Have you ever felt like intimacy is just another task to check off your to-do list? Many women in long-term relationships experience this—going through the motions without truly feeling connected. But why does it happen?
In this episode, I dive deep into:
- The real reason intimacy starts to feel like a chore
- How being stuck in “thinking mode” disconnects you from emotions
- The key to bringing back joy, playfulness, and vulnerability
- Why intimacy is not just about sex and how to redefine connection
- A powerful real-life story of a woman who felt numb and found her way back to intimacy
The secret to deep, fulfilling intimacy is not about pleasing your partner—it’s about reconnecting with yourself first. When you feel love, joy, and excitement within, intimacy stops being a routine and becomes something you naturally want to experience. Listen now and share your thoughts—have you ever struggled with intimacy in your relationship? Looking for deeper transformation?
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When Intimacy Becomes A Checklist: Breaking Free From The Chore of Connection
Recognizing The “Checklist Life”
Wake up, check. Shower, check. Brush teeth, check. Make breakfast, check. Go to work, check. Meet the clients, check. Back home, check. Shower, check. Dinner, check. Spending time with kids, check. Put the kids to bed, check. It is having sex day, so be prepared, wait for his move, and have sex, check. Go to sleep, check. When Samantha came to me, she was living exactly like that, crossing all her checklists and feeling that she had to get all her to-do list and had no idea that she was operating her daily life like a robot.
She lost the sense of feeling her emotions and felt that nothing was special in her life. Everything was normal like it used to be. The words she used the most were, “I have to. I must,” nothing she could enjoy. She believed that she used to be fun and playful, but not anymore. Without realizing it, she went all the time in her thinking mode as her work needed her to be and used more of her head instead of her heart, even when she needed to connect with others. She was disconnected from her heart and lost empathy.
The charity they gave to the company was only a routine. I remember the very first exciting moment she said, “Today, I feel that the food I usually eat for lunch tastes different. I feel that it was more delicious.” Day by day, Sam started paying attention to what she was doing and did it because she loved to do it, not because she had to. Guess what? She also started to bond and connect better with her husband and kids. The very first practice that Sam did was to be more mindful.
Most of the people, when we say mindfulness, immediately think of meditation. Yes, meditation can help us become more mindful, especially if you understand meditation in a common way. The way that all the gurus teach. Sit down and pay attention to your breath. It helps you to be more mindful because you’re focusing on one thing at a time, your breath.
Probably after a couple of seconds, you start to think, “I forgot I have a meeting at 2:00 PM. What’s for lunch?” That’s the monkey mind that wants to play. You forget about breathing and go round and round with all the thoughts in your mind. If you’re curious about mindfulness practice and meditation, let me know and I’ll create another video for you next time.
Let’s get back to intimacy. Many people think that we will have intimacy as long as we have a relationship. Unless we learn and practice it, we will not have it. Intimacy is not a gift of a relationship or marriage. You need to practice it to have it and make it stronger. To practice intimacy, first, we need to practice being vulnerable and innocent as a child. Imagine an innocent child who is always curious, open to receiving, and brave to try something new.
Intimacy is not a gift of a relationship or marriage; it requires practice to develop and strengthen. Share on XI remember when our kids were small. They loved to play sliding from the stair rail at home. It was scary to watch. When the family came and saw it, they told them, “No, don’t do it. Be careful. You might fall.” We let them play because they were toddlers. They had so much fun because of it. The same happens with our feelings. As we grow older, we tend to go for it and close ourselves off because we are afraid of being hurt. Why can’t we be vulnerable again? It’s because we are afraid.
We don’t want others to hurt us. We don’t allow ourselves to feel pain. We close our hearts to feeling happiness. To be vulnerable and innocent again means being open to seeing, accepting, and acknowledging the real, raw, and unedited version of ourselves. When we can love and accept ourselves for who we are, not who we should be, we will learn to be vulnerable.
Reconnecting Through Vulnerability And Playfulness
We will start allowing ourselves to feel everything, all the emotions like happiness, joy, trust, sadness, fear, guilt, disgust, shame, anger, worry, boredom, and other emotions that arise. When we allow ourselves to feel, we allow ourselves to be spontaneous, go on an adventure, and hopefully enthusiastically. We are coming to a new experience, even when we have no idea what will happen. Life will be filled with joy and excitement.
Since you are here, I don’t just want you to read this but to implement this in your life. What is the little thing you can do to start opening up? Maybe you want to start being honest with yourself about how you feel and allowing yourself to feel it. Maybe you want to start inviting your inner self vulnerable version by seeing everything around you once more like it’s your very first time. Let me know how it changes the way you appreciate people and everything else around you.
If you’re here because you see the title Intimacy as a joke and the idea of intimacy is something about sex, I want to share another story with you from a lady named Mia who came to the I Love Me classes. Mia felt obligated to have sex. It was painful and nothing about it was good. She had sex with her husband only to avoid him from cheating on her. She had a hard time feeling the sensations in her body.
To be vulnerable and innocent again is to be open to seeing, accepting, and acknowledging the real, raw, unedited version of ourselves. Share on XThrough a suggestion from her best friend, she bought many kinds of vibrators to help her to feel good. It hurt her husband’s feelings and made them lose their connection because he lost confidence in how to please Mia. Their relationship grew colder. She started to notice her husband’s withdrawal, like playing games on his phone more and more and turned his back to Mia while on the bed. Mia caught her husband watching porn.
All of this disconnection made her easily feel worried and jealous when they spent time together with friends, especially when some of the friends were beautiful and had sexy bodies. Mia felt insecure and started criticizing herself. From hating her body to hating her life, she became easily angry and felt alone. If you feel like Mia, I hope this will help you in some way to see how intimacy can help you overcome all the worries and insecurities you have in your marriage.
Redefining Intimacy Beyond Sex
Let’s have intimacy from another perspective. Many people, when they hear the word intimacy, it immediately tense their bodies. They think it must be about sex. Sex is not intimacy. Sex can be part of intimacy, no question, but sex doesn’t come with the guarantee of having intimacy. Women often misunderstand this concept.
Many women want to have sex because they feel love and connection. After sex, they expect to feel more love and have a deeper connection with their partner or husband. When the partner fails to make her feel more connected and loved, she withdraws from sex and starts to question what is it for her. “He’s just using me to please him without understanding me.”
The worst thing a woman can do is to punish his behavior with not having sex. The endless cycle keeps turning. Let’s put aside the belief that sex equals intimacy. Let’s try to understand what is intimacy. Intimacy comes from a gentle heart, the feeling of being loved and accepted, and becoming one. You know that you have intimacy if the presence of the person makes you feel joyful. You feel happy without a reason.
That is why before you want to connect intimately with others, you need to connect intimately with yourself. Pause for a moment and imagine if your own presence can give you the feeling of acceptance and love. You can smile without a reason. You feel happy and joyful all the time. It doesn’t feel good. Will you love life? Will you do many things willingly because it makes you feel good?
When you have intimacy, you also will feel safe to be your authentic self. You will love yourself unconditionally and in your ups and downs as a human, knowing that the bond and connection between you and someone you love will stay close and even closer in every situation you face in life. When you and your partner have a deeper intimacy, you both can be vulnerable and open to receiving and giving love.
It will not feel like a jar because it will be a part of your identity. It’s not a to-do list because it’s something you have. You love the feeling and do things for yourself, not for him. When you are happy and joyful, your partner will feel it as well. This time, I hope genuinely because you feel so good about it. Get out of the jar. Go deeper into understanding yourself and be comfortable with your feelings, emotions, desires, and needs.
I’ll give you one thing. When you start to feel, “I have to,” then pause to pay attention to what you mean by saying it. Step into the innocent child once again. Challenge yourself to look at people and things like the first time. Be excited about life. Get out of the routine. It’s as simple as that. It means you feel that nothing is exciting anymore. Invite your fun, playful self to be crazy. Be the person you adore that makes you smile and laugh without a reason.
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