One of the most important things in a relationship is having emotional intimacy. If you wonder what is happening in your relationship and if your relationship will last, it can leave you feeling disconnected and upset.
If you’re emotionally disconnected, you can rebuild your relationship and make it even better than it was before.
Lack of Emotional Intimacy
Some relationships lack emotional intimacy, and they feel disconnected. This means that they don’t feel safe no matter how long they have been together. The connection that they have isn’t real and there is a lack of understanding between the two.
As you deal with this lack, you will see the relationship is getting more and more broken. This kind of situation often leads to one partner cheating.
Being Married without Emotional Intimacy
Many marriages have a hard time working out because of a lack of emotional intimacy. The connection that you have with your partner can make the marriage healthy and that is one reason that you choose to be with your partner in the first place. It can be hard depending on what is going on with your children or your finances, but you need to get past the problems and push through.
Being married means that you want something more such as:
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- To feel loved.
- To feel connected.
- To feel important.
- To be on their team.
- To have adventures together.
- To reach your highest self as if you are with your favorite person.
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No marriage just wants to survive, and we all want so much more.
Where is the Emotional Intimacy?
Relationships can lose their emotional intimacy based on schedules and having a harder time finding time for each other. There are also things like fear of being vulnerable and stress in the relationship that can cause the intimacy to leave.
Most couples look for a deep connection with each other even though emotional intimacy can be scary sometimes. Things that can get in the way of this include:
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- Conflicts.
- Resentment.
- Not opening up.
- Hurts that aren’t resolved.
- Being rejected.
- Feeling unloved or not worthy of love.
- Not knowing how to build emotional intimacy.
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Creating emotional intimacy can be hard and when it is hard, sometimes people will distance themselves even more. Rebuilding your emotional intimacy can be a skill that you can learn. You just have to learn when to do it and what to do to make your relationship survive.
Is the Intimacy Gone?
Here are some signs that the emotional intimacy might be gone:
- Distancing
Emotional intimacy can start to become less and less and this can cause you both to withdraw and detach from each other. This can be hurtful, and it makes you want to protect your heart.
When emotional detachment happens though, it causes there to be more distance and this can make things even worse.
- Feelings of Loneliness
One hard thing to deal with in a marriage is being lonely. This can happen even if you are spending time with each other. You likely sleep in the same bed, share dinner together and you share life with your partner, but this doesn’t mean that the loneliness isn’t there.
Being lonely can cause you to distance yourself from your partner even more. This can happen when you live together and there is a lack of emotional intimacy.
- Having Little Affection
Relationships that have no emotional intimacy might lack affection. When there is distance between you and your partner this might mean that you stop hugging, kissing, holding hands and more.
This can affect your sex life and as the physical affection lessens, there will be less sex, and this will cause more problems.
- Less Sex
Lack of intimacy can mean there being less sex or no sex at all. You might have a lack of emotional intimacy, and this can be the problems that you’re having in bed.
If you aren’t having as much sex as you have had in the past or if every time sex comes up you argue, there might be a lack of emotional intimacy.
- You Aren’t Sure What to Say
Maybe you have a hard time building your emotional intimacy. This is something that you need to be able to talk about, but the problem is that after it has gone on for so long it might be hard to know what to say.
Building intimacy happens the same way that the relationship started. You have to be open to what you’re feeling and honest with what you need to say. This is a way that you can share and figure out things together.
- Lack of Compassion and Empathy
Empathy means that you can walk in someone else’s shoes, and you can understand the feelings of other people. If you feel that you have lost this empathy or this compassion for your partner, then you might have no emotional intimacy.
You need to learn to understand each other and to care for each other but it can be hard when you are emotionally distant from one another. When your partner isn’t showing you empathy or listening to your feelings, you will feel unsafe, and you will be withdrawn.
- Arguing a Lot
Every relationship has ups and downs and when there is arguing, this is normal. The problem is that when arguing is always happening, the emotional connection is suffering.
- Innocent Humor
People that are passive and aggressive often use innocent humor to say what they need. They take things that are serious, and they make them into jokes. This can make emotional intimacy feel that it isn’t there.
- Loss of Trust
You might be afraid of saying the wrong thing and you might feel that you need to constantly walk on eggshells around your partner. Trying to say the right thing to get your partner in the right mood can be tiring and when there is a lack of trust it can keep the relationship in a dangerous place.
This might mean that you are constantly fighting and that you are having a hard time communicating in a good way. Rebuilding emotional intimacy will help your partner to let go of negative emotions.
- No Team
Instead of being a team with your partner, you don’t support each other anymore. You thought at first you would be able to take the world together and that you would support each other beyond anything on the earth.
When the emotional intimacy is gone, you won’t want to take care of each other, but you will both try to get one up on each other.
Is the Relationship Right for You?
Having an emotional connection is all about meeting the needs of people in your life. The relationships that you form should meet your emotional needs and if you’re in doubt about your needs being met, you need to figure out how to get your emotional intimacy strong.
You might find that you are thinking of separating and this means that things need to change. You can rebuild your intimacy and if you are watching out for the warning signs then you will be able to fight to make your relationship work.
Building Emotional Intimacy
If you are having problems in your relationship and you need to have emotional intimacy, set goals in your marriage to make sure that you are communicating with each other and that you are working to make your relationship strong. You can reignite your intimacy and you can set goals to push through any problems that you might face.
