6 Ways to Develop Intimacy in Your Relationship - Part 1

Excerpted from the book Road Warrior by Stephen Arterburn and Sam Gullucci

There are six external activities that can help you build a strong intimacy in your marriage and sustain you while you are on the road and separated.

1. Laughing Together

Laughter is a doorway to intimacy. It is like an instant vacation in a marriage and the best way to keep perspective when things go wrong. If you laugh together, you can cry together, and thereby feel more ready to trust each other when communicating feelings. If you can find humor in everything, you can survive anything.

Do not take things so seriously. Learn to stop yourself when you are ready to get angry and instead use the love language of laughter. If this is your behavior at home, then you can take this behavior on the road through phone calls and little creative things you can do while you are away.

2. Encouraging Each Other

Become each other's cheerleader. Learn how to encourage and support your spouse's activities. Listen and really take an interest in the things your spouse likes to do. Express respect for your husband. Every chance you get, compliment him in public and in private. Build up your wife in front of others and give her honest credit for your family's successes. Let your spouse truly know you appreciate him or her. The more we build up our spouses, the more they will feel valued by us and build us up in turn.

3. Touching Each Other

The power of intimate touch cannot be underestimated. You must develop a healthy habit of touching each other beyond just the bedroom. Intimate touch is the love connection of holding hands, cuddling, stroking each other's hair arm or leg, and other ways of showing physical affection.

Too frequently I run into couples who do not touch each other, especially in public. Touch is the basis on which couples develop a healthy desire for each other. Touching your spouse protects you from wanting to touch others in a world of many lonely people. Touch protects you from finding a substitute for what God has designed for your marriage-Intimate touch does not have to include sexual touch, but we must develop a language of sexual touch with our spouse as well.

If you learn to touch your spouse, you will lose your desire to touch someone else.

Come back tomorrow for Part 2 and 3 more ways to develop intimacy.

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God bless your family and your marriage.

Jim Stephens