Only spirit can join. Ego can form temporary, shifting, transactional alliances.
Spirit cannot see darkness.
When someone else and I are in light, we can share and join.
When I am in darkness, that darkness cannot be shared, although a temporary illusion of intimacy is created.
When I am discussing my darkness with someone from within the darkness, I am in illusion, and the illusion cannot be shared.
When I am discussing my darkness with someone from the outside, namely we are discussing its illusory nature, we are in light, and the experience can be shared.
The mistake is to believe that I can join with someone else by wandering around in darkness, abstraction, and intellectual analysis. None of these can be shared. Only experience can be shared, in the present, in the light, right now.
Anne Wilson Schaef says that many people can be expert at talking about their feelings but are terrible at 'doing them'. Me discussing my darkness, you discussing yours, us trying to discuss ours, from the point of view of the darkness, is a facsimile of intimacy and therefore the most perfect defence against it.