The Importance of True Intimacy When Conventional Intimacy Isn't Possible

Our Wedding Day

When hubs and I went through pre-Cana we talked a lot about communication, conflict resolution, financial matters, sex, children, growing in our faith, and intimacy. We had sessions with our pastor, took an NFP class, and attended a diocesan conference for engaged couple. An ongoing theme from our pastor, the NFP teaching couple, and the two married couples who led the conference was the need for true intimacy in marriage. One of the couples who led the conference was on their 60th year of marriage, and during one of their sessions they talked about how to learn what true intimacy was. They also stressed that true intimacy is developed over time and, contrary to what the majority of people think they know about intimacy, intimacy is not solely physical or sexual. In fact, the definition of intimacy makes no mention of anything physical. According to Merriam-Webster intimacy is "the state of being intimate" or "something of a personal or private nature." Emotional and spiritual intimacy are just as important as physical and sexual intimacy, and without the first two the last two are difficult.

Hubby and I were, of course, going through pre-Cana with half our brains because we were so focused on our wedding day and all the planning involved. Everything we were meant to learn kind of got filed away to process later. When the reality hit that marriage really is as much work as everyone was trying to tell us we luckily had some knowledge to fall back on and

It was only after being put on pelvic rest that I even remembered all the focus on intimacy. Pelvic rest is pretty self explanatory. And while part of NFP involves abstinence during fertile periods, it's only for a few days at a time. Not weeks. Not months. Hubs and I had never talked about anything like this coming up, we never really acknowledged that a situation could arise wherein our physical marital intimacy would be impossible for an extended period of time.

We both have had to make some adjustments to the circumstances, and have started to understand the need for true intimacy. We've also realized that in order to foster true intimacy we need to make a few things a real priority:

1. communication
2. honesty/openness
3. friendship
4. prayer

Without communication, we'd be more roommates than spouses. We've fallen into that rut before, it's not fun. We both got wrapped up in how busy we were, that we ended up living parallel lives instead of an integrated life. Communication isn't easy when one of you is upset or hurt, it's not easy when you're tired, or if you've gotten out of the habit of communicating. But it's so very important to stay connected when you're married.

Communication is both verbal and nonverbal. Communication take practice. It's harder to reopen lines of communication than it is to keep them open even under difficult circumstances. Not to mention people with different personalities communicate in different ways and at different times. Sometimes I just want to talk about an issue in order express how I'm feeling about it, validate those feelings, and then I can think more clearly about how to address and solve the issue. But when hubby hears me wanting to talk about an issue all he focuses on is how he can fix the problem for me. It took a little bit of practice (and exasperation) to convey that all I needed him to do was listen and validate and then I would solve.

On the other side, hubs isn't much of a talker. He doesn't like to burden people, he likes to solve things in his own way on his own time, and when he's bothered by something his way of communicating is physical -- a hug and a kiss, snuggling up on the couch, physical intimacy. This isn't to say he keeps things from me, he just mentions them in passing. Physical intimacy is his way of being validated, and it took me some time to realize this. Too often I was too busy to stop and share a long hug and a smooch, because it wasn't my way to communicate, and it wasn't the way I experienced validation from my husband.

Along the lines of communication come honesty and openness. Being honest isn't just about not lying to your spouse. It's about not withholding information your spouse needs to know. It's also about making sure that decisions and issues get a fair shot at being discussed, and going into enough detail to get a point across instead of assuming your spouse will understand a novel full of information through one sentence. Here is where openness comes into play. If hubs asks me how I'm doing, I can't assume or expect him to realize that when I say, "I'm ok" I really mean, "I'm overwhelmed, tired, stressed out, had a rough day with the kids, I'm behind on housework, I need help and you better understand all of this when I say 'I'm ok' or you're going to be in the doghouse." If I want him to know all of this, I need to tell him. On the flip side, when he hears "I'm ok" he now knows to press the issue a little to make sure everything really is ok.

Friendship and prayer will have to wait for another day, I didn't realize how long winded I am! My apologies! And it took me two days on and off to write this much, so if I were to try and get the rest in now I'd never hit post. Until next time!