March 29, 2021
Building Intimacy With Your Significant Other
When you think of intimacy in a relationship, you might equate it to sex. However, intimacy also refers to a healthy emotional relationship or the feeling of closeness and trust between you and your significant other. Even more than sexual passion, emotional intimacy can build a new relationship or revitalize one that may feel stuck.
Here are six things you can do right now for building intimacy with your significant other:
1. Forgive
When you hold a grudge, it can stilt your entire relationship. If not resolved promptly, grudges can turn into a toxic brew of pettiness, anger and even a desire for retaliation.
Remember that your partner is a human being, and if they forgot to pick up milk on the way home, let it go. However, if it’s something more serious, it’s best to address the issue right away.
If you’re unable to work through these feelings on your own, therapy for couples can be very helpful.
2. Compliment Them
No matter how long you’ve been together, compliments are necessary to build and maintain intimacy. As time passes, you may feel that love has become an unspoken assumption. However, this can make your significant other feel as though they’ve faded into the wallpaper.
Compliments can make a world of difference in a relationship’s intimacy. Make them specific, though. For instance, don’t just say, “I love you,” but “I love how kind and thoughtful you are.” Which is a more genuine compliment, requiring thought and awareness.
3. Be Vulnerable
Being vulnerable is sometimes confused with being weak, but they’re really two very different things. Vulnerability is about sharing your fears, feelings, dreams and insecurities with your significant other. It may feel risky and you may wonder, “Will they still love me if I open up?”
Actually, when you’re vulnerable, you radiate authenticity, and an authentic person is easy to get close to emotionally.
If you struggle with being emotionally available, however, couple counseling can be very beneficial to helping express yourself without fear.
4. Be Supportive
When you’re supportive, your partner feels safe and more capable of weathering life’s challenges. You don’t have to have all the answers. You just have to be in their corner.
5. Engage in Physical Intimacy
This doesn’t mean sex, but small, meaningful gestures that provide emotional support through touch. These include holding hands, kissing or hugging.
However, if you rarely touch this way except before sex, it’s not beneficial to intimacy. Couples therapy can help if physical intimacy is lacking in your relationship.
6. Don’t Try to Change Each Other
If you buy a television, you accept that it’s a television whether it’s one year, five years or 10 years from now. You wouldn’t try to change it into a couch or a coffee table.
The same must hold true about your significant other. In order to build intimacy with your partner, you both need the freedom to be yourselves and to be accepted as who you are. Therapy for couples can help if either of you have unrealistic expectations of each other.
If building intimacy in your relationship has become a struggle, you may want to consider couple counseling. In a safe, nurturing environment, you’ll be guided toward insights into intimacy issues and how to process underlying emotions. Couples therapy can be an important part of rebuilding and nurturing emotional intimacy for a healthy, thriving relationship.
If you want to build intimacy with your significant other, check out Huntsville Professional Counseling, as we are experts in the field, and will help you restore intimacy to your relationship.