Understanding Intimacy

Have you ever met a couple whose marriage seemed to glow, even in the common, everyday times? Intimacy creates that glow. It is the warm core of every successful marriage. Sadly, many couples have lost their intimacy. Some never even had any intimacy to lose. Instead of a warm glow, they experience a constant chill. And, like cold people everywhere, they cover up to protect themselves.

In a survey of married couples, family therapist Stuart Johnson verified the importance of intimacy to a successful marriage. He found that all the happily married couples he surveyed had developed healthy intimacy in four vital areas:

• Verbal intimacy: talking together and understanding each other
• Action intimacy: doing things together that you both enjoy
• Problem-solving intimacy: finding wise, workable solutions to common challenges
• Sexual intimacy: sexual love that stimulates and satisfies both of you

As a follower of Jesus, I would add another vital expression of intimacy to those four

• Spiritual intimacy: a unified love for God and desire to please Him in every way.

The specific ways that a married couple experience intimacy in each area will differ depending on their personality, lifestyle, and stage of life. But you will find them in every vibrant marriage.

If this five-fold intimacy can do so much for a marriage, why do so many couples fail to experience it? We'll look at that in more detail in other sections of this study. For now, here is the short, essential answer: Couples do not experience intimacy because, in our present human condition, intimacy is neither easy nor automatic.

What is the root cause of our frustrations in developing intimacy? To help us understand that, let's look at the story of Adam and Eve. You can read it in Genesis, chapters two and three, but for now here is a synopsis of the story: God created man and woman in perfect innocence. He made them to live together as one flesh , a condition unique to marriage and the closest possible expression of human intimacy. Although they were naked, absolutely uncovered to each other, they felt no shame and no need to hide. Sounds perfect, doesn't it? It was. But not for long.

Because God wanted genuine people, not programmable robots, He created that first couple with the capacity to make choices, whether good or bad. Eventually, they made a very bad one. That willful, determined decision to ignore God's command caused sin to enter the human race. Sin polluted everything, including their relationship. God had given Adam and Eve one restriction: they were not to eat of a certain tree. But the devil did what he always does. He tempted them, assuring them that God had lied to them and was keeping something good from them. So they ate the fruit that God had said was not theirs to eat.

The moment they tasted that forbidden fruit, they felt an emotion they had never before known. That emotion was shame. It made them want to cover themselves, to hide from one another and from God. Can you see the difference? Before the fruit, intimacy was automatic. They had no reason to hide and nothing to fear. After they ate it, shame came, and with it suspicion and separation. What once came easily, without a worry or a question, now became so difficult it must have seemed impossible.

None of us know the intimate details of Adam and Eve's relationship. We dont know how they talked, or laughed, or made love. But we do know that for the first time they felt the need to cover up and hide. Try to imagine that. Try to imagine feeling shame for the first time. It isn't easy, for we have never known the pristine innocence of that first man and woman. To some extent we have lived in hiding all our lives.

People are starving for true intimacy. But because of sin there are forces in us that frustrate our attempts to nurture it. That is the human condition. Too often what we want and need, we fear and resist. In fact, at the heart of shame is a fear of, and expectation of, rejection. Psychologist Paul Gilbert describes shame as ". . . an extreme form of the fear of the loss of approval."

With shame comes suspicion. We find it hard to trust and constantly wonder what others really think of us. And, since shame and suspicion tend to cause isolation, we find ourselves withdrawing from each other, becoming separated.

Shame, suspicion, and separation. These three obstacles to intimacy form the basis of our fears in any relationship, whether with God, friends, or spouses. Now perhaps we understand why intimacy is so difficult to develop and maintain. We are all people in hiding, afraid to reveal ourselves.

Think, Act, Pray

1. Early in your marriage, which type of intimacy was easiest for you and your spouse?

2. Which type of intimacy has been the most difficult for you to develop and sustain?

3. Think about some of the ways you have seen the effects of shame, suspicion and separation in your marriage. What are some ways those three conditions frustrate intimacy in your marriage?

The next article, Intimacy Lost, will help you understand what we need to develop intimacy.