Tim Arrigo tells a client that intimacy feels like a chore because of missing empathy. When you understand your partner's feelings instead of getting defensive, they feel valued, and sex stops being transactional. Before calling a relationship toxic, fix the toxic one you have with yourself.
So I'm talking to a client earlier and he tells me, Tim, it's like my wife makes intimacy a chore. And he said, you know, it's like every time my wife begrudgingly, right, doesn't really want to be intimate with me, it's like I have to— I feel like I gotta force it and it feels so forced and awkward. And I said, yeah, because you're missing one valuable part. What's the bridge to intimacy? It's empathy. Empathy is the bridge to intimacy. And so you have a lack of empathy in your relationship. What's empathy? Emotional understanding, validating your wife, making her feel seen and heard, like I always say, right? You're spending all this time on your business and all these other areas of your life, but you're not investing in one of the greatest assets that you have, which is your marriage. And so when your wife doesn't feel like she's valued and the marriage, when there's no empathy in the marriage, right? When you don't want to see things from her perspective, when you don't reflect back to her how she's feeling and start to become, right, curious instead of defensive. Let me say that again: start to become curious instead of defensive. Like, what is she going through? What is she feeling right now? That's empathy— seeking to understand rather than being guarded, defensive, and stonewalling. When your wife starts to feel the empathy in the marriage, right, she starts to feel like, my husband cares, he values my opinion, he values my preferences, he values my thoughts, he values what I think, how I feel, he values what I do. When you don't feel the need to have to be superior in the marriage, exalt yourself over your wife and basically deny her own reality Empathy is the bridge to intimacy. When you create that empathy in the marriage, your sex life is going to change because your wife is going to feel like she's valued, she's important, right? Intimacy just isn't transactional. A lot of you guys, it's like you don't understand. Your business might be transactional, but your marriage and your sex life isn't. And so why do you— why does it feel hollow? Why does it feel empty? It's hollow and empty because you don't invest in it. Because in business, your same power through attitude, you can use that in business, but you can't bring that same attitude into your house. You got to meet a more calm, emotionally present version of yourself. In relationships are where our deepest needs are met as human beings. Here's the thing, if you're not meeting your own deepest needs, which are what? To be at my full potential, to love myself, have a healthy relationship with myself. A lot of you guys are saying, but Tim, I'm in a toxic relationship. Check it out, bro. You can't determine whether or not you're in a toxic relationship until you change the toxic relationship you have with yourself first. So let's start there. You can sit back, point the finger at your wife, blame her for why you're miserable and why you're unhappy. and you can, you know, entertain a plan B about leaving, about being single, about ending the marriage. But how could you ever do that if you don't have closure? And you know how you get closure? This is how you get closure: by knowing that you did everything that you could to be the best version of yourself, so that if you do need to walk away, you can do it with your head held high, with integrity, honor, and knowing that you went all in on being the best version of you first. Before you just ran away and escaped and looked for something better, only to come down— come to find out for whatever you thought was better wasn't. Because wherever you go, there you are. Stop avoiding the work you need to do.
