Are you living in a marriage without intimacy? It’s easy to equate a lack of intimacy in marriage with a lack of sex between you and your spouse. However, healthy intimacy in marriage is way more than just having sex. An intimate marriage also reflects the way you and your spouse connect, care for, and relate to each other.
As you realize what intimacy is really all about, you can begin to understand the challenge of living in a marriage without intimacy. If that’s where you are right now, how did your marriage get here? And what can be done to learn how to bring back intimacy in a marriage like yours?
Understanding Healthy Intimacy in Marriage
In order for a marriage to endure, it needs intimacy—hands down. Yet while sex is a key aspect of intimacy, there actually a few important types of intimacy that ideally should to be present, too:
- Spiritual intimacy: Connecting with your spouse based on mutual beliefs in a higher power
- Experiential intimacy: Relating to your spouse over a shared experience, interest, or hobby
- Emotional intimacy: Expressing your personal feelings in-depth with your spouse, such as hopes, dreams, insecurities, and fears
- Intellectual intimacy: Connecting with your spouse by sharing your ideas and thoughts on various topics
- Physical intimacy: Connecting with your spouse sexually, but also affectionately, such as cuddling, sitting near each other, or holding hands
Signs of a Lack of Intimacy in Marriage Checklist
As you read about the different types of intimacy, there may be a few that stand out because they’re missing in your married relationship. But how can you tell if you’re experiencing a lack of intimacy in marriage? You may feel it in your gut for one, sensing that something hasn’t been quite right about your connection with each other. However, there are some key signs you can look out for that may indicate you have a marriage without intimacy:
You’re Experiencing a Lack of Intimacy in Marriage When…
- Your conversations are surface-level and emotionally absent
- Your spouse is indifferent when you share something vulnerable
- You don’t express your feelings, hopes, dreams, or fears with one another
- You question whether your spouse knows or supports your emotional needs
- Sex has substantially decreased in frequency or feels like checking off a box
- Your relationship lacks affection or physical touch
- Your conversations are no longer meaningful nor address deeper topics
- You’re not interested in sharing intellectual interests, thoughts, or ideas
- You’re unaligned on mutual purpose, values, and beliefs
- You sense that your spouse doesn’t value your perspective (or you don’t value theirs)
- You don’t make new memories or enjoy shared activities anymore
- You can’t respectfully resolve disagreements
- Conflicts are usually avoided because they take too much effort
- Your finances aren’t addressed openly or as a team
Discovering What’s Wrong: Can a Marriage Survive Without Intimacy?
Well, can it? Asking can a marriage survive without intimacy in some ways is missing the point if you’re reading this article. Sure, it can survive. But a marriage without intimacy won’t thrive. It’ll likely be full of ongoing challenges and leave you and your spouse unfulfilled.
Instead, it’s important to explore why you’re struggling with a lack of intimacy in marriage. What’s the cause? For some, it can actually be an intimacy disorder. You or your partner may be afraid of intimacy in general, which keeps you both from getting the healthy closeness you need in marriage. This fear of intimacy often stems from the lingering effects of unresolved past trauma, including adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) still causing harm decades later.
On the other hand, intimacy disorders can arise from sexual addiction, such as a sex, porn, or masturbation addiction. In fact, the Mayo Clinic estimates that up to 24 million American adults could be classified as addicted to sex. If you’re married to a sex addict, for example, he or she may be compulsively having sex all the time, but it’s driven by coping with underlying trauma, not intimacy. And if sexual addiction has led your spouse to cheat on you, you may be struggling with betrayal trauma on top of this—causing an even greater lack of intimacy in marriage.
How to Bring Back Intimacy in a Marriage
If you want to change your marriage without intimacy into one marked by a loving, intimate bond, what can you do? How can you restore intimacy in your marriage? It takes intentionality and consistent effort, but developing intimacy in marriage can be done. Here are a few steps we’d recommend taking to get things back on track:
- Address your intimacy struggles at the source: Not only do you both need to acknowledge the problem you’re dealing with, you also need to determine what’s causing it. If you think it may be an intimacy disorder, it’s important to seek professional help from a CSAT therapist or treatment program.
- Focus on cultivating the various types of intimacy: Remember, intimacy is about more than just sex. You and your spouse should make time for all of the various forms of intimacy mentioned earlier, from spending quality time to actively listening, sharing your dreams, and expressing gratitude.
- Handle conflict together: Conflict is a normal part of intimacy. When it happens, you don’t need to avoid it. Instead, you can learn to handle it respectfully and find solutions together.
Heal Intimacy Disorders at Integrative Life Center
If you think your lack of intimacy in marriage is due to an intimacy disorder, we can help at Integrative Life Center in Nashville, TN. With our comprehensive, trauma-informed, and personalized intimacy disorders treatment program, we can address both fear of intimacy and sexual addiction, as well as other co-occurring mental health challenges. By getting the right treatment, you can both reclaim your life and your intimacy in marriage. Contact us now to get started.
If you’re unsure whether you have a sexual addiction, take our short, free assessments for the clarity you need to seek help:
