Marriage is not all about husband and wife coming together to procreate. It goes deeper than that. To understand your partner, you should develop a bond with that person, especially if it is an emotional bond.
Knowing how to build emotional intimacy in marriage is very essential to both husband and wife. I mean, let us be honest, love alone cannot save a marriage, other things are involved. One of the key pillars of a healthy relationship is emotional intimacy.
In this article, you will get to know and understand how to build emotional intimacy in a marriage. Alright, let us get to it…
How to Build Emotional Intimacy in Marriage
1. Understanding Your Partner’s Love Language
Your partner’s love language could be words of affirmation, physical touch, gifting, or an act of service (like cooking, or doing laundry, amongst others), amongst others that you should be able to understand.
Once you know and understand your partner’s love language, then you can start acting on it. Show love and emotional intimacy by acting on your partner’s love language for them.
Once you get to understand and practice your partner’s love language, you start to build emotional intimacy with them. Do you want to know how to build emotional intimacy in your marriage? Try understanding your partner’s love language.
2. Communicating is a Way of Building Emotional Intimacy in Marriage
Some people find it hard to communicate with the person they are married to, and this can be very wrong. If you find it hard to communicate with your partner, then understanding is going to be very hard to come by.
You should understand that whenever things go right or wrong, you should always communicate with your partner. Not in a manner of reprimanding or a wrong approach, but in a diplomatic manner. If things go right, let them know, if things go wrong, still communicate with them.
A lot of marriages lack intimacy, not because there is no love, but because there is no emotional connection between the 2 parties. If you want to save your marriage or have a lasting marriage, I would suggest you establish emotional intimacy as a pillar in your marriage.
3. Teamwork
Let’s be real here, most couples don’t know the art of teamwork. Some marriages are based on duties (which can be a good thing), but they base it on just that, duties.
To build a bond that encompasses just the physical, you and your partner need to be on the same team. Being on the same team doesn’t mean doing the same thing.
Take for instance the football sport, each teammate performs a certain function, whether it’s the striker, the goalkeeper, or the midfielder. They all have their functions, but their collective objectives are to score the opposing team and protect their net from being scored.
It should be the same thing in marriage, you guys have your functions but achieve a collective objective. This builds emotional intimacy because, without spoken words, you know what your partner needs. Work on knowing how to build emotional intimacy in your marriage by including teamwork and seeing where that takes your marriage.
4. Respecting Your Partner
Respecting your partner is another method of knowing how to build emotional intimacy in a marriage. I know I am not the only person who has heard of this saying, ‘Respect is Reciprocal’. In every relationship you find yourself in, respect should be a primary factor.
Respect, in this case, should not be one-sided but it should go both ways. I mean it takes two to tango so should it be in respect? Respect the decisions your partner makes in your marriage, regardless of if it will be futile or not. If you feel it is not fruitful, let them know and you can work it out with them.
5. Appreciate Efforts
Always show appreciation to everyone around you. Saying or acting your thank you goes a long way in every relationship with everyone. You can’t expect someone to love you if you don’t appreciate them.
The same thing goes for your partner, you can’t expect them to just do everything you want without appreciating them. You could appreciate your partner by buying small gifts, taking them out, and sending an appreciation message to them. The most essential thing to do is to appreciate them.
Most times surprise appreciations are usually the best. You could book a spa day for your partner, take them out for lunch or dinner, or even buy them what they’ve always wanted to get.
This will build and grow emotional intimacy in your marriage. Just put your partner first and appreciate them for everything they do and are, and see where that takes your marriage.
6. Look Good and Keeping a Clean Environment
I have a friend who is happily married to the love of her life and blessed with a beautiful daughter. She believes that a way to build emotional intimacy in your marriage is by dressing well and keeping a clean environment, and I couldn’t agree less with her. I mean it is working perfectly well for her so why don’t you and I imbibe that?
She says that dressing well for your partner gives them a sense of happiness and comfort knowing that their partner is a fashion guru. If you look at the part and smell the part, your partner will be happy. Being clean also goes hand-in-hand with dressing and scenting well.
I mean, cleanliness is next to godliness, according to her. You should always keep your environment tidy and clean at all times. I mean imagine walking into an untidy and dirty environment, I mean it can destabilize your whole mood and mind as a whole.
So if you want to build a strong and lasting emotional intimacy in your marriage, I suggest you go with what my friend has to say… Look good, scent nice, and keep a clean environment.
What Not To Expect From Arranged Marriage
I have seen a lot of arranged marriages blossom into something beautiful, so expecting the worst in arranged marriages should not be thought of. Deciding to marry someone is not easy. And when going ahead with an arranged marriage, things will never be predictable.
The thing with arranged marriage is that you don’t know the person you are getting married to. You do not know them mentally, spiritually, physically (sometimes), and emotionally. You don’t know this person so building something like emotional intimacy may not be as easy as you may think.
Here are some factors to not expect from arranged marriages…
1. Expecting Your Partner to Give You More Important Than His Family
Arranged marriages can be very tactful at times. You are marrying someone who has not been intimate with you emotionally, so building a bond will be hard.
You don’t expect that after your wedding, your partner starts giving you more relevant than their own family. You need to remember that they don’t know you that much, so giving you relevance will be hard.
Your partner will give their family more importance because that is who they know and trust. It is going to take months, if not years to build not only emotional intimacy but a deep level of intimacy with your partner. Hence, expecting your partner to give you more importance in your marriage is a wrong expectation.
2. Showing Affection Towards Your Family Immediately After the Wedding
You can expect your partner to respect your family, but expecting your partner to fall in love with your family is also a wrong expectation.
You fall in love and get fond of people when you have spent a quality amount of time with them and have gotten to know them. So don’t expect your spouse to just suddenly have a likeness to your family immediately after the wedding. Let the relationship be built naturally.
3. Expecting Your Spouse to Like Your Friends the Way You Do
The marriage is all about you and not external parties, so don’t expect your spouse to love your friends just because you like them. Everyone has a different perception of who a friend is and how they should behave. So don’t expect your spouse to like your friends because they are ‘your’ friends.
It’s all about knowing how to build emotional intimacy in marriage so don’t make excuses for external parties in your marriage. If you do, it will be these external parties that will ruin your marriage.
4. Understand You From Day One
You should not expect your partner to know your likes, and dislikes and understand how you think and feel all within a few months of marriage. You should not expect them to just magically know how you feel and who you are.
Give your partner time to get to know you and let them work in their own space.
The Bottom Line is…
Knowing how to build emotional intimacy in your marriage should be a priority for you in your marriage. Don’t feel like since you’ve gotten married, then the next thing is to procreate and then raise kids.
If you have this mindset, then at some point you are going to realize that you and your partner never knew yourselves in your marriage. It’s like you guys were strangers.
Build a deeper emotional connection with your partner. That’s your best friend, spouse, sibling and everything else, so if you have a deep emotional connection with them then your marriage is sure to flourish. I’ve said this before, love alone does not work in a relationship, and emotional intimacy is also a pillar in all sorts of relationships.
So you want to build emotional intimacy in your marriage? Know how to build emotional intimacy in your marriage.
FAQs
What causes a lack of emotional intimacy in marriage?
There are a lot of factors that cause a lack of emotional intimacy in marriage, but one for sure is when one or both partners are not willing to work things out in their marriage. Ignorance is the main factor. Partners don’t care how their partner feels, or if their actions are in any way affecting their partner’s mental health.
How do I get emotional intimacy with my husband?
There are a lot of ways to gain emotional intimacy with your husband. Some are, giving him gifts, dressing and scenting nicely for him, giving him good food, respecting him, communicating well with him, and generally, just being a good wife.
How do I fix emotional connections in my marriage?
I would suggest you communicate more often with your partner. Let them know how you feel, or why you act the way you do in a certain situation. Also, appreciate your partner, it’s not easy doing what they are doing, so show them appreciation.
What destroys emotional intimacy?
Well, my friend would say, ignorance, gender wars, lack of communication, lack of trust, and lack of accountable duties in marriages.
What kills love in a relationship?
A lot of things kill the love in a relationship. These include disloyalty, lack of communication, lack of trust, abuse (of any kind), lack of emotional intimacy, and no genuine affection towards the person.
What causes disconnection in marriage?
Lack of emotional intimacy, communication, and depression. A lot of people just disconnect from their partners because they are depressed or worried about something and don’t know how to talk to their partner, so the next thing they do is disconnect.
How do you know if your relationship lacks emotional intimacy?
If you guys rarely communicate. You should ask yourself if you guys talk well and if the conversations are usually deep. If they are not, then your relationship is on the verge of lacking emotional intimacy.
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