Emotional Intimacy in Your Relationship
In PM Counseling, I start the intimacy conversation talking about the EMOTIONAL side, because we rarely want to get naked with someone we feel no connection. Couples that desire a return of closeness or want to deepen their emotional intimacy, can do so by slowing down and dedicating time and energy to doing things together.
We live in a fast paced world and we have a lot of responsbility. Couples need to balance work, friends, family perhaps planning a wedding or raising children. With so much going on, it's a challenge to prioritize couple time, let alone finding time for yourself.
So What Can We Do?
The first thing you must do to restore emotional intimacy to your most important relationship is to reflect on when you feel most connected with you partner. Perhaps it’s when you talk right before bed or when you travel the world. Or maybe it’s right after sex or during a weekend breakfast date. Whatever it is for you, can you make sure to schedule some time for connection during the week? There’s also a good chance that you can deepen your emotional intimacy if you increase the amount of time that you spend together. And that’s not just time, but Quality Time. If you’re not familiar with Gary Chapman’s 5 Love Languages, Quality Time is one way we may like to receive love. Quality Time centers around togetherness. It's all about expressing your love and affection with your undivided attention. When you're with your partner, you put down the cell phone, turn off the TV, and focus on them. Whether or not Quality Time is your love language, time together will certainly build emotional intimacy.
Quantity vs. Quality
Not only is spending time together essential for restoring intimacy and marital happiness, however the way you spend time together is also important. For one partner, spending time in the same room watching the same television show may count as quality time together. For the other spouse, this activity does not count at all, and may serve as a source of disappointment. You do not have to be doing anything “special” like taking a vacation or going on a date to be engaged in establishing closeness in your relationship. Many people still harbor the notion that they can spend next to no time together, carve out a tiny slice (one hour a week as date night), then will count as “quality” vs. “quantity” time together. If you are both together, connected in some meaningful way, where you both believe it to be meaningful, you have quality time. What can you do to add meaningful exchanges throughout the day? They may not add up to very little actual time together, but they can certainly add to your ‘love bank’ and work wonders for feeling close and connected.
However, couples need more than “quality time” together. They need a quantity of time together. Couples who are experiencing a lack of closeness usually need to spend more time together to deepen emotional intimacy. It usually takes spending quite a bit of time together to establish that shared sense of connection.
The Need for Closeness
Partners enter relationships with their own history, which may include insecurities and a higher need for closeness. A couple will rarely have the same level of need for connection at the same time. In the beginning of the relationship, couples usually share a similar desire for closeness. The process of “falling in love” happens when each is excited about seeing the other, and in turn pays a lot of attention to what the other is thinking or feeling. When couples come into premarital counseling, they often share that they want to feel like they did when they first got together throughout their marriage. They want to re-experience that sense of falling in love or being in love. They want to feel desired by their partner. But desire to have that experience does not magically make it happen. It takes both time and effort.
3 Tips to Build Emotional Intimacy
1. Make time to do something meaningful to both of you, together. If you’re not sure what that is, ASK!
2. Be curious about your partner. Ask for their opinion and understand WHY they feel a certain way about an issue.
3. Share appreciations. We can usually rattle off things that bother us about our partners, but how about expressing things that you love and appreciate?
Need some guidance talking through connection and intimacy in YOUR relationship? Feel free to reach out and let me know.