What's Intimacy?
***This article was originally published for Giddy***
The best lovers know that sex doesn’t end when you roll over and go to sleep. There is a lot of emphasis on the big bang but the more you’re able to maintain intimacy between sex, the more fulfilling the sex will be. Author and researcher Brene Brown has turned the spotlight on vulnerability and its crucial role in unlocking our ability to experience love and connection. According to Brown, vulnerability is “uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.” While uncertainty and risk alone can be intimidating, emotional exposure seems mysterious and elusive, especially for those of us who have been taught to suppress our emotions. It’s not uncommon for men to completely cover or ignore their feelings for much of their life. So it’s no wonder that when it’s time to open up emotionally, many men struggle with expressing themselves.
Intimacy is not oversharing or launching into a monologue about your life, it’s about sharing yourself in relation to another person. Do you treat your partner as a whole and complete person? Or do you focus only on their flaws and ways they are not meeting your expectations? Culturally, we see talking as the primary mode of creating intimacy. However, intimacy can be demonstrated in many different ways.
If you want to create more intimacy and share your authentic self but you’re not sure how to get started, there are tools that can help you understand yourself and help you express yourself more clearly.
The 5 Love Languages
The 5 Love Languages has been a popular tool for evaluating intimacy styles for decades. A love language is how we express love and affection toward another person and how we receive messages of love from our partners. While most people can appreciate all five of the languages, we tend to respond most to one or two.
The five Love Languages are: Verbal affirmations or hearing and saying kind things to each other. Doing favors or acts of service such as helping with chores around the house. Physical touch that doesn’t lead to sex such as long hugs or a gentle back rub. Spending quality time together without distractions or obligations. Receiving gifts that are meaningful.
When you discover your love language, you can share with your partner what that language means to you. You should ask your partner to take the assessment to learn about their love language too.
The Erotic Blueprint
While the love languages are one way to identify how you are affectionate with your partner, your Erotic Blueprint will help identify how prefer to express yourself sexually. According to the Erotic Blueprint, there are five main erotic types: Energetic types are focused on teasing, sexual tension, and anticipation of sex. Sensual types experience their peak arousal from physical sensations like smell, sounds, and touch. Sexual types are aroused by genitals and intercourse itself. Kinky types are most turned on by the taboo and anything that seems “naughty”. Shapeshifter types are just thrilled by their partner’s arousal and are open to being whatever their partner needs.
This is another great tool to share with your partner and even if you already have a sexual routine, you might be surprised by the results! While no one is always going to be one “type” all the time, it’s interesting to have a new perspective on yourself and how you find pleasure in the world.
The Gottman Institute
John and Julie Gottman have created an extensive collection of resources for couples including quizzes such as “Do you trust your partner?”, “How well do you connect emotionally with your partner?”, and “What is the state of your sex life?” These quizzes can be helpful in reading your relationship map and show you different paths that your intimate and sex life can take. They also offer workshops, retreats, books, and worksheets all based on decades of relationship research. A great benefit to the Gottman resources is that it not only validates so many of the struggles a that couples suffer through behind closed doors, but also offers the tools to build a stronger sexual relationship.
No matter what your quiz results are, you are still the expert of yourself. Still, openness and seeing different perspectives is a key component of emotional intelligence and maturity so it’s worth challenging yourself to be self-reflective.
So what does this have to do with sex again?
Sharing yourself with another person through sex is only one way to be intimate. And when sex is the only way you express intimacy, the relationship becomes fragile and the hot sex starts to cool off fast. Strong relationships are not built on one form of intimacy and being able to share yourself and your needs is another way to strengthen relationship bonds.
Simply knowing your Love Language or Erotic Blueprint, or buying a library of relationship books does not amount to an intimate relationship. However, clarifying and putting language to parts of yourself that you can share with your partner is a good foundation to build intimacy...and keep sex spicy!