How do we define intimacy?

I recently re-read "Sex in Public" by Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner. I also recently saw Stranger than Fiction and Julie and Julia. Revisiting Berlant and Warner's questions and arguments about intimacy and watching these films made me wonder if Julie and Julia, and Harold Crick and Karen Eiffle interactions (this is not quite the word I need) constitute intimate relationships. What are relationships? How do we define them? What is intimacy?

In Stranger than Fiction Harold Crick, played by Will Ferrell, is a boring IRS worker who follows the same routine everyday, down to the number of steps (which he counts) that it takes to get to the bus each morning. One morning while brushing his teeth (and counting the brush strokes), Harold hears a woman with a British accent narrating his actions. Harold's ability to hear the narrator means that he is no longer just the protagonist but also an audience member or perhaps he becomes a sort of reader of the book in which he is the main character. I haven't quite got this worked out yet.

Harold solicits help from Professor Jules Hilbert a professor of literature, played by Dustin Hoffman. Hilbert tells Harold that there are two kinds of stories--tragedies and comedies--and that they need to figure out which one he is in. If Harold is in a tragedy then he will die. The Professor eventually figures out that Harold's narrator is Karen Effile, played by Emma Thompson. Harold learns that Eiffle always kills her main character at the end of her books. He finds Eiffle and asks her not to kill him.

Throughout the film Eiffle plays out/visualizes varying deaths for Harold. The meeting between author and character leads to a change in Eiffle's novel. Instead of killing him she puts him in a body cast.

I think that the interplay or interactions between Harold and Eiffle constitute raises interesting questions about intimacy. As author Eiffle knows everything that that her protagonist does. If intimacy is a certain kind of sharing or knowing then perhaps Eiffle has an intimate relationship with Harold. But this relationship is one sided because Harold does not know about Eiffle. When Harold begins to hear Eiffle's voice the relationship changes. The confrontation between author and protaganist changes both their lives.

Obviously I am struggling to find a way to talk about their relationship. I'm going to stop for today. Maybe tomorrow I will figure it out.