We are making attempts with Gleb Filonsky not just to lie in the direction of the text regarding existential tensions in relationships, but even to crawl.

One of my “favorite pairs” is closeness/safety. As you remember, it is not possible to fixate on one of the poles. Closeness, like safety, is not a point on the map of relationships. Participants regularly move, and not in a linear way. Having a scale might (possibly) simplify this activity, but such an option is not available. Therefore, the desire to always feel safe next to another (to meet the “right” person) as well as to achieve closeness, becomes desperate, doomed to fail. As a result, it leads to disappointment due to the impossibility.

In a surprising way, closeness has a successful PR campaign, thanks to which it is seen as a necessary good and something that should be realized in relationships. And if there are no questions about moments of unity with another, discovering one's own and another's otherness in that very closeness is not always experienced as joy (to put it mildly). Openness and vulnerability often evoke feelings of shame, fear, confusion, and a desire to hide. We can't be sure of the consequences of such “disclosures.” To me, at times it resembles “playing with all your money.” In this light, the impossibility of permanent closeness seems more like a salvation. For even God can't help to sustain that regularly.

Obviously, none of these states have a specific hue, but are rather neutral, acquiring one color or another in different circumstances with different people. Moreover, feelings of closeness or safety in some way always arise in relationships. The question is that they are noticed, comprehended, and loudly articulated in certain situations. And due to personal factuality and peculiarities, each pole will have different meanings and will be experienced differently.

To summarize: it will not be possible to get rid of the tension, but in essence, that is not the goal. The goal (if it is even appropriate to use this word here, but I can’t think of another) is somehow to move through this, be present, make choices, and be ready to pay the price. 

For closeness or safety - it doesn’t matter.