Wives, build a deeper connection with your husband through physical intimacy

Tip #36: Wives, build a deeper connection with your husband through physical intimacy. 

There are times when it feels like some “connection” gets lost between spouses. Long days, busy schedules and running around with the kids add physical distance. And confusion, frustration, misunderstandings, stress and grumpiness add emotional distance.

Both husbands and wives instinctively want to find some way to close the gap; we want to feel close again.

For most of us as women, there is a very clear way of doing that: we reach out for a hug, a touch, and a long conversation. Perhaps we want to talk over a meal. Or we want to sit on the couch and really explain about our day and get his feedback. Nothing makes a woman feel closer to her husband than to pour out everything that is going on, and to share life in an intimate way, heart-to-heart.

Would it surprise you if I told you that nothing makes a man feel closer to his wife than to share life in an intimate way, body-to-body?

In most cases, the number one language that will build a deeper connection with your husband is not spoken in words. It is shared through physical intimacy.

Between magazines, television and those go-at-it love scenes in the movies, it is easy to think that “men only care about one thing” –and it can frankly come across as almost a primal, selfish demand. With everything you have to handle as a wife and mom, physical intimacy can seem like something else to check off the “to do” list.

But you need to know that there is so much more going on, deep in a man’s heart, that makes him reach out for you in that way. And believe it or not, it is the same thing that makes you reach out for more conversation with him. He, too, is feeling distance. And he, too, has a desire to rebuild that closeness.

Sex is not just a physical thing for men. It is one of the main ways to his heart. I was shocked in my research with thousands of men for For Women Only that sex is actually primarily a powerful emotional need for men. A need to feel desired and desirable; and a way to feel close with the woman he loves. In fact, God built men in such a way that the bonding hormones which create that sense of closeness are not generally released during conversation – as they are with women. They are primarily released during sex.

So the next time you are feeling distant from your husband, and perhaps even offended that he would want you, physically, when you’re barely speaking to each other… see that as the signal of man who deeply loves you and desperately wants to rebuild that sense of closeness that both of you have lost, and which both of you are longing for.

Commit to building closeness through sexual connection, not just sedate conversation. And I think you will see there is a tender heart lying behind all that testosterone.

Join us next Monday for the next installment in our Marriage Monday series! 

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Shaunti Feldhahn is the best-selling author of eye-opening, research-based books about men, women and relationships, including For Women Only, For Men Only, The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages and her newest, The Good News About Marriage. A Harvard-trained social researcher and popular speaker, her findings are regularly featured in media as diverse as The Today Show, Focus on the Family, and the New York Times. Visit www.shaunti.com for more.

The post originally ran at the Christian Post for Marriage Mondays.

Welcome to Marriage Mondays! Each Monday, join me as I share my top findings on the little, eye-opening things that make a big difference in creating great marriages and relationships. Today’s post is one of a series on the surprising truths that men and women tend not to know about each other–and which change everything once we do.