Establishing Intimacy: Is Saying Everything the Way to Create Closeness?

Whether we are going on a second date or enjoying a relationship of decades, as Christian women, we are concerned with creating intimacy.

Yet while we all want it—and, yes, even men crave it—there are different strategies for achieving it.  Many times, especially during initial dating, things we think are creating closeness are actually impeding intimacy.  In other words, our actions may be sabotaging our chances for finding love.

Saying everything can sabotage intimacy

As Christian women, we value honesty and strive to be upfront in our interactions.  Since we generally don’t like games, we may think that simply saying everything is the alternative.  In fact, we often feel guilty if we so much as think something and don’t share it with our significant other…or even the person we’re casually seeing.

Unfortunately, this may be inhibiting the creation of intimacy.

Marianne Williamson*, bestselling author, inspirational speaker, and host of the “Miracle Thought” podcast on Sirius XM Radio’s Oprah Radio network, speaks eloquently on the topic of creating intimacy.

She explains how we mistakenly believe that in order to establish intimacy, we must share everything.  “We think, in the name of intimacy, I will say everything I’m thinking,” she explains.  However, “There are times when, in order to preserve intimacy, you don’t say everything you’re thinking.”

For me, this wisdom can be summed up by a story about a couple I know.  A friend of mine and her husband were watching television one night, and she was staring off into space in thought.  He noticed and asked the dreaded, “What are you thinking?”  In an effort to be truthful and perpetuate intimacy, she said, “Honestly, I’ve been struggling with my feelings lately because I just don’t feel exactly the same way about you as I used to, and I’m not sure why.”

Uh oh.

To make a long story short, this opened an enormous can of issues and really made the man question whether his wife still loved him and wanted to continue being married.  They struggled for months with their relationship, and the woman eventually sought counseling; during this, she discovered that she was really struggling with worries about getting older and being tied down with children (they were trying to have a baby)…her concerns had actually nothing to do with her love for her husband.

Eventually, they worked through things, but a lesson was learned: In an effort to build intimacy through total honesty, she actually harmed their intimacy.  And it took some time to get it back.

What shouldn’t we say?

The types of thoughts we should save in the name of intimacy tend to come in two varieties: things that will unnecessarily hurt the other person and things we should save in order to maintain some mystery about ourselves as women.

The first type is discussed in the above example.  Some things simply don’t need to be told, as they will only put our partner on the defense, which causes intimacy to shut down.  Or, they represent only a fleeting thought…or say more about our own insecurities and issues than our feelings for the other person.  Had my friend not blurted out what she was thinking before really analyzing whether her feelings for her husband had changed, she could have prevented a major setback in their closeness as a couple.

However, this brings us to another issue: How will we know when something seriously needs to be shared?  Marianne Williamson addresses this as such: “Sometimes the way you find your true, authentic self is that you take certain thoughts and you just place them in the hands of God; and then, if that thought represents something that, in fact, does need to be communicated…it is revealed to you how to communicate that thing in the most loving, compassionate way…”

So what about that second category of save-it statements, things that help maintain our feminine mystery?  And what exactly is even meant by “feminine mystery”?

Stay tuned for the follow-up article on Marianne Williamson’s intimacy advice: “Feminine Mystery: One of the Secrets to a Long, Successful Marriage—and to Turning ‘Dating’ into ‘Relationship’ to Begin with”

*Marianne Williamson is often incorrectly identified as a Christian minister.  In reality, she is nondenominational in her teachings, although she speaks from a perspective that assumes a close relationship with God and supports many traditionally Christian beliefs.