4 Ways to Increase Your Intimacy Quotient with Your Husband

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How to build intimacy with your husband? Before you go ahead with it, step back and reflected on what “intimacy” means in your marriage?  The first thought that might come to mind is “sex”, right? And that is indeed an important form of intimacy and one that gives great depth and pleasure to your marital relationship.  But let’s go a little further with the idea of intimacy, examining a second form: emotional intimacy.

You’ve probably got a great amount of this in your marriage already—the feeling of trust, love, safety and closeness that develops when two people are bonded by matrimony.  But just as you can work to increase your sexual intimacy and the pleasure that comes with that, you can also work to increase your level of emotional intimacy with your husband.  And the best thing about this? It’s not really “work”, but it will pay out in great benefits that give a greater depth and strength to your relationship. Let’s look at four ways you can build intimacy with your husband.

1. Go to bed together each evening

You both have busy lives, and your evenings are just as hectic as your days spent at the office. Getting dinner on the table, helping the children with their homework, their baths and their own bedtime rituals can leave you with the urge to just chill out in front of your pc or the television once all of those non-spousal obligations are done. More and more, you find yourself saying “goodnight” to your husband as he makes his way to bed, then going back to your online reading or watching your series, only joining your husband once your eyes can no longer focus on the screen. This does not help build intimacy with your husband.  

Try going to bed at the same time as your husband.  Commit to doing this for one month and see what blossoms in your relationship.  You don’t have to go to bed with him with the intention of having sex (although if that happens, all the better!) but just to be in physical contact with each other at the end of the evening.  So much magic can happen when you devote yourself to a common bedtime: your communication will flow as you both relax into the pillows, your happiness will increase as you get that skin to skin contact, and you open yourselves to more sex because you are both there, present and entwined.  You won’t get this if one of you is bedded down for the evening and the other sitting in their chair catching up on email or scrolling through their Facebook feed.

2. Get back to doing things together

Remember when you were first dating and you organized your evenings and weekends to be with your guy?  As you fell in love, you sought activities that would allow you to spend time with each other: hiking, dancing, working out, taking a cooking class. Then marriage happened, and because you were now living under the same roof, it no longer seemed as important to plan dedicated daily or weekly activities that you two would do together.

To build intimacy with your husband, get back to that “dating” mindset and involved yourselves in something you can both do together be it daily or on weekends.  Volunteer to be that couple that organizes the yearly neighborhood block party. Offer to be the parent chaperones at your children’s school dance.

Daily dates could be meeting each evening at the gym to work out together, or take a swim together.  Ideas for weekly together time might include enrolling in a Salsa dance class, or a foreign language class, or a French pastry class.  Watch your level of intimacy grow as you both learn a new skill and talk about what you are accomplishing together.

3. Praise your husband

We often forget to show our gratitude to our spouse when we’ve been together for years.  The chores he performs around the house, or how he contributes the to the children’s upbringing. These acts become normal and we forget to acknowledge him.  Make it a point to praise your husband at least once a day. By doing this, not only will he feel validated and flooded with pleasure and pride, but you will be reminding yourself of what a great man your married.  And that will increase your intimacy level as you step back and say “Yes, this man is really my better half!”

4. Don’t shy away from the hard conversations

It seems counterintuitive to think that having a tough conversation with your husband would add to your feelings of intimacy towards him, but it is true.  Not addressing something, keeping it bottled up inside of you, will only build resentment—and resentment is the opposite of intimacy.

So open yourselves up to talking about the hard stuff—whether it be about family, sex, emotional needs—whatever it is, find a good time to sit down and begin the conversation.  You will see that as you work your way through the hard stuff, you will both feel a level of closeness because you’ve made yourselves vulnerable and open to each other’s truest feelings.

Love is an action verb

The intimacy in our marriage isn’t based on some grand vacation we take or fancy, expensive date night we have. Intimacy is built on the choices we make each day.  So try some of these tips and see what kind of intimacy you can create with your husband.