Obstacles to Intimacy in Marriage: Reconnecting with Your Spouse

One of the keys to success in marriage is maintaining intimacy. Intimacy is about connection, being and feeling understood by the other person. When two people understand each other, and couple it with mutual appreciation and compassion, it makes for a rich and dynamic relationship. The difficulty with intimacy is that it can be hard to maintain, as many obstacles interfere with maintaining intimacy.

Before exploring the obstacles that undermine intimacy in marriage, it’s helpful to firstly understand the facets of intimacy. They present themselves differently in each relationship, but keeping an eye on deepening intimacy in these areas will help a marriage flourish.

Different types of intimacy in marriage

The term “intimacy” usually conjures up images of physical intimacy. To be sure, physical intimacy is one important form of intimacy. However, physical intimacy is only one of several types of intimacy.

Being complex, people connect in a variety of ways. Knowing these types of intimacy can help you ask yourself whether you and your spouse are connecting on those levels. It can set the stage for exploring different sides of yourselves and your relationship.

Spiritual intimacy

As beings made in God’s image, we are more than just flesh and blood. We are also spiritual beings and can relate to God in a meaningful way. We draw strength, direction, meaning, and a sense of purpose from God, and this shapes and influences everything else. Spiritual intimacy is praying together, sharing what you’ve been learning from God lately, or talking through the areas of struggle that God has been working on with you.

Emotional intimacy

Emotional intimacy is about sharing what you’re feeling with your spouse. Sometimes those emotions are raw, unformed, and unprocessed. It can be positive, such as joy or anticipation, but they can also be heavier, as in grief, sadness, and loneliness. Emotional intimacy lets your spouse know what’s happening in your emotional landscape and allows them room to share and meet us in our highs or lows.

Physical intimacy

Physical intimacy is not just sex, though it certainly includes it. Physical intimacy includes foot massages, kissing, rubbing your spouse’s back, holding their hand, giving them a hug in greeting or as a form of support, helping them shave, dancing together, going for a hike together, and so much more. Our bodies are so expressive, and we can use them to indicate care, affection, and a deep association with another person.

Intellectual intimacy

Mental or intellectual intimacy is about being able to express ideas, thoughts, dreams, and hopes with your spouse. When we share and appreciate one another’s thought life, that too fosters a close connection. These thoughts or ideas can be mundane or epic, relating to domestic life but also waxing philosophical or abstract.

Our ideas and thoughts are an important part of who we are and being able to share them without fear of being shut down, ridiculed, or ignored helps to make a person feel seen, known, and heard.

Social intimacy

In addition to being spiritual, emotional, and physical beings, we are also deeply social and relational beings. We interact with others in a variety of settings, exchanging ideas, laughing, having fun, or playing. Being able to do things you enjoy together, like hobbies, sports, cinema, or theatre, is part of cultivating this form of intimacy.

Intimacy is multidimensional. There may be facets in your marriage that are better developed than others or areas you maybe haven’t even explored together. Maybe you are actively nurturing intimacy in different areas. Whatever the case may be, cultivating intimacy in all areas will help deepen the connection between you and your spouse.

Challenges or obstacles to intimacy in marriage

Being intimate with your spouse is a gift to your marriage. When you both feel known, seen, and heard, the connection is felt deeply. That allows the relationship to flourish and overcome various challenges that come your way. However, it is not always easy to initiate and maintain intimacy in a marriage for various reasons. Challenges or obstacles to intimacy come in many forms.

Being busy

Whether one or both spouses are working, a key obstacle in cultivating intimacy is simply being too busy. It may not necessarily be anyone’s fault, but a couple can drift apart from each other because life is rushing past them both. They don’t have room to slow down and catch up with each other.

A marriage can function without intimacy for a while. You can talk but find yourself mainly talking about the things that allow the household to function – who is doing which chore, what activity is next on the calendar, where you will spend the next holiday. However, if the conversations never go past this, never touching the heart level, trouble may lurk.

Lack of intentionality in connecting

Alongside being busy is another intimacy killer, apathy. Your life might not be that busy, but you can settle into a casual acquaintanceship with each other. You can accept a comfortable pattern where you don’t interfere with each other too much. Perhaps that is due to some unresolved conflict, or past attempts to connect that didn’t pan out as hoped.

Whatever the reason, intimacy can die a slow and quiet death in a marriage because it takes intentionality to initiate it and go past casual conversation toward more vulnerable discussions.

Ill health

Illness can make it difficult to connect in a couple’s typical ways. That doesn’t mean intimacy is impossible; it just means it changes forms and emphasis in that season of illness. Acts such as reading to your sick spouse, feeding them, and simply being present can help to maintain that vital connection.

Infidelity

An affair breaches trust between a couple. When you don’t trust someone, it’s hard to be vulnerable and share with them. Whatever the reasons for the infidelity, it makes it hard for the couple to relate to one another in the same way as before. Trust and intimacy can be rebuilt, but it takes time, intentionality, and accountability.

Stress

People respond differently when they feel stressed or under threat. Some people shut down, while others become irritable. These responses can make communicating freely quite difficult. The stress may be from work, finances, or conflict in the relationship, but it can ultimately prevent intimacy from developing.

Communication styles

Everyone has a dominant communication style. If, for instance, yours is an aggressive communication style, it may prevent your spouse from feeling safe enough to share their thoughts because you come across as domineering or even dismissive. Becoming aware of your communication style helps you moderate the impression you make on others, creating space for your spouse to be themselves.

Emotional avoidance

For a variety of reasons, including trauma, your spouse might struggle to connect with their own emotions, let alone articulate them for you. Emotional avoidance is discomfort with your own or another person’s emotions generally, or specific emotions such as anger or sadness.

There may be areas of your life together that remain unexplored; no-go areas that you don’t share or open up to one another about and this can create a feeling of distance with one another.

Moving toward one another – reconnecting with your spouse

Intimacy isn’t always a straightforward journey. Challenges come up, whether rooted in the marriage itself, or flowing from past or outside events that shape the spouses into who they are today.

It is possible, however, to move toward deeper intimacy with your spouse through help from a Christian marriage counselor. Your counselor can help you work through difficulties you may have with communication and addressing past trauma that may affect your relationship here and now.

Christian marriage counseling can help a couple establish new patterns in their relationship that will allow for deeper intimacy and flourishing. Reach out to our offices today to speak with a Christian marriage counselor who will guide you in deepening your intimacy with your spouse.