What is intimacy anyways?
Do you ever have one of those moments where you read a sentence and all of a sudden everything makes sense?
My wife and I had been struggling, fading, and loosing our connection for a few years. I had this feeling like I knew there was more, that I needed and wanted more from the relationship but really just did not have the words to express what it was. Then one day sitting 3 feet away from each other, not talking, scrolling endlessly thru Instagram trying to distract myself from the emptiness that was suffocating me I came across a quote:
“People think that intimacy is about sex. But intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them bare and their response is 'you're safe with me'- that's intimacy.”
Taylor Jenkins Reid
It was like one of those scenes from a movie where my entire life’s story started wizzing past my eyes. Every conversation, interaction, and moment in my married life where I had the opportunity to see every interaction thru a different set of eyes. That time when she shared with me her doubts about her profession and my response was “you will never be happy”, the time she told me “I feel like our relationship is falling apart” and my response was something along the lines of “no it isn’t”…
I knew two things for sure in that moment:
1) That this was exactly the type of intimacy my wife was craving and needing from me
2) That it was not at all what I considered to be intimacy.
1) Emotional Intimacy:
It was like someone pulling back the curtain and the whole world was just behind that thin veil. In that moment I understood both how my wife could feel so disconnected from me and how I had failed to learn how to speak a language that was critical for her to feel seen, heard, understood, and valued. To be honest, up until that moment I don’t think I had ever given 2 seconds of thought to the different types of intimacy and certainly not to learning what it meant to have an emotionally intimate relationship.
2) Its not all my fault:
This is where I need a huge heaping of forgiveness and will provide a little back story to help those that speak emotional intimacy understand those of us that don’t or didn’t.
As a boy growing up in the 80’s we were constantly taught that sharing our feelings was wrong, made us appear weak, and was just generally unacceptable. I’d love to say that this ended in the 80’s but I’m sad to say that I still see this today. There was a great article about a teacher with two kids of her own who was starting down the path to try and understand why men often struggle with emotional intimacy when she noticed a pattern in her class.
Boys vs Girls: When a little girl was crying the adult, caretaker, or teacher would kneel down, wrap her in a hug and ask her what was going on? They would create space for her to share her feelings, why she was crying or sad, and would help her process those. The little boys on the other hand, the default go-to for a boy with tears from all of his adults was almost always “Oh you’re ok, get back out there”. From the earliest of ages we are teaching little girls to share what is going on and telling little boys to stuff that shit down!
So back to me: I grew up in the 80’s where that was very much the case, I’d get hurt playing soccer and nobody would ask me how it felt emotionally to not be able to play the game I loved, they would ask “so when can you get back out there”. I’m sure it was an innocent question but what I know now is that on the emotionally intimate scale of connection this was as low as it gets. Its like talking about the weather or what you did last night vs asking a friend how their relationship with their father is these days.
To me (and most men) we are taught that intimacy is about sex, about physical connection. Its in every conversation and is indeed woven into the fabric of our society. Think about this, when someone asks you about your “intimate partner” are they talking about all of the close friends who you can speak freely with, share your true feelings, or are they talking about people you have sex with?
Leveling UP!
So once the curtains were pulled back and I could see that what my wife was desperately asking me for was emotional intimacy and that I had NO clue what that meant I also realized that I needed to do a much deeper dive into what it meant to have intimacy in a relationship, the types, the levels, etc. So I did what I always do, I started looking for all of the information I could get my hands on to help me understand how better to define intimacy, how to understand the different types, and how how to go deeper!
That’s when I found “The Seven Levels of Intimacy” by Matthew Kelly, in his book he clearly defines 4 types of intimacy and then breaks down what it means to find a deeper connection in each. Matthew breaks down intimacy into 4 primary categories:
Emotional Intimacy - What we were talking about above, the ability to share openly, to speak your mind, to feel like your words are safe with your partner.
Physical Intimacy - What many consider “intimacy” due to how we define it in public opinion, and in fact the one type of intimacy that you can only get from your partner in most committed relationships.
Intellectual Intimacy - The ability to share ideas, solve problems, talk about topics that stimulate the brain.
Spiritual Intimacy - This can be related to your religion of choice or simply connecting on a level of what it means to be alive, to be connected to something greater, the higher-power version of each of us.
He goes on to further break down how to take that intimacy and start to level-up inside of it. Some of my favorite examples are when your partner asks the simple question “How was your day” you are probably unknowingly deciding how deep that connection will go without giving it too much thought. Here are some examples of how we can build intimacy from such a simple queston:
How was your day?
FINE: This sentence is a start and end to the conversation. It has a hard period and tells the other person you don’t want to share, be open, or talk abou tit.
It was great: Lets call this something like a level 2 conversation, it gives a little more context but no detail.
It was great, I finally got to present to that new customer and they loved it: Lets call this a level 3 conversation, it is an answer with context and shares about not just the events but your feelings start to peek thru.
It was great, I finally go to present to that new customer and they loved it, it made me feel really seen and respected: You can see how this is getting deeper and deeper in to my emotions, what I was feeling, and why its important to me.
I could go on and on but I’d rather give you my main takeaways and strongly encourage you to read or listen to Matthew’s book.
Main take aways:
We often have a romantic partner that defines intimacy differently from us
If we want to have an intimate connection to our partner we need to understand and nurture all forms of intimacy
My intimacy was lacking because her intimacy was lacking
This isn’t just for our spouse, understanding how to build intimacy has helped all of my relationships, work, with my daughter, my wife, and all of my friends.
If you feel like you are not getting your “intimate needs” met, ask yourself what your partner may be missing to help them feel more connected to you.
At the end of the day I think we all desire to have deeper intimate connections with those in our lives, sometimes we are just a little too focused on getting our intimacy needs met and forget that our partner may speak a completely different language. As a relationship coach my goal is to help you both understand what it feels like to meet your partner’s needs and have them meet yours. Read the book, have a conversation with your partner about what types of intimacy they relate to the most and are most important to them and see if you can both put in a little effort to deepen the intimacy that is important to the other.
As always I am passionate about helping others. If you and your partner are struggling maybe its time for a coaching session to help navigate the conversations about intimacy and build something better. If you need a helping hand I’m always here, you can schedule a 15 minute intro call with me or sign up and follow my blog and my Instagram where I share varying formats of resources that have helped me become a much better partner than I was at the start of this journey!
