What Does “Prioritizing Intimacy” Actually Look Like?

To prioritize intimacy is a piece of relationship advice that is often thrown around, but is much easier said than done. What makes this difficult for many relationships is that it’s hard to know what this can look like beyond simply having more sex, it’s hard to maintain in the face of busy schedules, and it can also be just as hard for intimacy to keep up with the changing seasons of a relationship. 

For all its difficulty however, prioritizing intimacy may be one of the most important things we can do in our relationships for it is both the anchor that keeps us connected to each other and it is the invitation to keep growing together.

Prioritizing intimacy doesn’t mean having more sex

Prioritizing intimacy looks different for the couple that are new parents, the couple that are overwhelmed with work or coping with chronic illness, or for the couple that are stuck in a roommate rut. Depending on the season of your relationship and your life, the answer here might not necessarily be more sex but to give yourself permission to explore what intimacy could look like when we remove the expectations that it has to follow a certain script.

To prioritize intimacy might mean prioritizing connecting to your own body and sensuality, prioritizing play and novelty, or prioritizing emotional depth and sustained attention. The beauty of intimacy is that it can’t be reduced to one single act, but the intimacy is in us devoting time, attention and consistency to each other and in doing so, we make the decision that this matters.

When we live and love from this more expansive view of intimacy, we get to explore and know so much more of ourselves and each other. We also then loosen our grip on the learnt societal expectations that say “we should have sex X amount of times per month” and it simultaneously debunks the notion that intimacy has a ‘set and forget’ option. Too often intimacy is taken for granted and assumed to always be there once this stressful work period is over, the to-do list is all done, or the children are all grown up. 

To prioritize intimacy is to recognize that there is no final destination to arrive at. It will keep evolving as we do. Just like brushing our teeth or moving our bodies, we don’t need to wait until we feel like doing it, we return to it because we know that it is good for us in the long run.

What makes you feel connected?

It’s worth having a conversation with your partner about what intimacy means to each of you and to return to it again and again as it evolves. For some, intimacy lives in touch and skin-on-skin contact and for others, it is the intimacy of cooking together, trying a new experience or existing in the same room together.

When you have a sense of what intimacy looks like for each of you, you can then get curious about the need that sits underneath it. Is it affection or reassurance? To feel desired or erotic? Novelty or a sense of togetherness? Naming these needs can move the conversation beyond the fear of not having enough sex and towards a more nuanced understanding of what you each are actually longing for. It also makes room for the truth that we will each have different needs without those differences meaning that either person is failing or not doing enough.

Starting this conversation with “when do you feel most connected to me?” or “what kind of closeness have you been missing lately?” will take you much further than trying to assign blame or criticism.

Look at what gets in the way of intimacy

It is here where the wheels fall off the wagon for many couples. We know that playfulness and intimacy matter, but knowing something is important doesn’t necessarily tell us how to find our way back to it when work stress, caregiving, chronic illness and the like take centre stage. These pressures slowly erode our capacity for intimacy, and as Emily Nagoski in her book, Come As You Are describes using a car’s accelerators and brakes analogy, these stressors gradually apply more pressure onto the brakes until the car comes to a full stop. 

The brakes aren’t always dramatic. They can look like answering emails from bed, an overbooked calendar, doom-scrolling side-by-side, conversations that become entirely logistical, or only being touched when sex is expected to follow. 

The laziness of simply rolling over at the end of the night and asking the dreaded “do you want to have sex?” question is not creating space for intimacy nor does it get anyone hot and bothered. For many couples, this makes honest and compassionate conversations about the mental load also essential. There’s nothing sexy about one person carrying most of the planning, remembering and emotional management in the relationship.

Taking inventory of what currently gets in the way of intimacy and noticing the routines we’ve slowly fallen into gives us choice and the option to do something different. We can begin to ask what might need to change in our routines so that intimacy has the space to find us again. 

Scheduling it in doesn’t make it any less genuine

When we prioritize intimacy, it asks us to let go of the learned assumption that intimacy must be spontaneous and effortless for it to be worthwhile. When we hide behind these expectations of spontaneity around intimacy, we create yet another obstacle for us to overcome.

To devote not only attention and time, but also consistency to intimacy says it is something worth planning for, protecting and returning to. Scheduling intimacy is not an obligation to have sex, but it is an invitation to play and to meet each other where you’re at, whether it’s an evening without screens, using a massage candle or planning a date night. 

Maybe scheduling supports you to allocate your mental energy and attention accordingly, maybe it allows you the chance to seduce each other, and maybe it gives you a good excuse to dress up and remember what it’s like to date each other.

This need not be an elaborate romantic extravaganza, especially if it makes you less likely to keep it in your calendar, but what distinguishes the everyday routine from a ritual is the intention and presence that we bring to it. This could look like ten undistracted minutes after dinner, a weekly shower together, a morning coffee ritual or the famed 6-second kiss by the Gottman Institute.

Small bids for connection mean more than the grand gestures

Prioritizing intimacy means making space for touch that doesn’t have to lead anywhere and for touch that exists simply because it feels good to be close to one another. When touch is used only as a means towards sex, this is often the beginning of a feedback loop where affection can gradually start to feel loaded with expectation and partners might start to avoid touch altogether for fear of giving the ‘wrong idea’. 

Making room for non-demand touch helps loosen this pressure attached to it. The intimacy that sustains long-term relationships lives in these everyday choices we make to turn towards each other and to be both intentional and generous with our attention. When we value these moments of intimacy for what they are, rather than what they might lead to, we create more ways of staying connected and we remember that closeness itself is the whole point. 

These everyday bids for connection like asking a real follow-up question, lingering over a kiss or sharing a meme, is how we keep finding our way back to each other amidst all the distractions and stressors. They are what remain long after the expensive dinner has been eaten or the fancy gift has been put back on the shelf.

Prioritizing intimacy is an ongoing conversation

It is a given that our relationships can be at the mercy of our calendars, changing life stages, health and various stressors. However, we and our partners deserve relationships that don’t treat intimacy as an afterthought when all the other responsibilities are ticked off the list because unfortunately, there will always be more chores to do. 

When we prioritize intimacy, we acknowledge that it will never be a one-and-done deal and we remember that this is the price of entry in our relationships as well as a privilege to love and be loved in the ways that matter to us. 

It begins with a conversation, a decision to remain curious about one another and a refusal to wait until we resent each other enough to do something about it. You might ask, “what has been feeling good between us lately?” or “is there touch you want more or less of?”. Again, it doesn’t need to be a grand plan or another thing to optimise and track. The point is about building a relationship where there is room to keep turning towards each other.

What might change if intimacy became something you shaped together, rather than another task to perform?

By Selina Nguyen, Relationship and Sex Therapist, Founder, Come Back to Bed

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