We are all born with the ability - in fact, the inextricable need - to achieve intimacy with others. To this point, C. Edward Crowther, author of "Intimacy," reflects that "Intimacy at the emotional and spiritual level equals our physical needs for air, water, food, shelter and sleep. . ..
"Intimacy is like a tree," he says, "with deep roots and a wide, spreading canopy of leafy branches. It is a tree of life. People with no intimacy in their lives lead starved existences with shallow roots and spindly branches on which few leaves will grow." Thus, though we all need intimacy, our bodies may survive while our intimate selves are starving.Intimacy, in marriages, isn't the same as the need for sex (although sex, in a committed relationship, is a part of intimacy). Basically, intimacy is the desire to connect with someone else - to experience that person's deepest inner self - and to share, in return, your own.
There are myriad ways to nurture intimacy in relationships. Here are a few ways you and your partner can genuinely share yourselves and bring energy and joy to your pairing.
- From Crowther's perspective, intimacy involves an opening, a sharing of autonomy, or freedom. This means that each of us must take full responsibility for our own lives, for evolving into the best human beings we can evolve into, occupying our own space, and letting our partner do the same. "In autonomy," says Crowther, "we are the fulfillers of our own life scripts, and the exercisers of our own physical, emotional and spiritual energies."
Only if couples allow each other full autonomy - the chance to have personal lives and space while, at the same time, building a solid core relationship, will they be able to achieve intimacy. "If I stop you from moving in directions you need to go for your own development, my love is but a thinly disguised method of controlling you," reflects one person.
- Give your partner ultimate respect. Intimacy cannot exist in a relationship beset with harsh criticism, with cruel put-downs, or browbeatings. Nor can it exist when partners typically yell and scream at each other or trample each other's fragile egos in order to be "right" or "better" than the other.
Rather, intimacy flourishes when partners take responsibility for protecting each other from being wounded. Adopting the guideline that "Your well-being or happiness is as important as my own" sets the stage for mutual trust and love that form the solid base of intimacy.
- Encourage intimacy by adding to the relationship the "emotional courtesies" you extend to the casual acquaintances in your world. Used consistently, the pleasant sounds of "Thank you," "Please," "Are you comfortable," and other thoughtful gestures are ways of demonstrating love and respect for each other.
- Tolerate differences. Remember that everyone is flawed (or so it seems from our own viewpoint), so be tolerant of your partner and overlook the irritants. Psychologist Carl Rogers uses this analogy to capture the need to accept those we love as they are: "When I walk on the beach to watch the sunset I do not call out, `A little more orange over to the right, please,' or `would you mind giving us less purple in the back.' No, I enjoy always different sunsets as they are. We do well to do the same with people we love."
- Keep the details of your intimate and sexual life private. Draw a boundary around yourself and your partner that disallows the revealing of private moments and confidences to others. You cannot have a truly intimate relationship when one or the other of you knows that intimacies may be shared with outsiders.
- Say "I love you" often. Everyone needs to know often that they are loved by their partners. Words can nurture feelings - can keep love strong and in the forefront of a relationship.
Crowther recommends what he calls the "poem of the marriage bed" in which a couple holds each other before sleep, each relating what his or her partner has said or done to show love in the course of the day. Reflecting each evening upon two or three examples of loving that have happened that day, in the course of a week a couple would have shared eighteen or twenty instances of being loved.
- Intimacy includes touching - much of which needs to be non-sexual touching - hugs, holding, brief kisses - an area that may need to be negotiated by couples. Women, particularly, may suffer from what might be called "touch starvation" without sexually-neutral, but loving, touching.
- Intimacy also includes understanding and responding to each other's sexual needs. "His Needs, Her Needs," by Willard F. Harley, Jr. observes that the typical wife doesn't understand her husband's deep need for sex any more than the typical husband understands his wife's deep need for affection. "For the woman, qualities like affection, attentiveness, warmth of personality, kindness and tender sensitivity do more to arouse her than any special technique a man may have developed. And a man with the qualities mentioned above makes a woman feel that he understands her and knows how to take care of her." Since a woman's choice to participate in a sexual relationship is a "mind set," her actions, in feeling loved and cared for, in turn, may cause her to respond sexually in ways to her husband that are fully satisfying.