When talking to couples about their marriages, it was interesting to see what these people thought intimacy and love was all about. There are actually different kinds of intimacy that make up a marriage and it's important for you to understand what these are and the approximate percentage each takes within married life.
From the above chart, you can see rough percentages of the types of intimacy that are involved in a marriage. It may be useful to try and do an exercise with your partner and draw your own Pie chart to find out what your partner thinks that the percentages should be of each type of intimacy. Do it as a fun exercise together. You could even say that you are interested in a male point of view and have been reading up on something and want to verify it.
When you link up two people of the opposite sex and place them into an environment where they have to live in some kind of harmony, it isn't always appeal how to achieve that. A. man's needs in V will be different to his woman's needs, one thing that should always be equal the level of commitment to each other men may ignore physical needs his woman, but his man may have emotional needs.
Look at these pie charts side by side because they are interesting. What is interesting about them is that they each paint different pictures. This is because of the difference between men and woman. A man's natural instinct will be to provide for his family and to expect physical contact because it’s part of his makeup as a man. He is the hunter provider. The woman, on the other hand, is much more emotional and needs more emotional support than a man does. She doesn't want particularly to have sex every night, but she does want to hear that she is loved and treasured. He, on the other hand, may not be that bothered about her spiritual beliefs and see them as fanciful although interestingly enough when men and women were quizzed to produce these pie charts. The amount of spiritual intimacy that was necessary both to men and to women came out as pretty equal.
Having drawn a chart each, the way that you get the intimacy back into synch is to look at areas where you differ considerably from your partner. In fact, the exercise of drawing a chart together may be seen as an exercise in intimacy itself because you are giving away deep-rooted feelings about your life and the way that you look at it. What you can then do is try to balance his needs with your own. If he needs more physical intimacy and you need more emotional intimacy, then the equation is pretty simple to get answers from. If he doesn’t compliment you and make you feel feminine enough, perhaps you don't respond as often as he would like you to. Conversely, perhaps he wants a certain level of commitment from you that you are not giving. Perhaps you are tied up in your work and are too tired at the end of the day to keep giving something of value back to him.
The point of the pie charts is to examine your needs and then to learn from them why distances have happened. You may wonder why spirituality comes into the pic¬ture, but it actually does in a big way. If your spirituality is strong and your partner's is weak there’s a little bit of missing intimacy that can be put right – not by changing your fundamental beliefs, but by understanding the importance of those spiritual beliefs your partner has and being able to respect them.
You can also add more detail so that your partner knows where you feel that weak areas exist but don't feel critical of your partner if some of the areas he finds problematic are down to your attitude. You need to be totally giving and totally taking in this relationship and together you can help each other with your weak points so that you get stronger as an alliance and find that marriage gives you more than it is doing right at this moment in time.
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