The Tiny Concept More Crucial To A Healthy Marriage Than Anything Else
Are you prioritizing the right things in your marriage?
Toa Heftiba | Unsplash Intimacy is an important part of any healthy relationship since it helps build a bond; intimate needs are just as important as emotional ones for many reasons.
If you're struggling with intimacy issues or wondering how often married couples should be intimate, then you may be concerned that you're falling into a loveless marriage or that your relationship isn't healthy.
Keeping passion alive and healthy is a critical aspect of the process of sustaining an enduring and fulfilling partnership. Failure to have fulfilling married intimacy may hurt your marriage with your partner and wind up becoming a factor in the breakdown of your relationship down the line.
While most people realize that the extraordinary magic of infatuation wears off with time, there is little understanding of how it is possible to continually regenerate the vitality that is often lost when couples settle into the ordinary reality of daily life.
When work, child-rearing, chores, and other family responsibilities dominate your attention and push intimacy into the background, you run the risk of creating patterns that leave you feeling unfulfilled.
This can cause frustration, resentment, and vulnerability to temptations outside of your primary relationship.
It is possible to keep the excitement alive, even in long-term relationships.
There are a variety of ways to cultivate the ability to engage in intimacy as a sacred practice in which your hearts and spirits, as well as your and your partner's bodies, are stimulated and inspired.
Many couples feel that they have to choose between ordinary or routine, which usually translates into “boring” with the same partner, or run the risk of jeopardizing their marriage by having affairs.
Neither of these options is viable to a couple that has a partnership dedicated to mutual growth.
The experience can be broadened as well as deepened, regarding the focus of the erotic beyond physical contact. The elements that make your initial physical contact with a new lover so compelling have to do with experiencing the excitement and aliveness that is inevitable when you encounter the "unknown."
You can extend the experience of new and compelling aspects of intimacy far beyond the "infatuation stages" of a relationship when everything is new and exciting. You can keep your passion and romance alive when in any relationship with a little bit of effort.
You may not realize that the reason you're struggling with physical intimacy is because of unconscious patterns of resistance, or hidden fears and anxieties that may be the source of physical and emotional blocks to a more deeply connected experience with your partner.
By exploring these areas, you may discover what's interfering with your ability to enjoy your intimate moments more fully and be open and vulnerable.
You can work with your partner in creating a safe, trustworthy, and stimulating environment that will help balance a healthy relationship.
A 2004 study conducted at Dartmouth and the University of Warwick in England drew on a sample of 16,000 people. They found that intimacy factors strongly into a person's overall happiness.
Those who reported no intimate activity were noticeably less happy than the average person.
The typical American has intercourse two to three times a month (regardless of income), and despite the myth, married people have much more intimacy than those who are single, divorced, widowed, or separated.
The findings of the study were clear: The more intimacy, the happier the person. They estimated that increasing intercourse from once a month to once a week is equivalent to the amount of happiness generated by adding $50,000 in yearly income for the average American.
And by far, the happiest folks are those having the most intimacy. The point system that the happiness researchers use shows us that a couple being intimate four times a week has a large effect on their happiness. Both women and men in their research derive a great deal of happiness from being intimate.
The statistics showed only very slight evidence that men enjoyed being intimate more than women.
A healthy marriage depends on a loving intimate connection. It is often the case that being intimate is more important to one of the pair.
It's important to understand that if intimacy is important to your partner, then it’s important to the relationship. You must both find a way to make time for true, honest, intimacy as much as possible. Don't just "go through the motions" since that may leave one or both partners dissatisfied.
Intimacy is a very valid and important part of any healthy relationship. To be a truly fulfilling partnership, there must be enthusiasm. Stay tuned for some ideas about how to bring the passion level up.
Linda Bloom, LCSW, and Charlie Bloom, MSW, are psychotherapists and relationship counselors who have worked with individuals, couples, groups, and organizations since 1975.