Establish Mutual Trust
You cannot build intimacy when you are trying to protect or defend yourselves. You cannot build intimacy when you are afraid of exposing your needs and frailties. You cannot build intimacy unless you feel safer with your partner both emotionally and physically than with anyone else in the world.
Intimacy grows only in a place of safety. Because human behavior is organized around the seeking of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, you must treat your partner in such a way that he or she will always identify you with pleasure, not with emotional pain.
When husband and wife are afraid of hurt, rebuff, criticism, or misunderstanding from each other, they will find it difficult to touch affectionately or share freely. God’s Word shows how to establish the trust that builds intimacy in two concise statements:
(1) “Love covers over a multitude of sins”.
(2) “Love builds up”. In other words: (1) Overlook mistakes and never criticize. (2) Always encourage and give your partner the precious gift of sympathetic understanding.
Criticism can be the death blow to love and intimacy. It never changes anyone for the better. It only succeeds in putting miles of emotional distance between a husband and wife who are longing inwardly for closeness. Praise on the other hand has power to enhance the relationship, while strengthening and inspiring the individual to higher attainments.
To give your partner unconditional love (that love we call agape) is the very best way to win his or her trust. If you want to find out how to love unconditionally, please read chapter 10 of Love Life for Every Married Couple, “The Agape Way.” Also reread chapter 3 of this book.
Posted in Hindrances to Intimacy
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.