Intimacy Requires Honesty

A lie may take care of the present, but it has no future.

Croft M. Pentz

A fellow relationship coach posted, “You can’t be intimate unless you can tell the truth.”

This resonated with me especially after several comments I received about my own post Playing Defense in Your Marriage Won’t Work.

Two of the comments were about the lack of physical intimacy in long-term marriages. The men were looking for help in changing the situation.

The third comment was from a man whose wife is ending their twenty-year marriage because she never felt he truly desired her. This despite a fairly active sex life.

What do these situations all have in common? A lack of honesty.

This dishonesty wasn’t in the form of blatant lies. It was in lies of omission. Not saying things that need to be said.

I get it.

Talking about the quality or quantity of physical intimacy is hard. That doesn’t mean it’s not necessary.

Especially if it’s a situation that’s been going on for years.

The two biggest disagreements in marriages are around money and sex. That’s because both are extremely personal.

And to talk about them productively means being willing to say and hear difficult things.

And therein lies the rub.

The difference between strong, healthy marriages and the ones that end (or simply limp along with one partner suffering) is the ability to have these hard conversations. And they do have them.

Every couple does.

The hardest conversation my husband and I ever had was about our physical intimacy. We both had to be open to the other’s perceptions and feelings. We had to be willing to both speak and hear hard “truths”.

There were tears and fears. But because we were willing to put everything out there, and because we were committed to having a marriage that works for both of us, we were able to get things on track.

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I won’t lie. It took every relationship skill and tool I had to get through that conversation. That’s how hard it was. So, I understand why the commenters are struggling.

But not having the conversations only pushes things down the road. And that is never good for your marriage.