Close relationships are like living beings – they are born, grow, develop, go through painful crises, get sick and recover, or they can die. Family therapist Lucy Mikaelyan has been working with dysfunctional couples for over twenty-five years. She talks about what safe intimacy in a couple is and how to create it.
All studies say that there is something very important that makes a marriage healthy. This is not to say that in a healthy marriage, people do not quarrel – all couples quarrel at times; or that you should be like your partner in everything – in all couples there are differences between spouses. The most important component of a healthy marriage is emotional responsiveness1.
Pass the tests
- What degree of intimacy is optimal for you as a couple?
- Are you able to maintain intimacy in relationships?
Think about a close and significant person, imagine how he looks, what he is wearing, what he is doing. Three full breaths and exhalations will help you focus on inner experiences. Now, keeping your relationship with this person in mind, ask yourself, “Can I rely on you? If it is necessary and I will call, will you come? Am I number one for you?”
You can feel an immediate response in the middle of the chest, in the solar plexus, in the abdomen, in the throat, in the legs – the first reaction will be a bodily response, which will take shape either in a “definitely yes”, or in “I doubt”, or in “probably , No”.
“Yes” corresponds to a secure attachment and gives a feeling of calm and confidence in yourself, partner, relationships. You may feel such a “yes” in your body, for example, your chest may become warm. “I doubt” and closer to “no” respond with anxiety, depression or lack of feelings, and relationships are experienced as if there is a crack in them – these are manifestations of insecure attachment.
Read more:
- “Create Moments of Intimacy”
If you have the feeling that there is secure intimacy in your life, you can handle just about anything. We work with people with problems such as strokes and heart attacks, with those who have survived cancer, with war veterans. And it is amazing to see how spouses can support each other in the most difficult situations in life, provided that there is a safe emotional connection between them. That’s what a happy marriage is. It makes you more self-confident, more successful at work, you cope better with stress, even your health is better.
Conversely, if you are insecurely attached, emotionally isolated, you are twice as likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke. In general, people who do not have reliable emotional connections get sick more and die earlier.
Secure attachment is sometimes called rubber attachment, emphasizing the flexibility and stability of a relationship in a couple. Such a connection gives us the opportunity to be closer, then further, it gives us the opportunity to be together and be different, it is like a dance with a series of close hugs and opening hands. In such a relationship, you can breathe. In such a relationship, you are not alone. Such relationships are quite stable – they can withstand the pressures associated with the appearance of children, job changes, moves and other life changes. Such relationships are experienced as a great value. I want to be in them, I want to take care of them. Caring for such a relationship becomes something natural, meaningful, and fulfilling.
A safe emotional connection is not a myth or a distant dream, it can be created, first of all, through empathy with one’s own experiences and those of a partner.
Read more:
- Is it worth it to force yourself to intimacy?
Feeling unwanted in a close relationship is hard and painful. Living on the brink of failure is unsettling. Each of us has our own ways to protect ourselves from the stings of pain and fear. After all, we dress so as not to freeze and not to get hurt. Interestingly, the “clothes” that protect us are also woven from emotions. Only these are other, more tolerable emotions, more familiar to experience, which give us at least some opportunity to act, give a feeling of control, that we somehow cope. You can defend your own and yourself in a dispute, for example. Or close, go into yourself and get out of contact. As if one partner is standing at a closed door and knocking, and the other answers from behind a closed door: “No one is home.”
The ability to turn to each other in difficult moments speaks of trust in a couple and makes the relationship safe. It sounds paradoxical – because when we are scared, we want to run away, hide, freeze. Or get defensive. Both can help if we are traveling through the jungle and there is a wild animal hiding behind a nearby bush. Neither of these will help us reconnect with a loved one.
Read more:
- How I freed myself from my fear of intimacy
What will happen if the wife turns to her husband and says: “When you say that you will not console me, it really hurts me”? What will happen between spouses if the husband says: “I don’t know how to calm you down, I can’t, it makes me feel bad.” Or the wife will say: “At such moments, I feel that I am losing my relationship with you, I am losing you, I am scared.” Or the husband will say: “I’m angry, I feel that I failed again, I need time to calm down.”
Even if you just say that you are afraid under the fire of criticism and displeasure of your spouse, this can change something in your relationship. You have never said that before, either to yourself or to your partner. And if you say that you love and cherish your husband or wife, but some of his or her actions hurt you and really hurt you, and then you go into hiding, trying to save the relationship and heal the wounds received, this will change something. If you say you don’t want to hide anymore, tiptoe around and feel bad, and ask your spouse to trust you a little more and check a little less, that will make a difference too. If you consistently follow this line of behavior, it can change you and your relationship.
Read more:
- Trust in life: how to find support points
Softening a critical partner is the next logical step towards safe intimacy. The withdrawing partner was able to declare himself and your value to him. The door is open, no need to bang on it. Now you can not demand, but ask. But you don’t notice it right away. Also, asking from an insecure position is risky and feels like stepping into the unknown. “If I fall, will you catch me?” “No, no, no, I can’t decide, let me check your reliability again.” Being stuck in a testing position will not bring you closer to the real intimacy that you lack, and will not eliminate the need to take a step towards your partner. When you nevertheless decide and feel that a loved one is tuned in to you, listens to you and tries to understand, and that he likes you the way you are now, an amazing and exciting event will happen between you – an experience of intimacy and security. You will want to return to it again and again, it will be a shame to lose it, and you will strive for this experience, restore it if something goes wrong. In other words, you and your partner will naturally begin to nurture a new kind of contact and nurture secure attachment in your relationship, reinforcing it with positive cycles of mutual attention and mutual care.
Read more:
- Why do they choose to be alone?
Relationships are a two-way process. By changing our relationship with our partner, we change our relationship with ourselves. We can finally feel worthy of love and acceptance. We become able to accept love unconditionally, even though not all of our behavior will be unconditionally accepted by others. Because the other, just like ourselves, is not a perfect person or an imaginary parent with an inexhaustible supply of empathy and patience. My partner turns out to be more like me than I thought before, and our needs are similar.
See more at Center for Systemic Family Therapy.
1 Read more about this in S. Johnson’s book The Practice of Emotionally Focused Marriage Therapy (Scientific World, 2013).