Because of some writing I’m doing, I have been thinking about intimacy in couples relationships. I think I can give you a better idea I’ve been thinking about my telling you about a conversation I had with a woman some time ago. She had been married when she was very young and they had divorced after just a couple of years, and she was remarried at the time I knew her. Our conversation started when she learned that I had been widowed and she was asking me about my second marriage. Had I been reluctant to date? Did I have any idea what sort of woman I was looking for when I first started to date again? They were all good solid thoughtful questions. I asked her many of the same questions because it had been her decision to ask for a divorce. I was curious if she had been reluctant to date or knew what sort of man she was looking for. As we shared our answers, we came to the conclusion that we had both been reluctant to date, but we had had no real idea about what sort of partner we were looking for. She went on to explain that she still liked her ex, but their interests and outlook on life were so vastly different there was no intimacy in their relationship. When I asked her why they had gotten married in the first place, she looked at me and sort of grinned at with a slight blush said one word, “Sex.” She went on to explain that both of them had thought they were in love, but they knew less than a year into the marriage it had been a mistake.
I asked her what was different in her second marriage. She thought a bit and then said that that was hard to describe. She said that she was “closer” to her second husband than she had been to her first one. When I asked her to explain, she said that she didn’t know how to explain it but she thought of an example. She said that when she was around her first husband unless they were engaged in sex that she didn’t want to be naked around him. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him. It just made her uneasy. She said it was very different with her current husband. They had a huge bathroom and often both of them would be in there. One might be showering while the other one was at the sink doing something. She said that she felt perfectly comfortable being naked around her current husband, unlike her first husband. She finally said that there was more “intimacy” in her second marriage.
Back to how I started this blog – intimacy is not just one thing. It’s a constellation of things in a loving relationship. That’s what makes it a worthy topic for my current writing project. Your thoughts?
