Intimacy And The Lack Thereof

Many of my friends have expressed their profound dissatisfaction with their marriages because they are married to people that do not have the same goals and expectations of married life. This creates a huge dislocation where people that are supposed to be in a partnership go their own way wreaking havoc on the marriage. With so much pain and dissatisfaction going on it brings up the question (What is the root cause of this?). I think it has a lot to do with the expectations that our culture attaches to marriage. We are bombarded by images of smiling brides and grooms heading off into the sunset of married bliss. But as all of us that are married know that just ain't so. There are financial pressures, kids, and tons of other things that make those candle light bubble baths few and far between if ever. Being married is complicated and when kids arrive it gets even more over the top. One of the major problems that raises its ugly head is mismatched sex drives. One partner wants more than the other partner that causes a lot of friction (No Pun Intended). But the major complaint that is so often heard is that there is a lack of intimacy. 

 

 Intimacy generally refers to the feeling of being in a close personal association and belonging together. It is a familiar and very close affective connection with another as a result of entering deeply or closely into relationship through knowledge and experience of the other. Genuine intimacy in human relationships requires dialogue, transparency, vulnerability and reciprocity. As a verb "intimate" means, "to state or make known". The activity of intimating (making known) underpins the meanings of "intimate" when used as a noun and adjective. As a noun, an "intimate" is a person with whom we have a particularly close relationship.

If you notice this definition really doesn't say anything about a sexual relationship, but many people think the two terms are interchangeable. It is possible to have intimacy without sex and it is also possible to have sex without intimacy. Most people agree that the best sex is accomplished with someone that they are intimate with; by definition this makes a great deal of sense. There is a chronic complaint from many people that they receive no intimacy from their partner in marriage. By definition the married relationship is supposed to be the most intimate of all relationships, it is supposed to be the fusing of two people into a totally intimate relationship. But these days it seems that this is very rare and it seems that the culprit is the lack of communication that many people experience in marriage. After all if there is no good steady flow of communication back and forth in the relationship there really can't be a high level of intimacy.