You and your spouse have a good marriage–great, even–but you’re ready to take it to the next level. Maybe you’re physically intimate, but you want more of that intimacy to extend to your emotional life.
In today’s post, we’re sharing five tips for increasing the emotional intimacy in your relationship. Each of these tips builds on the next to help you create the deep, fulfilling connection you’re craving.
Nurture Trust
In order for your marriage to be as emotionally intimate as possible, you and your spouse must be able to trust one another implicitly. This means that both of you must commit to always being honest with one another, speaking the truth in love.
It also means that you should model trustworthiness for your spouse. If your husband or wife observes you being dishonest with a third party–for any reason–you’ve planted a seed of doubt in their heart. It’s very difficult to overcome breaches in trust, so do your best to avoid creating unnecessary problems.
Ensure Emotional Safety
In addition to being trustworthy, you and your spouse can increase your intimacy by guaranteeing one another emotional safety in your relationship. Lovingly accepting your spouse, warts and all, is the ultimate display of love–and an offering of safety.
If neither of you has to worry about being wrongly judged, criticized, or cut down, you will both thrive!
Encourage Vulnerability
With the gift of emotional safety comes the invitation to be vulnerable. Allowing yourselves to be authentic with one another will add a deeper layer of intimacy to your marriage. As you take the time to not only accept your spouse’s vulnerabilities, but also expose your own, your love for one another will grow deeper.
No one on earth will know you the way your spouse knows you. And no one will know your spouse like you do. The best way to get there is to be who you are with one another–without pretense.
Cultivate Closeness
Spending time together and sharing activities will give you the physical proximity you need to nurture your romance, as well as your friendship. Even if you’re short on free time, make sure to invest at least a few minutes a day face-to-face, enjoying one another’s company. The more connected you feel, the more intimate your marriage will be!
Foster Deep Connection
Feeling profoundly connected to your spouse can affect both of you (positively!) on a spiritual level, in addition to the benefits you’ll feel emotionally and physically. Take time to learn more about one another. If there’s something your spouse feels passionately about, ask questions to learn more. Or if they love or enjoy something deeply, show curiosity about it.
Connect where you are able, regardless of whether you have the same set of interests. Finding common ground together and reveling in that–instead of focusing on areas where you don’t agree or resonate with one another–will skyrocket your emotional intimacy.
How have you and your spouse increased the emotional intimacy in your marriage? We’d love to hear your stories about how it has positively affected your relationship! Share below in the comments section.
My husband and I have been apart for seven years. I have maintained that even though he divorced me and went on to another relationship, God joined us together and what God has joined together, let man not separate. We have recently done some texting back and forth, sporatic as it may be. I do not know what the situation is with the other Non covenant woman and my husband but I am beleiving for a complete restoration in our marriage. I read your emails and am encouraged by them. I have been a part of a group called covenant keepers since he left and have received much encouragement there too. He will be in my area in the next few weeks and I would gladly covet your prayers on our behalf. God will have the final word. 20 years ago we had several prophetic words spoken over us that said we would have a ministry where people could come for healing, reconciling people to God and people to each other. I still believe God will carry this out. Please join me in my prayers for this. Thank you so much, Brenda.
Keep the faith and stay strong! God always wins in the end.
Praying for you!
Jenn
I always find your emails to be a good reminder!! Thank you for the wise words – caring for our marriages is important!!
My husband loves the outdoors! That is something that I have come to love, as I made the choice to go walking with him around our electric fence, surrounding the cow pasture acreage. Some of our greatest emotional intimacy and my best “full-to-overflowing heart moments” have happened as he and I, sometimes with my stepson, tromp around in the mud and chop down weeds.
Those times, as well as car rides, have fostered wonderful conversations that would not happen in the house, with all of the distractions, and lead to even more intimacy and closeness.
I have learned, in our nearly 3 years of marriage, to be a good listener when my husband shares vulnerable things (thoughts/feelings about his parents, with whom we live and care for). At first, I would put in my two cents, in agreement. But that made him stop talking. In prayer, I asked God for wisdom and to keep His hand over my mouth when He would have me stay silent. That has been the best thing that He does to grow our marriage. And hubby can share all he will, with a listening wife.
Thank you and God bless your ministry!
Praying for you, Sister Brenda! Our God is a God of reconciliation and restoration!
After 30 some years of marriage and at an age where I should understand this, we still struggle, but there is always hope. We all hunger for emotional intimacy, like the crunch of that salty chip. We crave it at the oddest times and try to satisfy that hunger by filling our lives with other things. I’ve tried to fill that hunger with food and to my shame the food has often won. Yet in the midst of all that there are moments I know that one intimate look from my courageous man still sends me to the moon! Or that soft word spoken in quietness gives you the strength to carry on. So I thank you for your insights into how to fill that craving and satisfy the hunger for emotional intimacy not with the things of this world but with trust, safety, vulnerability, closeness and connection.