The Importance of Intimacy in Your Relationship

From: Dr. Frank Gunzburg

When you think about intimacy, your mind may go directly to sex. When I talk with people, they often say, “I want more intimacy with my spouse” and they mean they want more frequent sexual experiences.

My definition of intimacy, the one I share with my patients, is this: Intimacy is the act of touching an emotionally soft and tender place in another person.

If you accept this idea, then it is easy to see that intimacy can happen during sex, but it can also happen in other ways at other times as well. In short, intimacy does not equal sex. Sex can be a part of being intimate, but some people have non-intimate sex. It is helpful in a relationship if your language is clearer than using “intimate” to refer to sex.

There are many ways to be intimate that don’t necessarily include sex. Some of these include:

Emotionally connected conversations where you develop a deeper understanding of one another (see section 2 for information on a method for achieving this)
Sharing something with your spouse you have never shared with anyone else because you want to grow closer, and having your spouse listen and understand in a way that he or she can be touched by your communication
An act that expresses how much you care for your spouse and how special he or she is to you (this is where intimacy and romance intersect, and there will be more on this later in the section)
Sharing an emotionally moving experience such as the birth of your child
Talking about one of your weaknesses or an embarrassing memory so your spouse understands your pain in the situation and ultimately understands you better
Telling your partner in a heartfelt way how his or her behavior impacted you—either for the good or for the bad—without putting your partner down

In a healthy relationship there is a good mixture of sexual and nonsexual intimacy. Obviously sex is important in most marriages. And it is clear that having sex can be an intimate experience. But it’s also very important that you have nonsexual intimate experiences as well.

Sex ultimately only defines one aspect of your relationship. It’s an important aspect, there’s no question about that. But if you were only sexually intimate—and not all sex is intimate—there would be a lot missing in your marriage.

The glue that holds a marriage together is the intimate emotional connection you have with your spouse; the secret understanding you have of one another that no one else in the world possesses; the feeling of trust and sense of safety you create when you share sensitive, hidden parts of yourself.

One important way to know where the balance between sexual intimacy and nonsexual intimacy lies for you is by talking about it with your spouse. Every relationship is different, and there is no magic equation about intimacy that balances all the factors that play into having a successful intimate relationship.

You might use the following questions and concepts as jumping off points for the conversation:

Discuss some of your favorite intimate moments. What worked? What made them special or what did they do for you that felt special?
If you feel that intimacy is lacking in your relationship, consider what went wrong and how you could start being intimate again.
Remember times when you wanted an intimate experience and couldn’t get it started. Consider with your partner what might have been the difficulty and what might have made the difference.
When you look into the future, where would you like to see the intimate aspects of your relationship in 5, 10, 15, or 20 years? If you have a hard time with this, think about it as though you were watching a wonderful intimate interaction between you and your spouse on video tape. What do you see?

Once you have talked about what you desire and expect in this area, the next step is to take some real action and open up to the possibility of greater intimacy in your relationship.

Dr. Frank Gunzburg is a licensed counselor in Maryland and has been specializing is helping couples restore their marriage for over 30 years.