A story from one of our followers shows how leaning into intimacy, despite feeling like that is the last thing that would help the relationship, actually allows her to grow closer to her spouse.
“I had very little desire to be intimate with my husband. We had been married a few years and there was nothing in our relationship that had huge “issues”. No one would have guessed that physical intimacy was a struggle of ours, and mainly mine.
It’s not that I didn’t love my husband, it’s just that I didn’t have any real drive to initiate intimacy of any kind. My husband, in all concern and love, expressed that he thought I was very closed off to intimacy. We were having sex regularly but not very frequently. He also felt discouraged about my lack of desire towards intimacy. I admitted it was something I had noticed and wanted to work on but didn’t quite know how.
I decided to start small and work to bigger goals. I started with forcing some time each day to think about him in a loving way. In my busy life I had so many things on my plate that I didn’t make time for things like that, and when thoughts about intimacy with him would pop up throughout my day I would ignore them thinking I didn’t have time for that right now.
I tried to create opportunities for those thoughts and welcome the ones that came naturally. I thought about qualities that I appreciated in him, I looked at old pictures of us together, I thought about our favorite vacations we took together. These are just a few examples of thoughts I started with to create positive thoughts towards my spouse throughout the day, thinking that this would increase my desire for intimacy.
We talked more about things I had been holding in. I started to keep my opinions to myself to avoid conflict or disagreement or frustration. We started talking about almost every little thing. Basic things like what was hard for me that day. This conversation grew to feelings of connection that were not intimacy based but they really helped in the process of feeling connection with my spouse and helped bring back the desire for all types of intimacy.
We also had scheduled nights of certain intimacy activities that we would do throughout the month. This helped me look forward to intimacy dates and it also set expectations and boundaries for those dates. Sometimes we would do something intimate without having sex. Having these planned things so planned out helped create a comfortability and took away any pressure I felt to perform sexually. I found myself enjoying those intimacy nights and I also found myself wanting to be more intimate more frequently. It allowed me to feel spontaneous in a comfortable way, which I needed at the beginning.
Our intimacy has increased and I have initiated more often. We still have some ways to go but by leaning into the opportunities that arose and creating them myself I was able to have enough control to feel comfortable and I felt more free and receptive to my partner and participate physically in my relationship.”
As you lean into moments of connection, which is a choice you choose in each moment, you allow for more opportunities for connection. Relationships that seem to be lacking so much can be rebuilt on connection at a time.
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