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How Important Is Emotional Intimacy in Marriage?

Do you feel comfortable in your marriage?

By Maysa HirstPublished 4 years ago 4 min read
How Important Is Emotional Intimacy in Marriage?
Photo by Foto Pettine on Unsplash

Emotional intimacy has to do with that soul connection. When two married people are emotionally intimate, they use their emotions to show their love and to stay close to each other. They confess their love, trust, respect and have a sincere and open way of interacting.

The emotional connection is an essential element in a healthy, lasting relationship. People want to feel loved, close, admired, appreciated, to help each other, to feel that sense of security and protection. If the emotional connection is lacking, it will be difficult for a marriage to survive.

1. How do you know the lack of emotional intimacy in marriage?

Many couples lose their emotional intimacy because of the stressful life they lead, their busy work or schedule, nervousness, mental illness, lack of time and interest in their loved ones.

If you feel lonely, frustrated, emotionally disconnected from your loved one, it is clear that something is wrong with your marriage. A relationship without emotional intimacy cannot resist.

The main signs of lack of emotional intimacy in the couple:

You feel lonely and you distance yourself from your loved one

These signs show that emotional intimacy decreases in the relationship. The more lonely you feel in marriage, the more painful it will be for you to be emotionally disconnected. Even though you share a life with the couple, you live in the same house with them, you still feel that something is wrong, that you have moved away, that there is no emotional connection in your relationship.

Lack of affection and love

An affectionate marriage shows that love and passion have disappeared. Lack of emotional connection also affects intimate life, and this creates tension and frustration in the relationship.

Lack of communication and empathy

People who do not know how to communicate in a relationship usually do not know how to build emotional intimacy. They have dry, uninteresting conversations through which they do not know how to make their life more beautiful. Lack of communication leads to distance and loss of love.

Because of the loss of emotional connection, empathy also disappears, that ability to understand the other person's feelings and to show them that you care about them. By losing empathy, a relationship emptiness is created and the emotional withdrawal becomes greater.

Endless quarrels and the tendency to criticize the loved one

These habits also occur due to a lack of emotional intimacy. In many couples, people often quarrel over money, household chores, or other problems (such as those related to children) precisely because they feel lonely, frustrated, deprived of that empathy, and emotional connection. To these are added the pointless jokes, the habit of criticizing and making fun of the other's behavior. All this causes stress, nervousness, tension, and relationship breakdown.

When quarrels arise, one is likely to give in at some point, but this always-to-do-bad mood of one's partner can become very stressful and tiring with each passing day. The nervous states that appear every day in the relationship, the conflicts created only destroy even more the emotional intimacy and the couple's relationship.

2. How to build emotional intimacy in marriage

Sometimes you feel like you don't know your loved one, even though you've been married to them for years. The reality of life is that people change over time, probably because of the circumstances that arise in life. To maintain your relationship, you need to pay attention to the other person's emotional needs and build emotional intimacy again if it has been affected by your actions.

To connect with the needs of your loved ones, you need to be open, honest, and a little vulnerable to them, express your feelings and try to get emotionally closer to them. If you take the first step and are a little vulnerable, you might want her to do the same.

Stubborn partner

All people have flaws and pride, so it is difficult to get over certain unpleasant aspects that appear in a marriage, in which there are problems of emotional intimacy. Some even seek the help of a marriage counselor to solve their problems, to save their relationship.

Those who face the stubbornness of their partner need more patience and compassion if they want to fix the situation.

The emotional connection is something that can be built gradually, if the two have the necessary openness to each other and if they want to be closer.

Other ways to build emotional intimacy in a relationship

Spending time together is a great way to build emotional intimacy. A short weekend trip could bring you pleasant moments and bring you closer. It is not enough to watch TV in the evening or go shopping together, you need more special activities, which are not done daily and which can improve your mood.

Try to be more generous, pay close attention or give gifts, show compassion and empathy. Many people strengthen their relationships through generosity, which brings them closer and helps them to have a better emotional connection. Show your attention, gratitude, even in the smallest actions such as preparing meals, washing the car, shopping, and so on.

Try to communicate more, discuss the issues you have and how you can solve them. Healthy communication can save your marriage from divorce.

Problems of emotional intimacy arise from different causes and they need to be understood and resolved. The main causes are life cycles, problems related to the financial situation or personal life. By identifying the factors that produced stress and tension in the relationship, any problem of emotional intimacy can be solved.

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