Friday is a good day for lists and it’s a good day to talk about building the intimacy between you and your spouse. Theoretically, every relationship has levels of intimacy. The intimacy you share with friends is going to be less than the intimacy you share with really good friends and different from the intimacy you have with your family and finally your spouse. Each relationship is different and the levels of trust, confidence and communication are all different.
Creating a greater sense of intimacy between you and your spouse opens channels of communication and helps to heal injuries before they occur. Building intimacy with your spouse is a form of marriage fitness and it increases the health of the marriage and a healthy marriage has multiple benefits including recovering from problems and more.
Here are ten tips for increasing the intimacy in your relationship and helping you build your marriage fitness:
- Don’t let physical contact fall by the way side; holding hands may not seem that intimate, but as humans we need physical contact whether it’s a hug, hand-holding or just a casual caress
- Sarcasm is a verbal weapon and weapons should be put away and not wielded within your marriage
- Conflicts can arise from other sources – exhaustion and frustration with other areas of your life can erupt into a disagreement with your spouse – identify where the conflict is coming from in order to elicit your spouse’s support rather than animosity
- The Silent Treatment doesn’t benefit anyone – and remember when you punish your spouse, you are also punishing yourself
- Avoid using phrases of finality such as always and never – because in general, they aren’t going to be true and it’s like threatening to hold you breath – really not effective
- Use I language to communicate your needs
- Assume good intentions – even when you don’t understand what is going on or why your spouse is saying things, assume good intentions until otherwise notified
- Privacy is important, don’t air your disputes in front of friends, family or strangers – it’s dramatically unfair to them and to you
- When you’re trying to resolve a problem, don’t pull in every slight real or imagined from your entire life and throw them into the debate
- A win in a marriage is when you are feeling close and connected, a loss is when you are so busy trying to win that you and your spouse can’t communicate any more
Marriage fitness is a constant, you get out of it what you put in. Like your physical fitness, you need to exercise your marriage regularly to build the strength and health of your marriage so that it can withstand problems, struggles and more.
How do you enhance your marriage fitness?
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