How to Build Deeper Sexual Intimacy and Desire in Your Relationship
Expanding your capacity for profound sexual intimacy and desire takes more courage than time.
If you want to progress quickly, focus on how you participate in the patterns and meanings that keep your desire low.
You may find this difficult because brains are much better at tracking other people’s behavior than our own. Dealing with your own insecurities and immaturities takes more courage than pointing out your partner’s.
Setting the Foundation for Greater Intimacy and Desire
You and your partner probably have similar levels of difficulty with intimacy and eroticism even if on the surface that doesn’t appear to be the case.
We tend to partner with people who are at a similar level of differentiation and raise our level of differentiation in tandem with a committed partner.
Being interested in more sexual frequency or variety isn’t necessarily correlated with being interested in the challenge of intimate, erotic sex.
The most effective way to pressure your partner’s growth is to take on your own.
As you grow out of the patterns that have played out between you, your partner loses the option of responding automatically to your predictable moves. You can break patterns by noticing your participation in them and not letting yourself respond the way you tend to.
You can also get a checked-out partner to pay more attention to what you’re doing by doing something surprising and positive.
Develop Self-Compassion
Self-compassion makes it possible to see your contributions to sexual dissatisfaction clearly.
Talk to yourself in encouraging ways.
Validate the goodness in what you’re reaching for and offer yourself the loyalty of patience while you sort out meaningful, erotic sex. Have your own back while you treat this goal as worth it. Give yourself permission to invest time and resources because your happiness is the result.
2. Respond to setbacks and difficult emotions with kindness towards yourself.
You might try a mantra for responding to disappointing or painful experiences, such as saying to yourself, “It’s ok, I love you.” If you cringe at the thought of talking to yourself in a loving way, be curious about the part of you that feels averse to that. Who taught you to treat yourself harshly? Do they have the kind of life you want?
3. Learn self-compassion skills from experts by listening to guided meditations. I recommend:
Like any skill, being kind to yourself becomes easier with practice.
Practice Self-Validated Intimacy
Take responsibility for regulating your own emotions and behavior.
You can unilaterally introduce emotional intimacy and eroticism to your relationship if you can handle sharing your sexual self with your partner without needing validation.
In practice, this looks like being transparent and unapologetic about what you really think and want, without trying to manage what your partner thinks and wants.
Self-validated intimacy looks like:
Confronting yourself about your contributions to the challenges in your relationship, and letting your partner see you do it.
Sharing with your partner the true depth of what you value and appreciate about having them in your life.
Asking your partner to join you in a partnered exercise for calmer connection, ideally every day.
Staying clear with yourself and honest with them about what you want, without pressuring their choices.
Practice Self-Validated Eroticism
Self-validated eroticism looks like:
letting your partner know what you want to share with them sexually, without trying to make them do it.
Sharing fantasies or erotic ideas that resonate with you, without needing your partner to share in return or to respond positively to what you share.
Sorting out for yourself who you need to be to know you are a desirable choice as a partner and living up to that.
The more you earn your own trust and respect, the less defensive you’ll feel when your partner doesn’t reflect a flattering view of you.
Most of us want partner-validated intimacy and partner-validated eroticism a lot more than we want the exposure and risk of self-validated intimacy and eroticism.
Wanting it is normal and fine, and happy marriages include plenty of partner validation, but needing that to be ok or to be able to step into intimacy and eroticism makes it very difficult to actually get it.
The more we’re able to validate our own desires, soothe our own anxieties, and manage our own behavior, the more desirable we become and paradoxically the more validation we tend to get from our partner.
The only reliable way to get it is to not depend on getting it.
How Do You Know You’re Making Progress?
You know you’re on the right track when you become better able to regulate yourself.
This means you take deep responsibility for managing your own emotions and earning your own respect through what you do and say, and you don’t let yourself use your partner’s immaturities and shortcomings to justify your own.
Other measures of progress include finding yourself in more of a struggle with yourself than with your partner, and being more kind and courageous even if you’re the only one doing it.
Resentment is a clue that you’ve lost sight of your own agency. You don’t have to be in this relationship, and you don’t have to do the hard work of creating a passionate marriage. It isn’t likely to be easier with anyone else, but you are free to leave and find out if that’s what you want to do, or to stay and not try to have passion.
Take Bigger Risks
If you want to grow faster, take bigger risks. And handle the emotional cost of choosing those risks if they don’t go the way you want.
Risk letting your partner reject you.
Risk not pointing out what they got wrong.
Risk telling the truth about what you get wrong - that you usually don’t say out loud.
Risk letting them be wrong about you instead of trying to defend yourself from their perception.
Support you need to tolerate taking bigger risks should come from professionals. Don’t expect this type of support from your partner. Your growth pressures theirs.
Books That Can Help
Passionate Marriage by American Psychologist, David Schnarch
Intimacy & Desire by American Psychologist, David Schnarch
Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path of Liberation by Bruce Tift
Frequently Asked Questions About Sexual Intimacy and Differentiation
What is self-validated intimacy?
Self-validated intimacy means being able to share yourself honestly and vulnerably with your partner without requiring them to respond in a particular way for you to feel okay. It involves taking responsibility for your own emotions, desires, and behavior while remaining genuinely connected to your partner.
What is self-validated eroticism?
Self-validated eroticism means being willing to share your sexual desires, fantasies, and preferences without needing your partner to validate them, agree with them, or respond in a particular way. It allows you to be honest about your erotic self while respecting your partner’s autonomy and choices.
How can differentiation improve sexual intimacy?
Differentiation allows you to remain connected to your partner without losing yourself. As you become more capable of managing your own anxiety, validating your own desires, and staying true to yourself, you can take greater emotional and erotic risks without requiring your partner to respond in a particular way.
How can couples increase intimacy and desire?
One place to begin is by focusing less on changing your partner and more on understanding your own participation in the patterns between you. Taking responsibility for your own emotions, behavior, desires, and contributions can change the relationship dynamic and create new possibilities for intimacy and eroticism.
Why does resentment interfere with intimacy?
Resentment can be a signal that you have lost sight of your own agency. When you focus primarily on what your partner is doing wrong, you can lose sight of the choices available to you. Taking responsibility for your own growth doesn’t mean excusing your partner’s behavior; it means reclaiming your ability to choose how you participate in the relationship.
Can relationship coaching help couples deepen sexual intimacy?
Relationship coaching can help individuals and couples examine the patterns that affect intimacy, desire, and emotional connection. Catherine’s differentiation-based coaching focuses on helping people take responsibility for their own growth while staying connected to the people they love.
If you want to deepen your intimacy, eroticism, and capacity for connection, coaching can provide support as you take the risks that meaningful relationship growth requires. Contact me for a consultation.