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, and a neighbor at the front door! Or the wife who interrupts her husband’s impassioned lovemaking to go take meat out of the freezer or check on a sleeping child! Therapists call behavior that hinders a satisfying sexual experience “sexual sabotage.” If you want to develop intimacy, you will pour yourself into understanding your partner’s needs and meeting them in sensitive, loving ways.
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, and by emphasizing tenderness and sensuousness rather than a technique that is goal-oriented to quick orgasm. A man can have a sexual experience that lasts a scant two minutes but this would be cheating both himself and his wife.
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, of course, devastating to the rich, sexually dimensioned intimacy God planned for husband and wife.
“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 sharing, it is difficult to enter into the enjoyment of it when you are self-preoccupied. Switching your attention to pleasuring your partner and enjoying the way your partner pleasures you will build intimacy and do away with anxious self-consciousness.
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 body are also inhibited when a person is concentrating on his or her physical imperfections, rather than erotic and pleasurable thoughts. It is amazing but true that many people feel quite unlovable, just because of some aspect of their body, and they are convinced their partner has the same negative feelings toward their appearance. The one thing the partner can do is communicate his or her appreciation verbally for every part of the mate’s body, always praising, never tearing down. Read the rest of this entry »
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 have something to give. A person with a low self-image may feel that he or she has nothing to give and may try to hide this “fact” by distancing himself or herself from family and friends. Sometimes people shrink from deep emotional involvement because they have been hurt by close relationships—often this happened when they were children and too young to understand and work out the problem. Read the rest of this entry »
There really cannot be intimacy without communication—a sharing on both verbal and nonverbal levels. One partner may actually attempt to keep the relationship superficial, because he or she is afraid of intimacy, afraid of closeness developing.
Most people, however, can learn to communicate with practice, if they really want to. Communication requires a listening love, as well as a willingness to be vulnerable—to try to put into words what one is feeling and trust those words to the partner’s understanding.
Anger and hostility, no matter how veiled or repressed, will kill any growth of loving intimacy. Marital boredom is often the mask that hides a world of rage and resentment never openly expressed. This happens when a couple fail to resolve issues as they arise. Sometimes they will opt for a strained politeness, refusing to deal with the cause of tension. Sometimes they resume a marital front, pretending that the clash never happened, but the bad feelings are still there. The issue may still be there, too, waiting to trouble them another day.
An argument, distasteful as it seems at the time, is better than chilly silence, because an argument does represent a reaching out to the other person. The underlying desire of the two arguing is that their position will be understood and accepted by the other. Arguments sometimes bring about a new understanding between husband and wife. Read the rest of this entry »
Many couples not only freely criticize each other in the hope of bringing about improvements in the other’s appearance or behavior, but they also fall into the habit of unconscious criticism—constant carping on a small scale—woven into their daily conversation. This is not an environment in which intimacy can flower.
Listen to yourselves. If there is habitual criticism, you can do something about it, even before your partner decides a change is needed. On your part, totally refrain from criticism, no matter how much you want to retaliate. Instead, replace those critical words with positive words of praise and encouragement. It can reverse the whole trend of your relationship, and you will begin to see just how impoverished the two of you were before, when you were unable to sit down and just enjoy talking with each other in an atmosphere of open sharing.
Intimacy is rooted in this security of belonging but it must be nourished by an ongoing sexual relationship that is sensuous and satisfying, characterized by tenderness, and by the feeling both partners receive of being loved for themselves. When sex is experienced in this way, a cluster of emotional benefits appears: relief from hurts, a welling of joy and optimism, a sense of security and peace.
When this kind of intimacy is sustained, husband and wife become so close emotionally that they are alert and responsive to fluctuations of feeling in the other, always concerned about the other’s well-being, finely tuned to what the partner needs.
Partners may become angry with each other—this happens occasionally in any interpersonal relationship. But the situation is rather quickly resolved, because they cannot bear to have their state of intimacy disrupted. Afterward, sex becomes a means of joyous reunion. Read the rest of this entry »
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.