, an overemphasis of one’s inviolable particularity and distance from others, obstructs the free circulation of love. It is incompatible with that bold self-surrender without which no genuine love is possible.

With an important modification, similar considerations apply to the other great classic type of love (as distinct from the conjugal one, which, anyhow, is a priori restricted to the relations between man and woman): the deep love that animates true friendship, particularly such as is embedded in a common allegiance to Christ. Here, to be sure, the other person’s corporeal intimacy cannot become a source of attraction; but here, too, it must cease to have anything deterrent about it.

Whenever the logic of a situation (we are not maintaining that such situations should expressly be sought for) engages one to undergo a contact with that sphere of corporeal privacy, one should not recoil from it nor be so preoccupied about it as to let one’s inner freedom fall a prey to self-consciousness.