Understanding Intimacy
Do you believe in closeness in your relationships? Do you want to be close to someone to get emotional support? It is the desire to get intimate with someone. Building Intimacy in a relationship is a decent way of connecting someone emotionally to get support. It means you want to share your feelings, experiences, and thoughts with someone you have as a human being. So, we communicated. Yes, communication is the best way to build intimacy. It is the closeness between you and your loved one that gives you a high level of trust that makes it easy for you to share your emotions with them, whatever they are. Building intimacy is not a seconds task, it builds over time as you get closer to someone and have faith in each other by spending time together. It may be a physical or emotional closeness or even a combination of the two.
Is Intimacy Synonymous with Sex?
No, it’s a wrong theory. You may hear about intimacy in the context of sex because people have the false idea that intimacy means getting sexual with someone. But the two are different terms. With different meanings. You cannot inter-relate the two. Sex without intimacy and intimacy without sex are two possible things. So whenever you want to build intimacy in your relationship, remember that intimacy has a different role than romance. For example, you have a party with your friends and you use the term “intimate gathering” to describe the event. It means you are talking about a group of close friends as opposed to a gathering of unknown people. Another example of building intimacy is spending quality time with your close friends. It means your relationships with your trustworthy friends, colleagues, or family members also have an intimacy effect.
Definition of Intimacy
A relationship in which you feel free to share your thoughts and emotional feelings with a loved one is an intimate relationship. And this sharing of thoughts is the way to build intimacy. But the things to note seriously about building intimacy in a relationship is to share intimacy without sex because intimacy never builds at once it takes time. Violence and abuse are the factors that spoil the intimate relationship. So avoid them. 
Building intimacy is a time-consuming procedure, so be patient about its development. Secondly, efforts from both partners are considered. It is a great reward from one partner to the other because building intimacy is a great feeling of trust and belief.
Intimacy is the closeness to someone and reassurance that your love has been accepted for who you are. As children build intimacy with their parents, adults develop this feeling with their friends or other partners.
Intimacy can be of different types. It can be spiritual, financial, recreational, intellectual, or reactive. So don’t tie it with only romance or sex.
Read More: https://onlinehealthpoint.com/how-to-navigate-a-breakup/
Types of Intimacy
Before getting intimate with someone, figure out the type of intimacy you want to have. Intimacy can be categorized in several categories, including:
Emotional Intimacy
Emotional intimacy refers to telling your loved ones your thoughts, ideas, and emotions, that you would not like to share with others. This is the sign of having trust in someone and the signal to feel safe enough to let your protective boundary walls down. It is a feeling of being safe in the company of a loved one, who is the replacement of all other people in your circle. You cannot share all your feelings with your sister or brother, so he/she is the one who provides you with a satisfied and relaxed feeling after sharing all you have. This emotional intimacy has positive impacts on your life.
Intellectual Intimacy
Intellectual intimacy is an effective way to get to know how another person’s mind is working and sharing the plan with you. This type of intimacy refers to exchanging ideas and having beneficial conversations. Whenever you have a philosophical discussion with your classmate, it is not just a class fellow, it is a friend. It can be understood by talking with your friend throughout the night and feeling that a connection sparks between both. This sharing of intellectual ideas brings you closer.
Physical Intimacy
Physical intimacy refers to physical touch and closeness between two bodies. Most romantic relationships have this type of intimacy in which love is shown by kissing, holding hands, hugging, and sex. A hug with a trustworthy friend is also an example of physical intimacy. In a romantic relationship, it might include holding hands, cuddling, kissing, and sex.
Experiential Intimacy
Experiential intimacy refers to spending quality time with your close friend and discussing common activities and experiences. You can enjoy this by working on a project of the same interests like a school project, a movie watching, or playing a game of common interest.
Spiritual Intimacy
Spiritual intimacy means having spiritual belief in something beyond the physical realm of existence. This may include a strong belief in human souls or a greater supernatural power. It can have different types like having the same feelings about a religion, sharing common values, or having an important place in someone’s life.
Importance of Intimacy in Relationships
Intimacy has different meanings for different people. It ranges from sharing of feelings to sharing of belongings. It may be up to dating someone or watching a romantic movie. You can take it just as a supportive hug or deep conversation. But in all ways, it has several beneficial effects. The most important thing to understand is the factors affecting the quality of intimate relationships. Let’s discuss key factors that influence your intimacy in a relationship!
- Trust
Sharing your parts, like embarrassing facts of your life, is another level of trust. To share your personality with someone is the realization of having high trust in a loved one. This feeling brings you closer to acceptance.
It is a great sign of building intimacy because you trust in the person who accepts you, as you are. You develop intimacy with him/her feasibly. Whenever you meet someone you have fears of being rejected due to your liking, disliking, your favorite playlist, or favorite cuisines. But as intimacy develops you don’t bother about these things and do your weird things freely in the presence of your partner.
- Safety
A sense of being safe or secure enhances your trust in someone. Hiding your secrets or feeling hesitant to share them is a sin of being terrified of a relationship. But when you feel comfortable discussing your dirty inner self with anyone, and being guarded, even having bad past experiences brings you closer to that person. Intimacy is a feeling of safety enough with someone that you let him know about all personal facts about you.
- Affection
Love, care, and affection are effective ways to show someone that he/she is important to you. Caring for each other helps to build intimacy between you and your loved one. This can be of different types like a hug, or a kiss. Kindness and affection can be shown by acts. You don’t need to say it.
- Communication
Good communication is a dominating reason to have intimacy in a relationship. It is known as the key to healthy intimacy. Making an effort to listen to someone and realizing that their conversation has a deep impact on you, is a great feeling that helps develop a healthy true intimacy. This quality increases the understanding between both of you. The growing intimacy brings you closer to each other.
Foundations of Building Intimacy
Intimacy has to be built by effort, it doesn’t develop in a flash. It is not an automatic procedure to be done on its own. You cannot develop it during a night stay. Spending more time will enhance the quality of your closeness and thus you have more elements to share comfortably.
At the start, you may have some apprehensions or hesitation about building intimacy in a relationship. Because to build trust in someone is not easy as it takes time to understand the references or rules of someone’s life.
Sometimes you feel it is a risk of getting hurt by intimacy. This thought prevents you from getting intimate with someone. But you don’t know that intimacy has a positive impact on your health. Health benefits linked with intimacy are very precious because you can’t get that benefit any other way. Once you have intimacy, it will have tangible effects on your health, including:
- You can combat loneliness by developing deep companionship.
- It helps reduce your mental stress with the release of good hormones by stimulating laughter together or a soft touch in the form of a hug.
- It helps you to boost your immunity, limit the risk of heart disease, and lower your blood pressure.
- It is a building block of a happy and content life.
Overcoming Challenges
You can overcome the challenges linked with building intimacy. Here are some tips for you:
Addressing Conflict
Do you have low self-esteem? Do you like to be alone? These thoughts can cause hurdles in building intimacy. Your fear of intimacy prevents you from letting people know you. Therefore you avoid deep relationships. You should work with a therapist or seek guidance from a professional healthcare officer to prevent these thoughts.
Open Communication
It is difficult to develop trust in someone who has no blood relation with you. You cannot feel comfortable sharing your struggles of hard times with a person who doesn’t know your past. Try to share your feelings with your partner. Remove fears of being rejected and stay calm while opening up about your secrets. Because it is safe to talk about yourself, about the things you need from them. This will save your relationship.
Emotional Support
To overcome the hesitation or fear of being disclosed to someone, you need emotional support. This support can be provided by a professional therapist because your therapist can help you figure out the causes of intimacy fears and work on healing the trauma you have.
Maintaining Intimacy
It is a time-consuming procedure to build and maintain intimacy. Often you feel; it is harder but after developing it with effort it gives you great rewards.
Some tips to build and maintain intimacy are here:
- Expressions are an effective tool to say something special. Express your love and care through simple acts of affection and kindness tell your partner that he/she is the most trustworthy person for you. Celebrating the good things of your relationship doesn’t ensure that your partner will understand your gesture, your words are necessary to describe your love to build intimacy in a relationship.
- Tell your partner about your feelings openly and freely, don’t hesitate to disclose your emotions before him/her.
- Make plans to spend more time with your partner. This may help both of you to focus on your partner. Sometimes, it is hard to do due to the responsibilities of children, household tasks, or a job routine. Ignore all these hurdles and make a plan to go somewhere with your partner where you two will be alone and happy.
- Every relationship has ups and downs. You must save your relationship through these highs and lows by creating such moments in a busy routine that bring you closer to your partner.
- Always be thankful to your partner, enjoy small gestures of love shown by the other partner, and be positive.
- Make sure that both of you are ready to build intimacy. Don’t pressure your partner to accept your decision. Try to convince him/her with love and affection. The desire for intimacy from both sides will make your relationship more secure and beautiful.
Conclusion
Building intimacy is the most cheerful way to enrich your life. You just need to seek out the meaningful connections you want.
Some emotional hurdles make it difficult to build or maintain intimacy in a relationship. You can get rid of these problems by talking to your relationship counselor or a therapist. You can attend some workshops to understand the highs and lows of relationships.
