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Proven Ways a Wife Can Improve the Intimacy in Her Marriage

By: Author Jeff Campbell

Posted on Last updated:

Categories Improve Your Relationship

A lack of intimacy is a normal thing that often happens in marriages. And research has found that at least 15% of all marriages are sexless. And if you’re a wife, here’s how to be more intimate with your husband.

As a general rule, a wife can increase intimacy with their husband by being honest and open, letting him know what her needs are, and for both partners to understand each other’s love languages. But also consider working with a therapist to work through issues.

You should assess your relationship honestly and find out the core issues causing the lack of intimacy. Then, work proactively to resolve the problems through communication and commitment.

No one has ever told you that you could solve intimacy issues with your marriage this way, did they?

If you are intrigued to get a detailed view into how these strategies work to improve the level of intimacy in your life, read on!

What are the 4 types of intimacy?

You might already be aware of the four types of intimacy in healthy relationships.

However, it’s always better to take a fresh look at the basics before getting deep into the technicalities of working on your levels of intimacy with your partner.

The four types of intimacy are — physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual intimacy. Let’s take a fresh look at each of them in terms of a healthy marriage.

Physical Intimacy

This indicates how physically close you can be with your partner comfortably, pleasurable, and easily. It also involves how aware you are of each other’s physical space, preferences, and boundaries in terms of comfort and pleasure.

  • Do you feel the warmth of their physical touch comforting at all times? (It’s also okay to not want to be too close sometimes.)
  • Do you know how and where to touch them for their pleasure?
  • Do you know where and how not to touch them?
  • Do you have unfettered access to each other’s physical space at all times?

All these questions determine how physically intimate you are with your partner.

Mental Intimacy

This is intellectual intimacy. It deals with the realms of ideas, concepts, and perceptions.

  • How similar or dissimilar are your ideas on general, common everyday issues?
  • How do your ideas and perceptions on marriage and togetherness match each other?
  • Do you often feel like discussing a topic or incident with each other to your heart’s content?
  • How much do you feel you are on the same wavelength in any given situation or common interests?
  • Can you usually share what’s going on in your mind without any fear or censorship with your partner?

Emotional Intimacy

This is perhaps the trickiest type of intimacy to grasp among the four. It deals with the aspects of feelings and emotions.

These are the question to ask yourself to measure your level of emotional closeness with your partner:

  • How often do you struggle to understand why your partner is sad or happy?
  • How often do you feel baffled by their behavior or responses to incidents?
  • How often can you sense you two are having the same emotional state?
  • Can you laugh or cry openly and share your emotional thoughts with each other without fear of judgment?

Spiritual Intimacy

This one is about how compatible your worldviews are as life partners.

The pivotal question to ask here is:

  • How much mutual understanding do you have about each other’s ideas of life, existence, meaning, purpose, and other core concepts related to being a human?
  • How far removed or closely matched are those ideas between you two?
  • Do the differences in ideas bother you or inspire you to learn from each other?

To be a well-rounded marriage, two people should have a balanced level of intimacy in all four kinds of intimacy.

Lacking in any one kind may hamper others.

What causes a lack of intimacy in marriage?

There are literally myriad reasons that can cause a lack of intimacy in a marriage.

The major reasons are:

1. Mismatched libido

If the level of energy and drive towards life as a whole and sex drive, in particular, is not matched to a sufficient level between two partners, lack of intimacy ensues as a natural consequence.

2. Lack of trust

Trust in a marriage suffers the most when there’s cheating involved. Other less serious incidents, like being caught lying or concealing stuff, can also hamper trust. A lack of trust can surely impact the level of intimacy.

3. Stress

Stress is another common reason behind declining intimacy between couples. Financial stress or professional stress is the most potent destroyer among them all.

4. Resentment

It’s a very common occurrence in marriages when little disagreements and heartaches compound to create lasting resentments, which in turn, lowers intimacy and feeling of closeness.

5. Kids

Having kids and being too focused on raising them is also another factor that can contribute to declining intimacy among couples.

6. Work-life balance

If you or your partner is too focused on work, the other partner can often feel ignored or not cared for enough resulting in an overall lack of intimacy in the romantic relationship.

7. Major life changes

Major life changes or incidents, like illnesses and grief of losing loved ones, can change people emotionally and start to cause a lack of intimacy in a romantic partnership.

8. Unresolved Trauma

Unresolved conflict resulting from trauma responses or childhood experiences can cause one partner to become unable to bond and grow an intimate connection.

No matter the reason behind your lack of intimacy in marriage, there are ways to work on it and improve.

It’s not uncommon to see terrible marriages recover with earnest effort and turn out to be wonderful later on. Want to know more about the chances of your marriage lasting without intimacy? I strongly recommend checking out my recent article on whether a marriage can last without intimacy.

Just click that link to read it on my site.

How do couples build intimacy?

If you find yourself in a marriage where you feel the level of intimacy is not enough for you or your partner, then be assured that all is not lost. There’s still hope for you to build intimacy and have a fulfilling married life together.

Remember what I said at the beginning? It all comes down to transparency, communication skills, action, and commitment.

Here’s a step-by-step guide for you to build intimacy in your life:

  1. The first step is to be honest with yourself about your lack of intimacy. Sit and think calmly with a clear and transparent mind about the four kinds of intimacy in your married life. Try to uncover the lies, if any, that you are telling yourself to truly find out the factors causing the lack of intimacy.
  2. Once you find out the reasons, it’s now time to use communication. Sit with your partner and frankly discuss your findings. Transparently open up to each other to assess and analyze all the aspects that are blocking intimacy. Tell them your plans of working together to fix things. Show your honesty and resolve to bring them on board.
  3. Now, it’s time for action. You already have brought all the relationship issues under daylight and have sorted out the actions to take during the communication phase. Now keep trying out all the possible actions that you think would help to increase your intimacy with your partner. Continue active communication on a regular basis with your husband on how your techniques are working. Tweak your actions and try out different things.
  4. The final step is being committed to the process, being patient, and giving it time. Marriage is a long game and requires a lot of hard work and determination to make it tick. On top of that, your situation of lacking intimacy is an added pressure on your marriage. So, having immense commitment and determination is of paramount importance to cross the long way to success.

As far as the actions to take to fix or rebuild intimacy, it largely depends on the causes that are blocking intimacy in your marriage.

Let’s take a look at some of the things you can do to build or fix intimacy based on the biggest reasons for the lack of intimacy.

How do you fix lost intimacy?

Whether you are trying to build intimacy first time from the ground up or attempting to fix lost intimacy, the action items would be similar in nature and would depend on the reasons behind the lack of intimacy.

You have to follow the same four-step process I have outlined above to find out the reasons, determine an action plan, and take action through communication and commitment. It may take a long time, but it works.

Here are the most prominent action items proven to improve intimacy in marriages:

1. Address Physical Health Conditions

If the reason behind your lack of intimacy is any health conditions like vaginal dryness or erectile issues, seeking medical attention is the first and perhaps the only way forward.

Many different types of health conditions can mess up the levels of libido and the ability to be physically intimate. So, even if you think you are alright physically, it can never hurt to get a thorough checkup done. It also comes with added health benefits.

2. Address Mental Health Issues

Mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, and unresolved trauma are other major causes of lack of intimacy and sexual desire in marriages.

If you are suffering from any of these or similar issues, the first thing to do is to consult a mental health professional or family therapist to find out ways to improve.

3. Work on Lifestyle Concerns

After proper analysis, if you find out that your lifestyle is causing the lack of intimacy, you are in for luck. Lifestyle issues are easier to fix than physical and mental conditions.

But you have to be committed to mending your ways and making compromises.

For example, if a messed-up work-life balance is causing the issue, you might have to compromise a bit on the work side and find out ways to get more time for family. If your kids are eating up too much time, energy, and focus, consider getting childcare help at home.

4. Schedule Experiential Intimacy Time

Another proven way to improve true intimacy in your marriage as a wife is to schedule a distraction-free together time with your husband on a regular basis.

It doesn’t have to be only for sexual experiences. You can use this time to simply talk to each other in a carefree environment, exchange non-sexual touch, and just be there for each other fully.

5. Explore Different Ways of Having Intimate Moments

A widespread misconception is that sex has to be penetrative. But it’s far from the truth. There are numerous other ways to pleasure each other without involving penetration.

Be open to each other about your deepest desires and experiment with what satisfies you and your husband. There’s no shame in going the extra mile when it comes to pleasure in marriage.

6. Try a Marriage Counselor or Sex Therapy

Throughout the whole four-step process, if you struggle to pinpoint the causes and solutions, never hesitate to seek professional help.

A relationship coach, marriage counselor, or sex therapist can help us in unexpected ways. They have years of experience dealing with many different kinds of marriages, and they know what’s going on inside out.

Are you wondering what more can you do to revive your marriage that has lost all the spark? 

Don’t miss my recent article, where I talk all about the best ways to revive a marriage. I get into 29 of the best ways to do it, including the 1 surefire tip guaranteed to double the intimacy.

Just click that link to read it on my site.

How do you know if you struggle with intimacy?

I suggest you go through the first section of this article on the four types of intimacy once again and ponder the questions suggested there.

If you try to think and find out the answers to those questions, you will get a fairly good idea about how much togetherness you have with your partner.

For this section, let’s specifically focus on the sexual relationship aspect of marriage, as that’s what mostly differentiates marriage from other types of relationships.

So, how do you know you are struggling with physical intimacy in your marriage? Or are you having enough sex?

Although there are no standards for how often married couples should have sex, a recent study conducted by Society for Personality and Social Psychology has found that couples having sex once a week are the happiest. This study also found that happiness levels stay the same even if you have more sex than the once-a-week baseline.

On the other hand, experts unanimously agree that marriages that have had sex less than 10 times within a year can be considered sexless marriages.

However, the most important thing to point out here is how happy, content, and fulfilled you are with the amount of sex or physical affection you are getting in your marriage.

Although rare, sexless marriages also result in a long-term relationship and fulfilling companionship if both partners accept and respect the situation. At the end of the day, when love, respect, and companionship reigns supreme, happiness is not too hard to find.

But if you suspect you struggle with intimacy, here are a few signs to be sure:

  • You or your husband feel afraid, anxious, or reluctant to initiate sex.
  • You or your partner experience repeated rejections of their advances to initiate sex?
  • Your partner openly expresses their dissatisfaction about the lack of intimacy.
  • Moments of intimacy do not make you or your partner feel sufficiently satisfied. 

If you see any of these signs, it’s time to go back to the sections above on fixing intimacy in a marriage.

How do you rebuild intimacy in a sexless marriage?

There are complications and debates regarding what qualifies as a sexless marriage.

However, as mentioned above, experts suggest that couples having sex 0 to 10 times are considered to be in a sexless marriage.

So, what does that mean for couples? Is there any hope of rebuilding intimacy in a sexless marriage?

Let’s return to the four-step process of building intimacy in a marriage. 

  1. Find out the causes by being honest and transparent with yourself. 
  2. Communicate with your partner and find out a course of action. 
  3. Proactively carry out the agreed-upon actions.
  4. Commit wholeheartedly to the process of building intimacy and making it work.

But what if the causes are irreparable?

What if trying everything failed? 

It’s time to have some serious talk. Ask yourself the following questions:

  • How hard is it for you and your partner to be in a marriage without sex?
  • How much love do you feel for each other? (Remember, being sexless doesn’t mean loveless.)
  • Would having a deeply emotional, intellectual, and spiritual intimacy overcome the lack of physical connection?
  • Would it be possible for you to have a happy and healthy intimate relationship with minimal sex or no sex?

Remember that many couples are in a happy and vibrant state despite being in a sexless relationship. For many people, sex doesn’t hold that much importance for being in a loving relationship.

On the other hand, for most couples, living without sex can simply be impossible.

So, it’s totally up to you to decide what would be best for both of you. Above all, you should also remember that after trying everything else, if you decide to go for a divorce, it’s a totally acceptable and respectable decision on your part.

Why would a man stay in a sexless marriage?

As I have already mentioned, sex is not the only thing important for being in a loving, caring, and fulfilling relationship for many people.

Men and women can both be happy in a sexless relationship, given all other good qualities and kinds of intimacy are fulfilling enough.

Apart from that, here are a few major reasons for men to stay in a sexless marriage:

  • The love a man has for her wife is much more than the want of sex. He wants to be together even if they are unable to have sex for some reason or other.
  • Their being together feels so emotionally and spiritually fulfilling that the lack of sex doesn’t overpower the happiness in the relationship.
  • After initial struggles in dealing with a sexless marriage and the frustrations associated with it, he has accepted their condition and decided to build a happy nest despite the challenges.
  • The man is afraid to live alone and values companionship with his wife.
  • Doesn’t want to go through the emotional and financial burdens of getting a divorce.
  • He wants to keep the family intact for their kids.
  • He wants to keep the marriage intact due to social pressures. 
  • He wants to fulfill their marriage vows by being by his wife’s side no matter what happens. 

The bottom line is – contrary to popular beliefs, men can also live without sex.

Although it would be difficult for most men, they can do it for many reasons; love and companionship are the two major ones.

If you are starting to suspect that your man is dissatisfied with the marriage and could be contemplating divorce, read my recent article.

In it, I dispel all confusion and learn about the signs he might be thinking of divorce. I also talk about how you can stop it from happening!

Just click that link to read it on my site.

How can a husband help his wife to be more intimate?

When a marriage suffers from a lack of intimacy, there are little things that both partners can do for each other that would help increase the level of intimacy.

The first thing for a man would be to make it totally clear to his wife that whatever they are going through is okay with him. This will enable the wife to get into a relaxed mental state to overcome the obstacles.

If the man is not happy and expresses his anger and frustration openly toward his wife, it would only make her more distant.

The husband should keep open communication with his wife to discuss all the issues that are causing the fear of intimacy between them.

He should be mindful of his wife’s preferences in terms of physical intimacy and respect her boundaries.

If the level or type of physical intimacy is not enough for the husband, he should also openly communicate with love and respect and try to slowly work things out the way it suits both of them.

Offer his wife attention, care, acts of service, and enough time to grow the relationship into higher levels of sexual activity, emotional connection, and spiritual intimacy.

It would also help a lot if a husband could foster trust between them so that they can become best friends to share all their thoughts and ideas without hesitation.

Conclusion

You will find a lot of advice online on the best ways to improve intimacy in your marriage as a wife.

Often, we see simple tips like trying to replicate a date night, intimate conversations over a cell phone, going on a weekend getaway, giving each other more quality time, and others.

All these are great tips. However, nothing will work if you do not really dive deep into exactly what’s causing the lack of intimacy and specifically target those issues.

That’s why the best way a wife can improve intimacy in her marriage is through following the four-step process of transparency, good communication, pro-action, and commitment.

Image by Chu Viết Đôn from Pixabay

Jeff Campbell
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