What is Intimacy in Marriage? Sex, Communication, or Closeness?

What is intimacy in marriage? Spoiler alert. It's not just sex now. Sex is part of it. We're going to talk about that. But it's so much more than that. And intimacy is vital to keep your marriage going strong.

That's right. Today we are addressing intimacy and talking about the three types of intimacy. Make sure you stick around until the end, because we're going to tell you the most important key to having better intimacy. We're Dave and Ashley Willis, and you're watching the Naked Marriage podcast. All right, let's dive in, sweetie. So the first question is, what exactly is intimacy? Let me tell you. Years ago, I know that we were. We were young pastors. Well, Dave was a young pastor, and I was along for the ride as a pastor's wife. And I remember that somebody blessed us with going to a pastor's retreat. We were so excited. I don't think we'd even, like, really left our kids to do something like that in a while. And we had some very little ones at home, and we had the best time, and it was so sweet. But there was one couple and that spoke at this retreat among, you know, in front of all these pastors, and they kept using the word intimacy, but we ended up. It kind of became an inside joke with us because they would use it like we couldn't tell if it was for sex. Like a code word for sex.

Yeah. They wouldn't say. They were talking. They would not say sex, clearly.

Well, we think they.

We still don't know, but they were not. They were not making themselves clear.

I mean, like, it was very marketing.

They say in marriage, you give comfort, encouragement, and intimacy. And they would make these kind of awkward hand gestures where you're like, I don't know right now, the way they're talking. If they're talking about, like, a foot rub or oral sex, I really don't know.

Or is it anything physical?

We don't know. Or maybe, yeah, maybe they're just talking about, like, reading love poetry to each other. I'm not sure. And I think when it comes to that word intimacy, there is a lot of murkiness. People are like, well, what are we really talking about here? Because the truth is, there are many types of intimacy. There's emotional intimacy, physical intimacy, spiritual intimacy. Sexual intimacy can kind of fuse all those together at once, which is a very important part of marriage. So intimacy 101. We just want to talk in this episode about. What is it? Where do we start? How do we break down the basics of building meaningful relationships? Because intimacy is at the foundation of every healthy relationship, especially. Especially. Answer. Especially in marriage.

That's right. So, guys, just to get real practical, if you Google intimacy, which be careful whenever you're googling anything, but I wanted to get like a dictionary definition of this. And the dictionary, okay, says that intimacy is a noun meaning close familiarity or friendship closeness, such as the intimacy between a husband and wife. So even defining it as, well, you know, the foremost definition of intimacy is that between a husband and wife. Of course, you know, people can talk about intimacy like they're describing. A cozy atmosphere is another use, but it also can mean an intimate act, especially sexual intercourse. Okay. And so I think, you know, in our tagline, we talk about sex intimacy and lifelong love. And the reason we say sex and intimacy as two separate things is that, you know, sex can just be an act and intimacy can just be a film familiarity. But when you have both together.

Yeah.

That's when you really have fireworks happen. Yeah, the fireworks. And the ultimate intimacy in marriage because you're matching, you know, your bringing together the emotional, the physical, the sexual, the spiritual. And it's just a beautiful thing. And so, yeah, gonna talk about the different forms of intimacy. So let's start with emotional.

Ooh, emotional intimacy. Right. And you need all these, by the way.

Yes.

I think like, if you're missing any of these aspects of intimacy, then it's kind of like, you know, like a three legged table. If it's missing a leg or one's really longer or shorter than the other one, that table is going to be so wobbly. So if you're building your marriage kind of on top of that table, so to speak, you've got to have the physical, the emotional and the spiritual intimacy. If one of those is way shorter than another one, that table's all wobbly. So how do you have all three? So emotional intimacy. Emotional intimacy, essentially is when you can share everything that you're feeling and thinking it's letting your spouse really see into your own heart. You know, some people say intimacy could really be divided up into the phrase into me. You see, like you are invited to see inside of my mind, my heart, I'm being vulnerable. Vulnerability is a vital key to intimacy. It's opening yourself up, it's letting the walls down, it's letting go of pretense. It's saying, I want to show you everything that I am. That's why we call this podcast the Naked Marriage. It's not just the physical nakedness, but that very first married couple in the Bible, Adam And Eve, they were naked and unashamed. And that nakedness is a picture of the familiarity, the intimacy, the vulnerability that God designed marriage to have. It's saying, I have nothing to hide from you. There's nothing that you can't see. There's nothing that's off limits to. You see my scars, you see my imperfections, and you love and accept me as I am, and I do the same for you. I'm going to share my fears, my doubts, my hopes, my dreams, my insecurities, my desires, all of it. And I want this relationship to be the safest place on earth where all that can be shared.

I love that. And being the safest place on earth is so essential, because when we are sharing emotional intimacy, it can be kind of scary because we are allowing someone to really see our raw emotions sometimes. And I think so many times in our culture, especially here in America, we're very prideful, right? And a lot of times, too, we can be kind of secretive and when it comes to our emotions, because we're trying to save face or we're trying to maybe just hide our emotions. And, you know, depending on our personality. And what that does in marriage, though, is if we're not being, you know, open about our emotions is we're not really letting our spouse into our world. And so what I've seen happen a lot, maybe in the early years of our marriage and also in a lot of the lives of the couples that we counsel, is that a lot of times we'll end up fighting about something that we don't even realize. Both of us want the same thing, like, the same end goal, but we end up fighting about it because neither one of us have been emotionally intimate. We've not been honest about our emotions. And so we start making assumptions about what our spouse is thinking and feeling, and that just is madness. And like, we. We really found ourselves in this frustrating dynamic years ago when we were first married, and it just was. It just wasn't getting us anywhere. And I remember we just came to a place where we just. We were like, we don't want to do this anymore. We don't want to feel like this anymore. We need to stop trying to act like things are okay when they're not and really just be honest with each other. And ever since we've been doing that, it's, you know, it's not always like we do it great, because, you know, here's the kicker is you want to be emotionally intimate and be honest with your spouse about your emotions, but this doesn't give you license to just unleash on them. Right. And so we had to learn how do we express our emotions honestly, but also in a loving way. And that is that we don't wait to express these emotions until they're so bubbled up, they're so emotional intense, that it comes out almost like, if it's anger, it comes out like we're angry at them, or if it's, you know, disappointment in something and maybe it is them, it comes out like we're just so raging mad at them that it shuts the communication down. And so we really want to just. Honestly, when we start having those feelings of doubt or frustration or whatever it is, that we go to our spouse and say, hey, I'm really struggling today. Like, I really feel frustrated with you, and I'm not even sure if. If you did anything on purpose, but it frustrated me, and I want to talk to you about it. And same for your spouse. Like, if your spouse, you know, comes to you and says, listen, I've just been a little upset with you, and I don't like this feeling, but I want to talk through it. You know, being that safe place means not getting defensive right away, but just really leaning in and listening and saying, well, tell me more about that, because I wasn't frustrated with you. I didn't mean that. But I want to make sure that I'm not putting off some kind of vibe that makes you feel like you can't come to me. Like, I want to be understanding in this way.

Yeah, that's so good. And this safety aspect of feeling safe to share what you're feeling. But like Ashley said, when we're sharing emotional intimacy doesn't mean that we can just kind of emotionally vomit on each other. Because for some folks, like, they try to manipulate situations with their emotions, and they'll pretend that this is emotional intimacy, but really it's emotional sabotage. It's almost like emotional terrorism. You know, when they. They want to scream or they want to. They want to have these kind of fits of anger, rage, or whatever it is to shut down conversation and to kind of get their way and to get the other spouse to cower to them and just try to get them to, like, no, no, no, whatever you want. And that's not healthy communication. I'm not saying there aren't a place for tears or for. For impassioned conversations, of course, but, you know, we've all known people, maybe in our own families, maybe growing up, you had a parent who was like this that they would just elevate their emotion and elevate their volume until everybody else just shut down. And that. That kills intimacy. When intimacy is inviting and it's safe, it's a safe place to. When you are hurting, you can say you're hurting. When you have emotion, you can express that emotion, but you speak the truth. The Bible says in love. And when we're screaming and demanding, that's not truth. In love, you might be saying, well, that's how I'm feeling. Well, there's a healthier way to express how you're feeling. As adults, we have the ability to regulate our emotions in a way that maybe a toddler does not. But if we're trying to stomp around getting our way the way that a toddler might try to. To get candy at the grocery store, that's going to be manipulative and ultimately going to harm the trust in the marriage.

That's such a good point. And you're right, sweetie. We all do have the capacity and the chance to learn how to regulate our emotions. But I feel like there's an epidemic of immature adults out there where we've just not learned how to regulate our emotions. And it could be that you have childhood trauma. It could be that maybe for generations, like all the women in your family just kind of would get emotional and it would shut things down and they'd get their way. Or all the men would just dominate and be emotionally kind of abrasive, and it would shut things down and get their way. I do think sometimes that's what we learn and that's what we end up doing. And so it takes really something that is talked about a lot more lately, which I'm really glad it takes something called emotional intelligence to be able to understand the difference. Now, how do we gain emotional intelligence? We do it by really leaning in and listening more than we talk. And that means, too, that we learn about our own emotions. I mean, sometimes this takes, you know, actual Christian therapy and going through it with someone else who has an objective view, who can say, listen, you know, I empathize with how you feel, because how you feel is how you feel. You can't help how you feel. Sometimes you can't help it. And we don't need to shame each other on how we feel, but how we. How we respond to those feelings and how we share those feelings with others, we have to regulate those. And regulate is an important word. And I think that the more we regulate them, and again, that's not squashing them, that's not lying. About them. It's none of that. In fact, it's the healthiest way. It's bringing them out and dealing with them in a healthy way. And so if you feel like, man, Ashley, I would love to do that, but, like, I am nowhere near that. Like, I feel like I'm a mess. I could never tell my spouse, like, or express to my spouse my true emotions. Then that's when you need help. And I would just encourage you all reach out to a Christian counselor. You can go to your local church and they can give you a list of good counselors. Or also, you may want to meet with one of our exo mediators. You can go to exomarriagehelp.com and they can actually take one or two days and really go through this with you. But the bottom line is there's hope for all of us. And listen, you know, we're talking to you here not necessarily as experts. This is something that we've gotten right sometimes, but we've gotten wrong more than we've gotten right because it's just taken a process of understanding ourselves, how we're changing how to express emotions. So this isn't something where I think you necessarily arrive and like, oh, no, no.

It's a lifelong learning journey.

It is. And so we're on the journey with you. But I'm telling you, the more you're willing to even have what we refer to as just naked, awkward conversations, that's how you build that emotional intimacy. You can't build it without investing time. You can't understand your own emotions or your spouse's when it comes to the marriage unless you actually go through the practice of having these conversations and of revealing those emotions.

Yeah, yeah, that is so true. You know, Ashley's finishing up her master's degree in biblical counseling.

Almost there. I'm so excited.

Don't be. Yeah, I mean, just you're right. Right there, right there at the finish line. And she's been doing counseling as part of that program. And just, you know, what you've shared from some of what you've learned in the scenarios.

I've learned a lot.

All these folks that are coming in for different counseling, and we see this trend, we see it for both you guys who've written us through the years on Instagram and other places, talked to us at our live events, and now through this one on one counseling that you've done that really, a breakdown in intimacy, in a relationship, a breakdown in communication, not feeling safe with one another. I mean, it's at the root of most of the marital problems that you've seen. Not everybody that you're talking to is in marital issues, but a lot of them are. And it's just a reminder that, like, how foundational this is. Like, we've got to get this right.

We do. And the bottom line, too, is sometimes it may not necessarily be an issue in your marriage when it comes to emotions, but you both affect each other by even your other relationships, like with your family or with your friends or even at work, how you're handling the dynamics at work. It comes into your marriage. And so what we need to do again is just promise that we're going to be a safe place, that we'll process it. And if we feel like we can't process it, we'll maybe ask for a little more time to process it and come back together and talk about it and get maybe some professional help if we need it. But I'm telling you, this emotional. We started with emotional intimacy because it's really foundational, because it really helps. Really, all of these are foundational, but I feel like emotional is where a lot of us really go wrong. That's where we've really lost our way.

Yeah, it's true. And because you can compartmentalize some of the other ones and you can have sexual intimacy where maybe it's passionate, but it's still disconnected from. From the actual emotional part, which is the most important. You know, spiritual intimacy, which is vital. You know, where you, maybe you're individually, you're seeking out God, you're studying the Bible, hopefully you're doing these things together. Hopefully you're prioritizing your faith together. But if the emotional part is off, really, if any of these are off, then the whole marriage is going to feel it. But kind of like just focusing on kind of the other two. As we're giving an overview of this first episode, talk about the spiritual intimacy for a second. So many folks write and they feel like they're in kind of a spiritual mismatch in their marriage, where maybe your faith in the Lord, you're walking with Jesus, and this is a priority in your life and your spouse, they're just not there to the same level of commitment that you are. And that disconnection is creating tension. And what do you do in that situation? You know, where I'm going to church alone, my spouse won't go. I'm listening to this podcast and doing these things to grow in my faith and my marriage alone. I feel like my spouse isn't joining me there. And that can be so lonely and frustrating. You might be listening this episode thinking, like, that's where I am. That's why I'm listening, because I'm doing all that I can do. But how do I cultivate those desires in my spouse? Where maybe none of the intimate aspects are present, but maybe two of the three are there? Maybe, like, our sex life's okay, even emotionally, I feel like we're connecting. Okay. But spiritually, the most important. What should be the most important part of our life as followers of Jesus is not even on the radar for my spouse. And not being able to connect in this area is causing so much heartache.

It really can. Because, you know, when you are a follower of Christ, it's the most important thing in your life. I mean, that's what we're called to make it. It's our first priority, right above our spouse. You know, our spouse is our second priority, our most important human relationship when it comes to our priorities. But there's God at the top. And it's hard when your first priority is your relationship with the Lord. And then your spouse doesn't even really have that. Or maybe they're just very, very much like in the infant stage, so to speak, when it comes to their faith in Christ. And I want to tell you, there's so much hope. And, you know, there's actually verses about this. Like if you are married to an unbeliever, it says, stay married to them. And basically through your love, through your Christlike love, just keep on loving them and keep on showing them the love of Christ. Right?

Yeah, that's right.

And I love that because that is not as complicated as we make it. You know, so many times. I can't tell you how many times I've had talks with friends where they're in a spiritual mismatch. And usually I will say, usually it's one of two dynamics. It's a dynamic where maybe they went into marriage and the spouse said they were a Christian and they said it's important to them. And like, in the dating and engagement phase, they went to church, and then all of a sudden they sealed the deal. And it's like that. That spouse that was thinking their spouse was also matched with them spiritually finds out, well, it was kind of not as authentic as I thought it was. And then all of a sudden, you know, he or she's going to church on her own, and the spouse is staying at home, or one's reading the Bible, one's not. And that's very frustrating.

But.

But it also can happen where maybe when you both married, you weren't Christians, then all of a sudden you came to Christ and your spouse isn't quite there. There's a lot of different dynamics, right?

Absolutely.

A lot of different dynamics. So don't beat yourself up about this. But I really think that we just need to take the complicated nature of it out of the way mentally and say, like, lord, help me to just share with my spouse in the most basic way what God is doing in my life. Don't use words that they're not going to understand. And I'm not. I'm not saying, like, using biblical words is a bad thing. I think it's beautiful among believers. Use it all day long. But I mean, talking about the kingdom and talking about anointing, they're going to be like, what are you in?

What are these words? What the heck?

You know, they would. And it just feels very like, I'm not part of that club, and I don't know if I want to be in it. So just being like, hey, you will not believe this. What just happened? I just heard from my friend, and, you know, you know, my friend so and so. And I've been really praying for her, and we've been really sharing about this difficult situation in her life. And I'm telling you, here's what happened. You know, God has answered this prayer in this way. Isn't that exciting? And just very normal. Okay. And you could even say too, like, maybe something, you know, great happened to your spouse, or maybe there was. There was something that happened where you're having a conversation and it's something you had prayed about or really in your heart of hearts had been just like, just really asking God to kind of meet you there. And you could share that with them and say, listen, I know you're not quite, you know, in the same place on your journey, but I just want you to know what I've been praying like, and here's what I'm learning and just being so normal about it that in and of itself creates that spiritual intimacy. And really, we want to show our spouse, like, the most important relationship in our life is with God and that we would love to bring them into that picture as a brother or sister in Christ as well. And we want to show them the appeal of it. Not that we're trying to be manipulative. You know, the Apostle Paul talks about this a lot in his different epistles to the church. He talks about, you know, making it appealing, like, appeal to people, show them the good the goodness of God, you know, And I'm telling you, that's what we do with our spouse as well.

Yeah. Make the word of. One translation says, make the word of God attractive.

Attractive.

Yes. By how we're living. Living in such a way that it's drawn them in and just love them. And the more, remember, the more intimate you are with God, the more capacity you're going to have to have true intimacy with your spouse.

And the grace.

And the grace, the grace towards our spouse. God's going to give you the strength, the grace. His Holy Spirit is going to equip you. He's going to give you the words to say, going to help you know when to keep your mouth shut. It's going to just do all those things because God wants your marriage to thrive. And so.

And I just want to say this too, keep inviting them. Don't beat them over the head. I mean, it could be as simple as, hey, they're having this thing at church. Can we go? I mean, it's not even a church service. It's just an event. Like, I always love it. Like a marriage night. Exactly. Like, so many times we hear from people and they say, you know, my. My husband or wife would never go to church on Sunday. They maybe have some past church hurt or they just don't get it, but they want to invest in their marriage. So they came to the marriage night, and then they're like, wow, is this like. I remember we were talking to a couple fairly recently, and they were like, we're not really churchgoers, but we decided we're new in town. We had some friends invite us to this marriage night. This was recently, actually at our home church. And they. She was like, I really came reluctantly. The wife did. She said, I came reluctantly. I thought it might be weird, to be honest with you. She goes, what can a church teach me about marriage? That's literally her words.

Yes, that's what she said. Yeah.

And she was just a real, like, straight shooter, which I appreciate. And she goes, but I want to tell you, first of all, I had so much fun. She goes, I didn't even know church could be fun. Like, I'm like, wow, these people really know how to have a good time. And she said, secondly, I learned so much. And she said, you know, I'm going to come back on Sunday. And this was an unbeliever. Like, do you remember this couple?

I vividly remember.

And her eyes, like, in both of them, they had this hope and, like, spring in their step. And I just Thought. I mean, that's so cool, you know? So just never stop inviting, but be very careful not to be like a clanging gong and just nagging about it. That tends to turn people off. But I would say in a nonchalant way, like, hey, can we. You know, we have. You haven't come with me in a while. Would you go? They're doing this special service at church today. I think you would really get a lot out of it. And hey, if you don't, no big deal. But can you just come today? That'd be so. It would mean a lot to me.

Yeah. And then in any step they take toward. Toward faith, celebrate it, cheer them on. So good. One last aspect. Let's talk just a little bit. And we're going to talk more about all these in the weeks ahead. We're going to do a whole series on intimacy, but sexual intimacy.

And we're going to go more in depth on this school's eye. Don't you worry.

Don't worry.

You know, the Naked Marriage podcast, guys.

We'Re just doing a flyover right now. That's right, man. We've talked about it a lot. We will talk about it a lot more. But a lot of couples like this. This is the area. It's like if, you know, I feel like we connect other areas, but our sex life is just off. And when your sex life is off, or it just isn't happening, or it just kind of feels, I don't know, disconnected, it can put a real wedge in the marriage and start to unravel these other aspects of intimacy. It can create resentment, it can create hurt feelings, especially when one spouse has a much higher drive than the other, which. We've talked about that dynamic as well.

Yes, we have.

But there are so many things that can come in and sabotage sexual intimacy, and a lot of them are out of your control. I mean, you might have hormone imbalances, you might have physical health challenges, mental health challenges, and there are solutions to nearly all of that. But whenever that's manifesting in a marriage, it's easy to start pointing the finger at each other, blaming each other, instead of lovingly, patiently coming alongside one another, serving each other and facing it together.

That's so true. And I would venture to say that usually when there's a sexual problem, you need to look back at these other pillars of intimacy. Look at the. Is there emotional intimacy here? Is there spiritual intimacy here? I would say nine times out of 10, it really doesn't even have to do with the physical side of Things it has to do with these others. And you know, I'm not discounting that there might be a physical thing. Like maybe you have anatomically, like, you guys, you know, something is hurting you. Like, if sex is painful, you're like, well, I don't really want to have it. It's painful. Again, there are solutions to that as well. Or maybe you're like, I'm not really feeling much of anything. Like, I've never had an orgasm. I don't even know why we do this. Like, there's all kinds of reasons. And we are through this series, so please stay tuned. We're going to, we're going to unpack this in detail. But I do think we have got to remember that intimacy is not just one of these. It's physical, it's emotional, and it's spiritual. And so if we are having issues in any one of these areas, we need to look back. But I'm telling you, the biggest two pillars of this are the emotional and the spiritual and then the sexual benefits. But again, I think that physically, you know, we have to. And we'll talk more about this, but we need to do our part to make sure we're physically healthy and as healthy as we can be. And that includes our bodies, but it also includes our hormones. It includes our like, just general well being. And we need to tend to that as well. And so we'll get into more detail later on. But I want to go ahead and come to the part of the program that we're going to talk about. What we said at the beginning. We said we're going to give you like the most important key, okay, to better intimacy. And so we've saved this one. We have not mentioned this word. And I told Dave, I said we can't say this word the whole time because you guys, some of you may already know this since you've been watching and listening to the Naked Marriage podcast long time, but this word is the word, the thing that leads to intimacy. And what is it, sweetie?

Vulnerability.

Vulnerability, that's right.

And I would, and I would add one additional word.

Yes.

So you get kind of a two parter for most important key. And I think it's consistency. 100% consistency is the key to not only intimacy, but really every part of marriage. You have to be vulnerable, but you have to do that consistently. You can't be selectively vulnerable.

Exactly.

You have to communicate, but you can't do that just every so often. You have to consistently carve out time to say, we're gonna, we're gonna go on a walk every night and talk. We're gonna put our phones down every day and have some uninterrupted conversation. It's those things you do with consistency and vulnerability that are really gonna create intimacy in your marriage.

It is because if we. And really you need both. Because the vulnerability isn't a one time thing. Like, well, I just told, I just, you know, bore my soul towards you and like told you everything wrong I've ever done and, and everything right I've ever done. And so that's that, you know, you know me now and we're intimate. You know, it's not like that. It's a daily practice. And again, start small. It doesn't have to be like, well, gosh, that sounds so overwhelming. And then Dave, you said consistency like so then I'm gonna have to do this again. Like just start small, start somewhere. I would say this too. A very, very simple place to start in building vulnerability is praying together. Make a commitment to pray together daily and start very simply. I mean, you don't have to know special biblical words. I mean, it's wonderful when you start reading your Bible and you do know more about the Bible, but God is your father. He just wants to hear your voice. He wants to hear from you. And there's something really powerful when a couple prays together. It really, it really in and of itself is an intimate act and it also humbles both parties. So you're both humbling yourself towards one another, but also towards the Lord. And, and he does something really just beautiful to a husband and wife. When we do that, when we choose to do that, he really keeps our hearts soft towards one another and he brings our hearts closer together.

So start with prayer man, that's so good. And we're going to have a lot more to say about all these. One quick resource I want to point out, especially as we were talking about kind of like our own emotional health, mental health, physical health, how that can relate to intimacy, all aspects. We have a book called Naked and Healthy. We can put it link to that in the show notes, but you can get that book wherever books are sold, including store.xomarriage.com and I feel like that book could be a great resource for you individually to grow in your health and for you and your spouse to maybe work through together to identify those areas where we could best improve our own health and ultimately the intimacy in our marriage. So check that out. Next Monday we're going to be talking about how to build unbreakable trust doesn't that sound good?

I know we haven't even talked about trust. Another huge component.

I know. It's another huge component of it. And so we're going to dive in how to have unbreakable trust or rebuild unbreakable trust if maybe it's been damaged in your marriage. So tune in next Monday if you.

Want to know more about how you can communicate better with your spouse. We have a great episode we did with our dear friends Narup and Hannah Alphonse. Click right here and like and subscribe so you don't miss anything. We'll see you next.