The Five Types of Intimacy

“How’s our marriage doing lately?” “Are we feeling good or bad about our relationship?”

I’ll be honest, asking these types of questions of ourselves can be confusing and even discouraging at times, because they’re too simple. I don’t believe that we can categorize our marriages as either good or bad, they’re far too complex to simplify it. So, I’m not surprised that social psychology researchers have recently written about the five distinct types of intimacy which you can experience in your marriage. So, rather than just asking “Are we doing well?” consider talking through these five types of intimacy with your spouse, and discuss how you’re doing in each category.

Physical: This category includes sex, but it’s not just sex. Physical intimacy also includes any warm physical contact between you two, including hugging, hand holding, cuddling, or just sitting close to each other on the couch. So, you can grow your physical intimacy in any way if you’re touching each other or close to each other, or have skin-on-skin contact.

Emotional: When we think about emotional intimacy, we’re talking about sharing our inner worlds with our spouse. So, if you talk about how you’re feeling, what you’re hopeful for, or concerned about, or anything else that’s heartfelt, you can grow your emotional intimacy with each other.

Spiritual: If you are religious, talking about the sermon you just listened to, or discussing what you’ve been praying about recently can grow your spiritual intimacy. Even if you aren’t particularly religious, asking questions such as “What do you think our purpose is on earth?” or “What impact and legacy do you think we can have here?” can grow you closer in this way.

Intellectual: No matter how smart you are, sharing your thoughts and ideas with each other is a key way to grow closer to each other. So, when different topics come up in conversation, just asking “What do you think about that?” and encouraging each other to discuss and even debate different ideas can be very special for your marriage.

Experiential: Doing things together and sharing experiences is an irreplaceable part of marriage. Most friendships (especially men’s friendships) begin with experiential intimacy, so continuing to make time to enjoy and experience new things together can be so special for your relationship. That could be as simple as enjoying a captivating show or movie together, or sharing your free time together; any way that you can do something side-by-side with your spouse can grow you closer together.

So there you have it, those are the five types of intimacy. You will probably find some areas that you two are very strong in, and perhaps some areas that you’d like to intentionally focus on soon. But, lastly, here’s my disclaimer: Just knowing about the five types of intimacy might not fix everything in your marriage. So, if you discover that even with this knowledge, you and your spouse still don’t connect well, that could be a sign of deeper unresolved issues, and difficulties in your communication dynamic. If that’s you, I strongly recommend you work with a marriage counselor like myself, so that you can enjoy all five types of intimacy within your marriage soon.

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