The most beautiful intimacy in the world is when you don’t have to hold back; when you not only allow someone to see deeply into your own secret heart, but you also visit their inner world, and both of you are drawn closer because of it.
That’s the kind of sun-drenched, soul-deep intimacy that lifelong love is built on. Here’s how YOU can build that with your man..
Why You Should NEVER Settle For a Life Without Intimacy
You crave that feeling of being fully known, and fully loved. But that kind of intimacy doesn’t happen on it’s own. If you find it slipping away, there are so many ways to bring back the joy and pleasure of closeness with another person…
“Four months ago I married a man I thought I loved. But we haven’t even consummated the marriage. He has ED and has tried several methods without any success. Any time I try to touch him or joke with him it’s war. It has now been years since I have felt the touch of a man. He works 40 hours a week, comes home, sits in his chair, and that’s the extent of our relationship day after day. Any advice for me?” – Gretchen
Oh, Gretchen, I’m so sorry; I know this casts a deep shadow on the garden of your heart. But I do have a few things you might consider, because you’re making one BIG mistake which is actually very easy to correct…
This isn’t really about having a man to have sex with. The true desire of your heart is to feel loved, right? I’m guessing that what you deeply crave is not (just) intercourse, but intimacy.
Your man may have some history of abuse or other problems in his background that contribute to his ambivalence around sex and intimacy.
Here are a few things that might help the two of you…
What IS intimacy, anyway?
Intimacy is a close connection between two people. There are lots of ways to describe it:
- Sharing your “inner” world with someone
- Being who you really are with another person
- Feeling emotionally, physically, or spiritually close
- Experiencing a sense of being wholly yourself, not held back
- Being known and accepted for who you really are
Intimacy is NOT exclusively about sex, or always about feelings, and it isn’t always a “happy” thing.
You can experience intimacy when you brush your baby sister’s hair, or help your best girlfriend get through chemo, or share a crazy rollercoaster ride with a complete stranger.
You can also experience intimacy while putting the children to bed together with your spouse, kissing your boyfriend under an umbrella at the bus stop, or studying late into the night with your best friend.
What BLOCKS intimacy between people?
Not only do men and women approach intimacy very differently (guys tend to want to share intimacy through TASKS done together, and women often want to TALK and “share feelings”), but many other factors go into keeping you from being able to be intimate with someone else…
- Low self-confidence
- Fear, jealousy, grief, anger, or other strong emotions
- Emotional injuries from the past
- Old or inappropriate/outdated patterns of behavior
- A judgmental environment
- Lack of trust
- When you don’t know what your personal boundaries are
I know, that sounds like a laundry list that you could NEVER manage to clear away.
But don’t get discouraged! Because there are plenty of ways you can begin to build a space of slow, beautiful intimacy…
Does your relationship seem hopeless? PLEASE don’t give up on your marriage until you’ve tried this.
Intimacy begins within your OWN heart…
Before you can really start opening your heart to someone else, it helps to put your own inner garden in a little bit of order.
Not the whole thing, beautiful, just a tiny corner.
Think of it as creating a small, secret corner of your interior soulgarden. Maybe enough to put a tiny, wrought-iron bench for two, a few of your favorite flowers, and a place to scatter some seeds for the songbirds…
3 simple exercises you can do to begin to clear your interior garden
Set aside some time in your life to journal and/or reflect on the following questions:
1. Meet your own needs, build confidence
On a scale of 1 to 5, how solid do you feel on your own as a human; what’s your confidence level? What are two or three small ways you could meet some of your own needs, and begin to reclaim your journey in life?
2. Claim and celebrate your gifts
What are some of your unique gifts and strengths? List them. Claim them. Celebrate them! These are special talents and characteristics that you benefit from, but that you can also share with others… You have much to offer!
3. Name (and share) what makes you feel loved
What things make you feel most loved? Make a long list, be creative, whimsical, serious; let them be tiny, enormous, or just ordinary. Which two or three of the smaller love-gifts would you like to receive from another? How can you gently communicate that?
12 beautiful ways to start building intimacy with your man
Now that you’ve begun to clear a fragrant, sunlit space within your soul, it’s time to invite the one you love to share some time in it with you…
Let go of your expectations. Just offer the gift, and open yourself to him.
1. Plan an intimate picnic
Pack finger foods that you’ll both enjoy (eating with your hands can be quite intimate) and spend the time being warmly, lovingly open to him. Click here to get 18 sensual picnic menu plans.
2. Create a “candlelit questions” evening
Candlelight can help create the atmosphere. Gather a handful of questions that you can ask him. The best kind invite him to share things that he’s passionate about. Click here to see my FAVE resource for couples’ questions.
3. Offer to massage his hands, or his neck and shoulders
Touch can be a powerful bridge to intimacy. Be sure to have some lotion or oil with a fragrance he will like (I like Burt’s Bees Hand Salve for this). You could also try this melty, delicious 30-second hug…
4. Set up a little computer surprise
If he’s on the computer a lot, clean out his keyboard and shine up the monitor. Then leave him a new screensaver of a picture of the two of you and a sweet note.
5. Share a nostalgic memory with him
Tell him about a time when the two of you were really happy together. Invite him to share a story also.
6. Just for the day, take over a task HE usually does
Picking up dry cleaning, making coffee, loading the dishwasher, shoveling the walk…
7. Write him a love note
And leave it someplace you know he will find it later. Here are 11 hot love notes and here are some flirty, fun love notes already done for you!
8. Indulge him in a small luxury item he doesn’t usually get himself
Maybe this is his favorite craft beer, a special shaving cream, or a new book from a favorite author of his.
9. Look at his high school yearbook, or an old photo album of his
Invite him to tell you some of the stories behind the photos.
10. Make him a special playlist
You can even write him a note, explaining why you chose the songs you did.
11. Invite him to explain something he knows a lot about
Ask a good question about the stock market, fantasy football, SLR photography, or something that’s he knows a lot about, but you don’t.
12. Tell him something you really love about him
Think about what drew you to him in the first place; what you admire or appreciate.
You CAN save your marriage (and it’s worth fighting for!)
Far, far too many marriages and committed relationships end prematurely. Why? Two reasons.
- Neither spouse knows how to prevent the passion, intimacy, and romantic connection from gradually fading away.
- They make the 3 “Marriage Murdering Mistakes” that very few people know about… and sadly, these 3 mistakes can quickly drive your marriage into disaster and divorce.
If you’re in this situation…
If your marriage is dead-as-a-doornail…
If you’re heading towards divorce, or even if you’re already at that point…
Then a new video by marriage coach Brad Browning will show you how to stop the downward spiral and breathe some life back into your relationship. (Brad’s a freakin’ genius, by the way.)
–> Save Your Marriage Now (VIDEO)
I wish I could convince every couple experiencing a marriage crisis to watch this new video… Because the strategies Brad reveals in it are extremely powerful and can be the difference between “unhappily divorced” and “happily ever after.”
The best part is that you can apply the techniques described in his video on your own… without your husband even being aware that you’re making an effort to save the marriage.
So don’t lose hope just because your partner refuses to attend marriage counseling, or won’t put in the effort to fix the problems that are slowly eating away at your marriage.
–> Please, please do NOT give up on love. Watch this NOW
There’s no catch to this, no marketing gimmicks…
At the very least, you should watch the first few minutes where Brad reveals the 3 “Marriage Murdering Mistakes”… These 3 massive myths alone are a huge reason why nearly half of all marriages end in divorce.
Start fighting for your marriage or relationship NOW. Watch this quick video that will teach you everything you need to know about salvaging the most important thing in the world:
–> It’s NOT TOO LATE to rescue your relationship!
It’s all good to tell women to work harder at keeping their marriages. But it would have helped me a lot to hear someone give me reasons why I should leave it.
When you’re in an abusive marriage, it’s hard to see it for yourself, because you desperately DON’T want to see the abuse. So the whole “work at your marriage, even if he’s not aware of it”? Yeah… don’t do that. If a man isn’t willing to see that you’re unhappy and work with you to change it, then maybe it’s time to save yourself.
Oh, D., I’m so sorry to hear that. It sounds like you’ve been through hell, and no one deserves that.
I’m so glad you’ve been able to see the abuse in your marriage, even from the inside (where, as you’ve said, it really is the hardest to see and acknowledge) and I hope you are working at freeing yourself and beginning to heal. My very deepest sympathies for what you’ve been through.
And for any other women in abusive situations who might be reading this, here’s an article I wrote a while back about how to know your relationship is only going to damage your beautiful, precious heart…
https://askclairecasey.com/9-signs-hes-wrong/
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment, D. I hope you are on your way to safety and healing…
Thanks for your reply.
The thing is, I wasn’t able to see the abuse for what it was while I was still with him. I mean, I’d spent years in therapy talking about all the things my ex was doing, saying, NOT doing… but I couldn’t see it for the abuse it was. I wasn’t ready for it and trapped (or so I felt).
I finally managed to listen to my gut and it told me it was over so I left. Of course when I did, I was the meanie, selfish girl who was breaking apart a perfectly fine family.
It took me 6 months out of his daily influence to realise what my marriage had been.
2 years later, I’m still struggling with a messy divorce, one where he claims I didn’t do anything for the 20 some years we were married, save for taking advantage of his hard-earned money… so he shouldn’t give me any money now.
I still have some struggle ahead of me to get rid of him and his influence over me. He seeks revenge so much that he’s willing to do things detrimental to our kids’ well-being.
It’s still a regular struggle, but at least it’s now weekly or monthly rather than daily. And I’m hoping one day soon I’ll finally be free of him.
He’ll always be the father of our kids, and I’ll keep fighting for them until they’re old enough to stand up for themselves.
But at least I’m hoping that, by the end of 2016 the divorce will be final and I’ll really be free.
But yeah, I wish someone (my therapist?) would have told me years earlier that this was abuse. The tricky part with emotional abuse is that the abuser knows how to twist your mind and make you believe you’re the bad one, you’re the reason things don’t work out. You learn to constantly find excuses for him, so I’m pretty sure I was telling my therapist all the reasons why he was right to be mad at me. They may not have seen the abuse through my words, because I didn’t want to see it.
So I don’t think anyone should work alone at a relationship. Ever. If he’s (or she’s) not willing to look at his/her actions and see that you hurt, don’t spend years trying to change yourself, wondering what you did wrong, what you need to do in order to make him happy/improve your relationship. Get out. Then you’ll be able to see what was really going on.