The other day, I shared a secret about intimacy in marriage. Intimacy as in the close like, know, and trust in your spouse. Because intimacy in marriage is so much more than the physical act that everyone thinks about when they hear the word. When I first heard this idea that you can share a level of intimacy emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, experientially, financially, and physically, I dove in! Based on that idea, I created this list of ideas for deepening your intimacy in each of the areas in your marriage relationship. Working on the emotional connection in your marriage will strengthen the physical connection you share and vice versa. The overall intimacy in your relationship is a balance of the like, know, and trust you share across all six types of intimacy!
TIP: If you’re looking for a specific way to improve the physical intimacy in your marriage, I highly suggest The 7 Days of Sex Challenge, from One Extraordinary Marriage. They have an intimacy lifestyle message that has made a big difference for a lot of couples!
Emotional intimacy is created when you share your feelings, thoughts, desires, and dreams with each other.
Sit down and draw out your dream home together. Talk about all of your “must haves”, what you want your master suite to look like and where you’re hoping to live. Make sure you share the why behind your dream home features. Draw all of your features together and save your dream home “blueprint” somewhere. Then you can pull it out and refer to it when you get to that point in your life.
Pick up one of these great conversation starters for couples. Asking each other one question a night will help you connect and discuss things on a deeper level than you might have normally. Using these resources means that you won’t have to think about what you want to ask each other or talk about, and you can focus on connecting.
Connect, beyond date night! Find something fun you can do together each day. You might go for a walk together, grab your favorite drink and talk in your car, play a game, or watch a new episode of your favorite show and talk about it afterward. It doesn’t need to take much time, but doing one thing together outside of the responsibilities you share each day is impactful.
Start a tradition of weekly family/couple meetings. Use that time to not only coordinate your plans for the week but talk about the things that you’ve been thinking about lately. Don’t hold back! You can’t increase your emotional intimacy without being vulnerable with each other. You might also consider these tips for having a “state of our marriage” meeting, which is a similar concept.
Related: Things to Discuss During Your Weekly Marriage Meetings
Use the app, Gottman Card Decks, from The Gottman Institute. This app has suggestions and questions for discussing sex, expressing needs to your spouse, learning to listen, letting your spouse know they are appreciated, creating love maps, and more. Love maps are Gottman’s term for getting to know your spouse’s world and continuing to get to know them as they grow and change throughout life.
Related: 12 Apps Every Couple Could Benefit From
Intellectual intimacy is created by learning together. This learning usually relates to an important issue, topic, or interest in your marriage.
Learn something together! Take a community class, take continuing education at a local college, or pick up a book from the bookstore about a topic that you’re both interested in.
Research a mutual hobby that you have. If you like to grill like we do in our marriage, watch YouTube videos, research rubs, and sauces, create a new recipe, etc. Maybe you’re planting a garden for the first time this year; find out everything that you can about the things that you are growing and successful gardening in general.
Related: 10+ Hobbies for Married Couples to Enjoy Together
Read a book together, fiction or non-fiction. Take turns reading a chapter together every night and talk about it after you’re finished. I know a few couples who get two copies of the same book. They read it separately and then sit down and discuss the book at the end. It’s kind of like a mini book club! You might even have the person who picked the book come up with questions to talk about together.
Related: Starting a Book Club in Your Marriage
Take a class on a topic that the two of you are struggling with or can’t seem to get on the same page about. This might be a budgeting or finance class, a parenting class for toddlers or teenagers, or a health issue that someone in your family is facing. Learn everything you can and work together to support each other in the different areas of your lives.
Spiritual intimacy is built around your shared religious beliefs and the way you choose to practice your religion together.
Find a couple’s devotional to go through together. Read your devotional together each morning, or before you go to bed at night. Really take the time to discuss your thoughts and what you’ve learned. One popular couple’s devotional out there is The Love Dare. But I know there are others you can find just by searching online or asking other couples in your religious community.
Study the scriptures together. Work your way through them chapter by chapter, study scriptures on specific topics, or study based on different stories. Don’t be afraid to ask questions if you don’t quite understand a concept. And be open to learning from each other and hearing what the other spouse has to say. Everyone receives different impressions and absorbs different things from what we read, even at different times in our lives. We can learn a lot by taking notes and sharing our insights with each other.
You can pray together. And you should be praying for each other.
Attend church services together weekly and discuss the things you learned over lunch afterward.
Discuss how you plan to incorporate your religion into your home and family as it grows. How will you encourage your children to grow a testimony of their own and explore their own spiritual beliefs?
Attend worship services for other faiths. Go with the idea that you will participate fully in their services. And have an open mind to the things they have to share. Maybe do a little research about the faith before attending, so you have a basic knowledge going in and can ask questions to learn deeper while you are there. Look for the ways that your two religions are the same. And be curious and kind, not defensive or judgmental about why their religion believes the way that they do. Go with a goal to learn, understand and accept.
Experiential intimacy is created by actively enjoying life together and participating in various activities.
Find something active that you like to do together. Maybe you like to go to the gym together, go on hikes every weekend, go on a family bike ride or buy roller blades and hold hands while you skate around the neighborhood. You might participate in a sport like soccer, swimming or softball and join a team together. Or join separate teams and watch each other play. Maybe you simply take walks together every night as the sun is setting.
Add some culture to your date nights. Go to the opera, a play, see a musical, attend a concert, or visit a local museum. Become season ticket holders or members at one of the venues. This could be a great gift that you purchase for yourselves each year for Christmas, to enhance your relationship and your lives in the coming year.
Every other date night, do something a little more active than dinner and a movie or different than your regular date night activities. Go on a hike, go bowling, play mini golf, go skiing, etc.
Share the kitchen and make a meal together on a regular basis. You might choose to work together on all aspects of the meal. Or assign each spouse to different tasks (main dish, sides, dessert) so you’re not stepping on toes. You could also buy various cookbooks online and work your way through them together. Learning to make new dishes or mastering a specific way of cooking (grilling, smoking, baking, slow cooker, pressure cooker, etc.)
Related: 13 Ways to Keep the Romance Alive in Your Marriage
Financial intimacy is created by making a plan for your money and being willing to communicate in the process.
Talk about your finances! Create a budget monthly, set financial goals, and consider combining your bank accounts. Have a budget meeting each week while you get the hang of things. Then pull back and have your meetings every payday.
Have these four financial discussions before you get married (or after if you are already married). Make sure you are not one of the 45% of couples surveyed who have no idea how much money their spouse makes.
Discuss how you will tackle debt together if you have any. Viewing your debt as a team will make you more successful when trying to pay it off. Find some sort of chart you can use to track your progress. Then set rewards for different milestones along the way.
Talk about your family’s financial future and make a plan. This post talks about five things that we’ve talked about and are preparing for in the future. If your finances are based on the goals that you have, you will be more likely to manage them well.
Take a finance course together to help you get on the same page financially. The way you talk about money in marriage is a lot about what you value and your goals. But it’s also emotional and can become a stressful topic. I love the Family Finance Rescue course from Pennies into Pearls. I have personally taken that course with my husband. It has helped to get us to get back on the same page and work toward our financial goals again.
Related: Why You Need to be a Team with Your Finances, ALWAYS
Physical intimacy is created through meaningful and loving physical touch.
Make your goodbye, hello and good night kisses last ten seconds every day. Kiss each other like you mean it, and like you did when you were dating.
Grab your spouse’s hand while you watch TV, when you’re out on a date, in the car, on your walks, and as you fall asleep at night.
Give each other a long hug every day, for no other reason than just to hug. Simply hold your spouse. Don’t talk, don’t be anxious to let go, just enjoy being held by each other.
Show affection in front of your children, this study says that it’s good for their health.
Related: Why Your Kids Need You to Prioritize Your Marriage
Reach out and touch your spouse’s arm or give them a little squeeze as you walk past each other throughout the day.
There are a lot of great games out there created with the goal of helping couples connect in new ways physically. Check out the fun bedroom games from Mentionables or grab the Coconu Roll Dice Game! Another one of our favorite resources is The Adventure Challenge… In Bed book!
Related: Why Your Spouse Needs at Least 8 Meaningful Touches a Day
When you think about intimacy in your marriage, remember that there’s more to it than what happens in the bedroom. The definition of intimacy has a lot more depth to it than what the media and the rest of the world might tell us there is. Increasing your intimacy in each of the six areas listed above will help to create a better, stronger, and more intimate marriage.
P.S. One of my favorite marriage books, The 6 Pillars of Intimacy by Tony and Alisa of One Extraordinary Marriage, talks about each of the areas of intimacy in marriage listed above and was released after the initial creation of this post.
What other things do you and your spouse do to increase intimacy in these six areas?