Intimacy in Relationships: How to Rediscover Lost Closeness

Achieving intimacy in relationships takes trust and courage. Knowing we need to let others see all of us is just the beginning. After we realize and accept how critical it is to allow ourselves to be truly vulnerable, it’s still very hard to do. This is where the courage part comes in.

It’s a huge emotional risk to put our hearts in someone else’s hands, not knowing what they will do with it.

How to Open Ourselves to Intimacy

It can help us to expand the bounds of our own vulnerability if we take small steps.

To slowly begin to open up and get more acquainted with the practice of being transparent and honest about our feelings and thoughts.

It’s best to start doing this in low-risk situations, to avoid potentially having our vulnerability back-fire and send us scrambling back into our own shells.

We have opportunities to practice being vulnerable every day.

Here’s an example. When asked how we’re doing, our answer is usually “Fine.” Synonyms for fine include excellent, first-rate, exceptional, magnificent, splendid, outstanding, prime and superb. When was the last time you actually felt “splendid”? (Wouldn’t it be amazing if that was our go-to state of being?)

Granted, the greeting of “How are you?” has become the equivalent of “Hello”, and so we often reply without much elaboration. 

But there are times when these are opportunities for a deeper conversation. We need to be observant to notice when they present themselves. Many times, we do notice – yet still fail to take advantage of them.

In fact, many of us don’t have any people who we feel comfortable having a completely open, honest conversation with. 

Sadly, we keep powerful thoughts, feelings, and emotions locked up inside – for a narrow-minded audience of one.

Why Is Intimacy So Important?

This is a real problem. Among other things, lack of intimacy in relationships fuels the fire of exaggerated comparisons to others.

Since we rarely allow ourselves to share fears, troubles, short-comings, failures, and disappointments, it’s easy to believe that those around us are, truly, doing “fine”.

This is unfortunate. And today’s social media frenzy can make it appear that we’re the only ones with uneventful lives.

The two combined can create misconceptions about the quality of life everyone else is experiencing.

The skewed impression we get from other people’s “life highlight reel” is that they are all successful, having a great time, and looking better than ever.

But the truth is, most everyone is struggling, in one way or another. When we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, and have more intimate, open conversations, it helps to shine a light on other’s true circumstances. It can also help us avoid the pitfalls of uninformed comparisons.

These pitfalls can make us feel poorly and feed our tendency to judge others too harshly. In short, allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and transparent helps us to become more compassionate and kinder, both to others and to ourselves. But allowing ourselves to be vulnerable is challenging and as noted above, takes courage.

Intimacy in Relationships

Do you feel as though you have intimacy in relationships? When was the last time you were truly open and authentic in a conversation?

Next time you have the opportunity to take this risk, do it.

Let’s consciously seek out people who make us feel safe and who we can have intimate discussions with. And let’s make more time for them.

Because they deserve more of us.

Please comment and let us all know what intimacy in relationships looks and feels like in your life.

We all deserve the support and love sincere, healthy relationships can provide.

Thank you as always for reading.

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Joan from Kindness-Compassion-and-Coaching.com

Joan Morabito Senio is the founder of Kindness-Compassion-and-Coaching.com.  Joan’s career includes leadership positions serving both public and private sector health care organizations. Joan’s focus is now on providing trauma-informed, compassionate coaching resources to support both individuals and coaching practitioners. She is a certified Neuroscience Coach, member of the International Organization of Life Coaches, serves as a thought-leader for KuelLife.com and is also a regular contributor to PsychReg and Sixty and Me. You can read more about Joan here: Joan Senio.