Prescription for Intimacy We could give you endless lists of suggestions for building sexual intimacy in your marriage but we are going to prescribe only three things. These are broad guidelines that reflect what therapists call the three functioning aspects of human intimacy: love, sensuousness, and sexuality. The first guideline has to do with love, [...]
Television watching may seem less significant than other factors we have mentioned. However, television promotes passivity; people wrapped up in watching T.V. have neither the motivation nor the energy to develop an intimate relationship. It can become so hypnotic that one does not realize how much time is being given to T.V. viewing. It can [...]
Sensuousness is defined by therapists as the need to be held, fondled, caressed, and touched. It should not be confused with sensuality, which is a preoccupation with the physical, as opposed to the intellectual and spiritual. We are speaking simply of the importance of touch, as a means of meeting a human being’s deep needs, [...]
To enjoy intimacy with your mate is to “be in touch.” This means physical touch, as well as the ways you touch emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. I have observed that married people need physical touching of an affectionate nonsexual nature to retain the feeling of being in love. Emotional/sexual intimacy cannot grow unless you touch [...]
Intimacy grows as we show our sensitivity to our partner’s needs. An insensitivity to needs and desires, particularly in the sexual relationship, can be quite detrimental to the development of intimacy. One traditional example often cited is the husband who demands sex right after an unresolved argument, with the children playing in the next room, [...]
Predictable, Mechanical Sex An emotionally enriching intimacy is always a sign of life. Sex that is as routine as brushing one’s teeth and as mechanical as mailing a letter is a sign of a dying relationship. It may be revived by emotional preparation for physical sex, by varying times and places and approaches for sex, [...]
De-emphasizing the Value of Sex The sexual relationship within marriage is one of the most profound, rewarding, and mysterious of all experiences. But, strangely, some people think of sex as an immaturity that should be outgrown. In some marriages one or both partners may consciously de-emphasize its value and turn their attention elsewhere. This is, [...]
“Spectatoring” is a therapist’s term for apprehensively observing one’s own behavior during lovemaking because one is so anxious about performing well sexually. This can be remedied as an understanding partner helps the person turn his or her attention to sensual feelings and the pleasure of nondemand physical caressing. Because intimacy is a mutual experience of [...]
There is a direct correlation between a negative perception of one’s body and inhibited sexual intimacy. Free sexual interaction, or even the intimacy of sharing a bedroom, cannot be enjoyed when a person is embarrassed about his or her body and trying to keep it covered at all times. The natural sexual responses of the [...]
Mutual trust is one of the essentials of intimacy. It takes time and care to build this trust. But a different problem arises when an individual does not have a good feeling about himself. This can cause fear of intimacy, because intimacy is reciprocal. To be intimate is to exchange, which means that one must [...]
To Ed Wheat Sr. and Gladys Gibson Wheat, whose commitment, devotion, warmth, generosity, and integrity stood for fifty years as a beautiful picture of genuine agape love.
Christian Marriage – Sex Technique and sexual fulfillment. Entries (RSS)