How do we Build and Maintain Intimacy in our Relationships?

In the last several years, psychologists have noted a specific decline in sexual activity among young adults and have termed this as the sex recession, observing data from the General Social Survey. The nation’s current climate of casual relationships neglecting connection contrasts those that have experiences with happy intimacy, profound depth, and a new reality of closeness that have all been absent due to the loneliness epidemic. Skill sets related to responding in ways that are not hijacked by troubling and negative emotions, becoming empathetic during interactions, and remaining non-defensive while choosing to constructively build emotional intimacy are ever-present needs in this generation’s landscape of relationships. According to attachment theory and the research of John Bowlby, secure attachments are formed when parents are consistently available, responsive, warm, and emotionally attuned to a child’s needs, especially when the child becomes frightened or distressed. Throughout the history of the child’s development, parents that are available and sensitively attuned to the child’s emotional expression foster a secure attachment and validate, recognize, and affirm the child’s worth. In a sense, attachment styles are the building blocks that establish healthy foundations for relationships and interpersonal effectiveness across settings. Neuroscience has now substantial evidence that the hormone oxytocin becomes released in the process of fostering an attachment within relationships. Based on the attachment profile, key brain structures and emotional responses occur as part of automatic processes that are ingrained in patterns of understanding, perceiving, and navigating the social environment. Attachment styles are necessary to understand and develop lifelong, so these behaviors are not seen to never stop growing. 

You need to feel a connection

Developing emotional connection is a necessary ingredient as part of the nation’s recovery toward meaningful, lasting, and transformative intimacy in relationships. Emovere, the Latin word for emotion, connotes the meaning for “to move.” Partners are “moved” when deeper feelings are uncovered and promote a sense of sincerely authentic connection with one another, causing them to reconnect and identify newer ways to be responsive toward each other. Fears of loss and isolation can translate to connection and caring when couples reveal the softer side of themselves and choose to tenderly, responsively, and humbly share with each other their own needs and fears, provoking the trajectory toward a new and positive spiral of love and connection. Safety, cooperation, closeness, and loving responsiveness are all part of the new narrative that a couple can embrace overall as part of shifting the relational atmosphere. Creating a new sense of loving connection requires couples to foster intimacy through listening well, become securely attached, and learn to emotionally ‘move’ toward one another. Essential questions as, “Will you come to me when I need you? Do I matter to you? Are you there for me?” encompass this innate longing for emotional connection and overshadow any other primal drive from within us basic needs. The human experience safeguards this primal longing for emotional connection and ensures its longevity as a lifelong hunger. 

Typically when a safe connection seems to be considered lost, a couple enters into flight-or-fight (and freeze) mode. One partner can place blame on the other and enter into severe aggressive styles of communication to elicit a response. Another might simply shut down and not care about getting a response. Ultimately, a blame-distance loop becomes established within the relationship and the underlying emotions confirm fear and contribute to a growing sense of isolation. Whether it becomes clearly articulated, acted upon, or left unsaid and undramatized, the primal emotional attachment cry becomes likened to a core protest against disconnection from one another. One partner might respond with freezing up and embracing failure. The other might embody the struggle of attempting to elicit an emotional response and challenging the sense of helplessness with more aggression. 

Similar to when a secure attachment forms between the infant and caregiver, a safe connection and secure bond becomes established between partners when they respond with assurance and soothing care. This will create a lasting trust and makes the love bond even stronger within the couple as movement toward trust, value, worth, significance, security, and belonging occurs. In a growing body of research, many biologists have termed a longing for novelty in contrast to “habituation to stimulus” when long-term couples are faced with struggling to maintain desire over what they already have within the relationship. Familiarity can breed contempt, and a couple that chooses to thrive relationally will require emotional connection to channel the typical anxieties of unrealistic, entitled, and selfish ambitions that remain relationally unfulfilled. Experts state that when the initial phase of the relationship is new and desirable, it’s seen as “limerence.” Managing conflicts over need and longing within a long-term and committed relationship while addressing the disparity between idealism and realism will necessitate a safe, secure, and loving bond as a couple. 

Start Slow

Moving slowly, cautiously, and intentionally toward one another into vulnerable territory allows for couples to clarify the relationship and better understand the foundations needed to deepen in their bond and grow in love. Use this questionnaire, from Dr. Sue Johnson the creator, author, and researching contributor of Emotionally-Focused Therapy for couples and families, as a way to determine how accessible, responsive, and engaged you and your partner are as a couple: 

Accessibility: From your viewpoint, is your partner accessible to you?

1. I can get my partner’s attention easily. T F
2. My partner is easy to connect with emotionally. T F
3. My partner shows me that I come first with him/her. T F
4. I am not feeling lonely or shut out in this relationship. T F
5. I can share my deepest feelings with my partner. He/she will listen. T F

Responsiveness: From your viewpoint is your partner responsive to you?

1. If I need connection and comfort, he/she will be there for me. T F
2. My partner responds to signals that I need him/her to come close. T F
3. I find I can lean on my partner when I am anxious or unsure. T F
4. Even when we fight or disagree, I know that I am important to my partner and we will find a way to come together. T F
5. If I need reassurance about how important I am to my partner, I can get it. T F

Engagement: Are you positively emotionally engaged with each other?

1. I feel very comfortable being close to, trusting my partner. T F
2. I can confide in my partner about almost anything. T F
3. I feel confident, even when we are apart, that we are connected to each other. T F
4. I know that my partner cares about my joys, hurts, and fears. T F
5. I feel safe enough to take emotional risks with my partner. T F

A score of 7 or more True will lead to a path of maintaining and developing a secure bond as a couple. Noticing, observing, and understanding the type of bond and attachment you share as a couple is one of the first steps in moving toward a more connected, meaningful, and satisfying relationship as well as explore areas for further progress in describing wants and needs as a couple. When a couple fosters attachment security through mutual demonstration of being warm, available, and responsive to one another, the relational fusion occurs that develops a lasting emotional connection and passionate attunement that presses through any season of trial and difficulty. Couples that internalize secure bonds through validation, self-soothing, problem-solving through adopting new strategies, and pursuing goal attainment develop belief systems that reflect that they are lovable, worthy of support, accessible to one other, and can overcome strains. When couples come to an impasse, tread water, and hit the wall, meaningful intimacy within the relationship is possible as we start inside out. It will take the deeper work in skillful emotional connection, intuitive communication, and challenging confrontation to cultivate the necessary growth and communion within the relationship as part of the necessary steps for discovering enduring and substantial intimacy.