Emotional intimacy is essential for a happy marriage. A marriage might suffer when emotional intimacy is lacking. Maintaining emotional intimacy necessitates effort and focus. It might be much more difficult to reestablish emotional intimacy after it has been lost than it is to work hard to maintain it along the road. Have you noticed signs of a lack of emotional intimacy in your relationships? Read on to learn how to deal with it.
What Is Emotional Intimacy?
Emotional intimacy is generally defined as a closeness in which both partners feel secure and loved and in which trust and communication abound. When you are emotionally intimate with your spouse, you may feel as if you can see into the other’s soul. You know their hopes, dreams, and fears and understand them on a deep level.
In marriage, having strong emotional intimacy is crucial and worth the effort. Taking steps to improve emotional intimacy in marriage shows your dedication to a long, strong, and happy marriage.
A strong marriage allows you to be a better spouse and individual, as well as an excellent husband.
What Does Emotional Intimacy Look Like?
Emotional intimacy can manifest in a variety of ways in a relationship:
- Having lengthy, meaningful conversations about your dreams, fears, goals, and other feelings.
- They talk to each other about what happened at work, and each individual ensures that the other feels safe and validated.
- Making time for activities that you both like.
- Showing interest in each other’s lives, experiences, feelings, and hobbies.
- Being willing to try new things your partner suggests, especially if they are outside your usual interests, such as watching a new movie, visiting a new restaurant, or attending a concert.
- Empathizing with your partner, validating their feelings, and offering emotional support.
What Is Lack of Emotional Intimacy?
When emotional intimacy is lacking, many couples fail to identify the signs. A partner, for example, may be taken aback when a husband declares his intention to quit the marriage. When people look back on their marriage, they may recall moments when there was an emotional gap between them.
Couples may not develop emotional intimacy at all or may lose it after a while. In an ideal world, both couples will work on preserving and increasing intimacy. Acknowledging your role in fostering emotional intimacy and being emotionally available is important.
Relationships that lack emotional intimacy are frequently characterized by a lack of trust, poor communication, secrets, and hidden feelings.
How to Improve Emotional Intimacy in Your Relationships
If you notice a lack of emotional intimacy in your marriage, you and your partner can do several things to develop and deepen it.
#1. Turn off the electronics.
The quality of human contact determines the depth and significance of emotional intimacy in a relationship. When you are apart and too busy to communicate, texting and emailing are crucial ways for you to get practical things done and stay in touch.
When you’re all together, consider turning off the computer, television, video game console, cell phone, and tablet. Spend time conversing, communicating, and looking each other in the eyes. Many successful couples use this strategy of turning off their cell phones and placing them in a small basket or box by the door as they arrive home. They agree to leave them off for at least an hour or two when they are together.
Real emotional intimacy might be hampered by electronic communication. Work emails, social networking, and entertainment can quickly become distracting habits that interfere with your solid, human, one-on-one contact.
#2. Make Yourself Emotionally Available
Couples eventually learn what might damage their partners after years of being together. Partners that are kind and caring to each other and avoid hurting one another make each other feel cherished, appreciated, and safe. When we provide a safe environment for our partners, emotional intimacy flourishes.
Unfortunately, many people have experienced animosity from those they trusted, have felt neglected, or have developed unhealthy relationship practices. If you have a pattern of insulting or emotionally abusing individuals close to you, this will destroy intimacy and create a barrier in your marriage.
Read also: EMOTIONAL NEGLECT: Signs of Emotional Neglect in Relationships & How to deal with it
#3. Increase Your Time Together
It can be difficult to spend time together as a pair. Having children in the house can often exacerbate the problem. So, consider having a cup of coffee together every weekend at a predetermined time to make you feel calm and capable of engaging in a nice conversation.
One family therapist suggested setting aside 30 minutes each evening after the kids have gone to bed to spend uninterrupted time with a spouse. During this time, we accomplish duties jointly, such as doing dishes and grocery shopping, to get things done faster and spend more time together as partners.
A weekly date n0ight, lunch once or twice a week, or regular walks around your neighbourhood will help you spend more time together. Making time to focus on each other without the distractions of children or other obligations is essential for preserving emotional intimacy.
#4. Read a book together
Reading a book together and discussing what you’re reading can be a great way to build emotional intimacy. There are some excellent books about marriage strengthening that you may read together. You can also choose a novel, biography, or book about a shared interest.
Reading together and discussing what you read helps increase the trust and communication parts of intimacy. Thus, it allows you to express your feelings and insights without condemning each other.
#5. Strive for a Balance Between Yourself and Your Partner
The most successful marriages have two interdependent spouses. Each has a varied set of interests, a career, or a social life, and they come together to invest in the marriage relationship.
However, too much togetherness can be harmful if it deprives the relationship of the energy and experiences that come with interdependence. So, as a husband and father, take care of yourself and enable your spouse to do the same. Then, as a safe and trusting pair, they come together.
#6. Make a “Fun List.”
Dr. Tony Ferretti, a marriage counselor, suggests that couples make a list of activities that they enjoy doing together and then schedule a time to pursue those activities. Spending time doing things you enjoy together can help you create shared memories and experiences while also enhancing your emotional intimacy.
Consider including activities you did when you were dating or newlyweds that made you love your time together on your fun list. Investigate activities that you’ve always wanted to try. Then, develop a habit of doing something from the enjoyable list regularly.
#7. Think about Marriage Enrichment Activities.
Marriage enrichment programs or marriage getaways are offered by the majority of municipalities, churches, and civic organizations. So, many couples discover that making this kind of investment in their relationship pays off handsomely.
Getting into a structured setting with other couples and a professional counselor or priest can be quite beneficial in developing a deeper and better marriage relationship. This type of intentional dedication to enhancing emotional intimacy might be a substantial time investment, but it can yield huge results.
How to Restore Emotional Intimacy After a Breakdown in Trust
Unfortunately, emotional intimacy can be lost as well. This can be heartbreaking and sometimes very painful. However, if the other person is willing, there may be a way to reconstruct what you lost.
#1. Accept responsibility: Accept responsibility for what you did, no matter how difficult it is.
#2. Accept your apologies (sincerely): It is important that you truly regret what you did; simply saying the words is insufficient. It is up to them whether or not they accept your apologies.
#3. Be patient. It is critical to allow the other person the time and space they require to heal and process in order to rebuild trust.
#4. Accept that the connection will no longer be the same: Although it will be painful, it is unlikely that you will be able to return to the relationship as it was; be prepared to start again from the beginning or someplace near to it.
#5. Make a commitment to altering troublesome behaviors. You can’t expect different results if you keep doing the same thing. It will take effort — and even professional assistance — but it will be worthwhile if you truly want to keep the connection.
#6. Please respect their wishes. They now have the ball in their court. You can do everything you can to rebuild that emotional link, but if they aren’t comfortable trusting you, you must let them go.
Can Marriage Counseling Help?
If you can afford it, working on issues in therapy can be beneficial. Depending on how you were raised and your past experiences, being open and vulnerable in a relationship can be quite difficult. If this is your circumstance, couples counseling can provide a safe space for you to discuss this issue with your partner. Inform him or her that you realize you have a problem letting them in and assure them that it is not their fault. If there is any way your partner can assist you, take the risk of asking for it.
Is Emotional Intimacy Important?
Emotional intimacy is essential for the survival and growth of any love relationship. When couples are willing to share their flaws, shortcomings, and fears with one another, as well as their goals, dreams, and triumphs, they are more likely to be happy together.
How Do Men Feel about Emotional Intimacy?
Men’s journeys to intimacy are frequently more physical than women’s. They are perceived to be primarily focused on sexual intimacy, but this isn’t always the truth; it’s just one of the ways they get there.
How Do You Know If a Guy Has Intimacy Issues?
Avoiding physical/sexual contact or having an insatiable sexual appetite, difficulty with commitment, history of unstable relationships, low self-esteem, bouts of anger, isolation, difficulty forming close relationships, difficulty sharing feelings, difficulty showing emotion are all signs of fear of intimacy.
If You Need Help, Please Seek It.
If you believe your emotional intimacy is deteriorating, you may consider receiving treatment from a counselor. You may have grown apart, unintentionally hurt each other, avoided intimacy for personal reasons, or become preoccupied with life’s obligations. These issues are frequently solvable with effort, time, and undivided focus.
Healthy relationships require relating on several levels, not simply the physical. Learning to communicate openly and honestly with your spouse and attempt to understand them can help you build the intangible sensation of emotional intimacy that will deepen your love life.
