Are you looking for answers on how to spice up your love life? There are ways you can do to increase emotional intimacy in your relationship.

Here are 7 tips to help you relax with someone special

Increase Emotional Intimacy in Relationships

“It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.” – Jane Austen

“He was as remote as the dark side of the moon. When he left, I returned his mail, having written on the envelopes ‘Never known at this address’. Because although we were married for nine years, I really do feel I never really knew him. And he didn’t know me at all.”

Strange one, this: how can we live with someone, see them every day, sleep with them (Biblically and otherwise), share all kinds of experiences, but still not feel emotionally intimate with them? Candice was telling me the reasons why she felt she’d had to divorce her husband.

“It wasn’t that he did anything wrong. It’s just that he doesn’t really do intimacy; looking back, we were never close.”

As she spoke, I pondered what ’emotional intimacy’ really means.

Getting emotionally intimate

Emotional intimacy is a sense of closeness to another person; a real sense of two-way empathy. When we’re emotionally intimate, we can share personal feelings, display affection, and not be dismissed or judged harshly but accepted ‘in the round’.

I love the idea that a real friend “is one who can see straight through you and still enjoy the view.” And some romantic partners describe their special person as their ‘best friend’ – a perfect combination of physical and emotional intimacy.

Emotional intimacy can exist between friends, family relations, and lovers. Some people even feel emotional intimacy with their pet. There’s no doubt that a sense of shared intimacy is important for both mental and physical health (1).

So you have intimacy when you feel spontaneous, natural, and trusting they feel as connected to you. But it goes deeper than that.

A sense of shared perception

I think emotional intimacy is also a sense of seeing life through the same eyes, sharing experiences in similar ways and feeling connected in knowing what one another would probably think about something, as in: “John would have loved this…”

Emotional intimacy is so important; but what if you find it difficult to let yourself feel close and intimate? Perhaps you find it difficult to relax and be intimate with people, even when you’ve known them for a long time. These emotional intimacy tips should help you to connect more deeply with people in your life.