How to maintain emotional intimacy in long-term relationships

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1:04You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

1:12Okay, if you have a romantic partner, I want you to imagine an illustrated version of you and them, one that you might see on the front of a greeting card. Okay, now also imagine your animals. What are you? Two sweet little bears in a cuddle pile? Delicate swans locking necks? A couple of otters holding hands? Trick question, you're porcupines. Hee hee. One of the fundamental challenges at the heart of a long-term intimate relationship is what we call the porcupine's dilemma. This is James Cordova, a professor of psychology at Clark University. He has spent his career researching intimacy and romantic relationships.

1:55So he says picture a couple of porcupines in love. Trying to get in there where it's warm and snuggly and close and connected. And they just happen to be porcupines. As in covered from top to bottom in sharp, painful armor that helps to protect their soft little bodies. So when you get inside of Quill's distance, which is where you want to be, that's where all the good snuggling happens, right? You're also really exposed to each other's quills. Maybe on some days those spikes look like sarcasm or anger or defensiveness. Maybe you didn't mean to snap at your partner when you came home from work, but you were in a bad mood.

2:32Or maybe they absolutely meant to poke your soft spot when they made that joke at dinner. The closer we are to each other, the more vulnerable we are to each other. the more frequently, mostly inadvertently, mostly by accident, we're going to cause each other a certain amount of pain, right? We frustrate each other. We might disappoint each other. All of those are these little quill moments, right? And that's why the work of maintaining intimacy is... It's not for the faint of heart. It requires ongoing effort and vulnerability. And that can be hard and scary, but also so fulfilling. On this episode, Life Kit reporter Andy Tegel talks with James about how to build and maintain emotional intimacy in your romantic relationship.

3:17He'll talk about how to infuse your daily routine with intimate moments, how to spot when it's time for a relationship reset, and how to know the difference between being intimate and being comfortable. That's after the break. I'm Anita Rao, host of Embodied, your source for intimate conversations about sex, relationships, and health. Join me to meet people who will change the way you think about everything from disability to dating. And who will take you into their own lived experiences of how things like being a truck driver or dealing with chronic insomnia shape their identity and relationships.

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4:00Today, we're here to talk about intimacy in our romantic relationships. When you're in a long-term relationship, especially, it's easy to feel, as you say, comfortable and stable. You're saying that's not the same thing as emotional intimacy. Why not? I was just talking with somebody when I was doing supervision earlier today, and we were talking about how couples often find their way into a relationship with each other where they're more orbiting each other than really interwoven with each other. It's a little bit like the earth and the sun. We find this distance that is close but not too close.

4:38It's comfortable. It's predictable. It has a stability to it. But it doesn't have the vibrancy and the vitality of a truly intimate relationship. Where you can be living your life together but not be an intimate relationship. Yeah. One of the things that we found in our research is when we do the relationship checkup with folks, which is like the relationship health equivalent of your regular dental health checkup or your regular physical health checkup. When we do relationship health checkups with folks, one of the things that we ask them about is to tell us what the strengths are, the biggest strengths in their relationship are, and to rank order those.

5:18So they're able to tell us what their most significant strengths are. And for a lot of couples, the things that they identify as their most significant strengths are things that have nothing to do with emotional connection. Like we're really good at raising our kids together. We're good at managing our finances. We're good at like being really supportive of each other's independent activity. And when we see that cluster of strengths, that tells us this couple has really found their way into that comfortable distance where we're orbiting each other. We're running the business of a small family together.

5:55But we're not, we don't really trust each other with our tenderest parts. Takeaway one, being close and comfortable is not necessarily the same as sharing emotional intimacy. Do you have a romantic relationship or just a roommate? Is that the place you want to be? According to James, simply making time and space is one of the biggest barriers to everyday intimacy. And bridging that gap starts by understanding where you're at and where your relationship might need some watering. You say that attention is the most basic form of love in your book. Why is that? So whatever we're giving attention to is the thing that we're nurturing, the thing that we're growing in our lives, right?

6:41And so it is a form of love. If we're really giving a lot of our attention to our work, you know we're nurturing we're growing we're cultivating the things that we do professionally and it is a kind of love and when we're certainly when we're giving each other that attention right we're cultivating we're watering we're nurturing we're growing that connection between the two of us right the challenge is that attention is a very narrow beam we only have so much of it And we can't be paying attention to everything at the same time. We can pay attention to one thing at a time. And so the place where relationships can really suffer is from the neglect of our attention.

7:36And really one of the simplest things that we can do to begin to nurture connection and intimacy and love is to bring very deliberately, more mindfully, that quality of loving attention to each other. I'm glad you say mindful because I know attention is a principle of mindfulness, right? Can you explain to me how mindfulness plays a role in intimacy? So mindfulness really just means that we are paying attention on purpose with some intention. I sort of think about like the lived experience of being mindful is like savoring. If you're really paying attention to something, it has a quality of savoring to it.

8:20And what we know from our research, what we know from our own experience is that when we are being mindfully attentive to what we're eating, what we're touching, what we're looking at, when we're mindfully attentive to the person that we're with, that that quality of savoring comes across. And it enhances both our own experience of the sort of vividness, the vitality of that connection, of that interaction with the other person. And it's contagious, right? Like we know, we can tell when we're being mindfully attended to. And we can also tell when we're not. Takeaway two. Pay attention to your partner on purpose.

9:11Take note of his outfit, her hair, their mood, the playlist they put on as they cook dinner. Maybe you'll notice something new and surprising. Maybe you'll appreciate the thing you've always loved just a little bit more. Or if this exercise feels difficult, that's useful information too. Remember how James says we're all porcupines? If you're feeling a lack of intimate connection, he says sometimes that might be because you're trying to avoid getting poked. When our relationships start to get a little complicated, when we've got that area of conflict that just keeps coming up in a particularly frustrating or painful way, there are so many other things that call to us.

9:54Like work. You know, I can go to work a little earlier, I can stay a little later. There's the dog, there's the TV, there's my phone, there's the lawn that needs to be mowed. there's all these things that feel like oh well this needs my attention and again i think that can happen at a really almost unconscious level i call it we follow the path of least emotional resistance i'm going to go in the direction of the thing that's the least emotionally complicated conflict of course doesn't often go hand in hand with deep connection at least when you're in the thick of it. And there are an endless number of reasons why you might be experiencing friction or frustration with your partner.

10:40I think the big mistake that people make is trying to solve the unsolvable points of friction. Like we find our problems and we just keep trying to solve the problem because usually what we're trying to do is get our partner to change. Like if you change, then this problem will go away. And of course our partner is going, well, actually I was thinking, If you changed, then this problem would go away. And the mistake that's inherent in there is that almost always that most significant area of friction in the relationship is the arrow is actually pointing back toward each of our most deepest vulnerability.

11:24We're trying to solve a problem like it's an emotional math equation. And that actually ends up creating more distance. One solution that might be able to help bring you back to intimacy quicker is spotting the difference between solvable versus perpetual problems. This is an idea from relationship researcher John Gottman. Solvable problems in relationships are situational and specific. They're one-offs, like who's going to get the car fixed? What are we going to eat for dinner? Why is that always the question? Perpetual problems, on the other hand, center on fundamental differences in personality or outlook or lifestyle.

12:04They're not easily solved, and so you keep coming back to them. As in, how should money be saved? Or what does perfect leisure time look like? Introverts and extroverts find each other irresistible and so often end up in relationships with each other and don't really know that they're going to run into this issue until they run into this issue, right? Like, what are we going to do on a Friday night? I'm tired. I want to socialize. I'm tired. I want to not see anybody else but maybe you. It's the perpetual problems that lead to the majority of relationship issues. So, takeaway three, name it to tame it.

12:47Labeling your perpetual patterns can help you ease up on conflict, collaborate, and come back to connection. You know, one of the things that we've found in our research is that when couples are running into these sorts of perpetual patterns in their relationship, more often than not, they present a sort of fish and water problem. Like the pattern is having a really strong effect on the relationship, but they can't see it. They just keep enacting it. That moment when you can see it and call it something, you know, like we're doing our introvert extrovert dance, right? Or we're doing our spender saver thing, right?

13:28Or we're doing our porcupine turtle thing. Whenever you can label a pattern, when you can label a relational habit, it changes it. And the better we are at being able to call a pattern out in that kind of friendly way, the less susceptible we are to the pattern itself. What we found in our research is that couples who can name their pattern engage in the pattern less. When life gets returns, how to build in a daily practice of building emotional intimacy.

14:05Okay, let's get right into our next takeaway, takeaway four. To create an environment where your intimacy can thrive, build it into your daily routine. You don't need a whole lot of time, just a few minutes of dedicated attention and curiosity for your partner. What we've discovered in the research is that it's the regularity of it, that we can create these sorts of daily rituals of connection in our relationship. And they don't have to take forever. They can be five, ten minutes here and there that are that turning toward, right? So it can be just a few minutes in the morning where the thing that's most important to me is being curious about my partner.

14:48the thing that's most important to me is making sure that my partner feels seen and cared about. Because that's really what we're all longing for in our relationships. All that I really want is for my partner to see me, to know me, right? And to care. She doesn't necessarily have to solve my problems. She doesn't necessarily have to do anything magical. If I know that she knows what's going on in my life and she cares, that's enough. You know, I think that the key is just, I'm going to spend five minutes in the morning being really curious about my partner. What's going on for you today? What's in your heart?

15:29What's on your mind? What's on your schedule? And maybe five more minutes in the middle of the day and five minutes at the end of the day. Like, it doesn't have to be forever, but it has to be that deep, dedicated attention is the most basic form of love, quality of attention that is, I just want to know you and I want you to know that I see you, I'm curious about you and I care. And just conversation, like just like five minutes over your coffee in the morning, like what's going on with you? Yeah. Yeah. This is what's going on for me. You know, this is what's popping around in my head, what's popping around in your head and the most particular things like what's on your agenda for today?

16:13What's the thing that you're most eager about today? What's the thing that you're most dreading today? What's the thing that you're most grateful for? What's the thing that you wish would go away? I kind of want to get a heads up on what are going to be the highlights and what are going to be the lowlights so that I can check up on it later. So how'd that highlight go? Was it actually a highlight or was it a no light? And what about the thing that you were really worried about? How did that thing go? So that, you know, I'm constantly carrying, you know, my partner's experience in my head and in my heart.

16:48And feeling like I also know that when I'm going into this meeting that I'm like, oh my God, I don't want to be in this meeting. I know that my partner knows that I had this meeting today. And she's kind of there with me. And she's going to ask me about it later. And I know that she cares about, like, how this is for me, even if nobody else does. It sounds like you're letting your partner in to your inner world and vice versa. Right. But does intimacy, like a daily practice of intimacy, does it always require conversation? Are there other ways to practice that intimacy with each other? You know, I'm thinking like, you know, not everybody's a big sharer.

17:26Not everybody always has time or room for that conversation. Are there other ways to foster intimacy? There are. And I think, you know, part of the way that I very deliberately constructed the way that I think about intimacy so that it doesn't always involve deep conversation. A lot of it is, you know, we get to know each other through our sort of daily habits, our sort of patterns. You know, we start to recognize each other's rhythms, right? Like you can tell your partner's tired and stressed. They don't necessarily have to talk about being tired and stressed. You just know. So you bring them a cup of tea, you rub their shoulders, you rub their feet, right?

18:04There's all these ways that we can, in the absence of words, show the other person that I see you and I care. You know, a lot of that is physical. A lot of that, you know, is just like physical affection, presence, you know, these sorts of like offerings, you know, like if you've had a particularly challenging day, this might be a good day for one of your favorite movies, right? Might not have to say anything about it. It's just like, hey, let's watch this movie tonight, Right. And so part of that is like discovering that about each other. What is my path to that place that for you feels like you're a source of safety, you're a source of acceptance and I can just be my grumpy self and know that you love me anyway.

18:53Takeaway five. Intimacy is often as imperfect as it is important. So keep at it. We'll leave you with some final wisdom from James to help. I think maybe it's three things. It's grace, so that we're giving ourselves and each other just a lot of space to be messy and to get it wrong and to just miscommunicate, to say it the wrong way, to use the wrong word, to think it was Wednesday when it was actually Thursday. So there's grace. And then maybe the most important element is just unrelenting kindness, which is like kindness towards ourselves and our own dumpster fire and kindness towards our partner, even when they're misbehaving.

19:40And then maybe finally in there again is that kind of loving curiosity. I think one of the most powerful practices that we can engage in with our partner is to prioritize on a regular basis understanding over being understood. And I think that our instinct is to really fight to be understood and to kind of forget about the seeking to understand part. And if we can flip that regularly, then a lot of the things that otherwise seem like unresolvable just start to resolve themselves. So grace, kindness, and curiosity. I think we could all use some more of that. That sounds lovely. I'll take an order.

20:32I'll take, yeah, I'll take an order of all three of those things. Thank you, James. That's lovely. James Cordova, it has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time. Absolutely. Thank you, Andy. Let's recap, lovers. Takeaway one, being comfortable is not the same as being emotionally intimate. Which one are you? Takeaway two, practice paying attention to your partner on purpose. their voice or clothes or taste or cooking. What new something can you find to appreciate today? Takeaway three. Conflict often gets in the way of intimacy. One way to more easily get back into connection is to understand when you're suffering a perpetual problem, like doing your spender versus saver routine or your introvert-extrovert dance.

21:19Spotting the pattern can be the first step in helping you break your cycles. Takeaway four. Create a daily intimacy practice. It doesn't have to take long. Just a bit of dedicated time and attention focused solely on your partner. Have a few minutes of pillow talk in the morning. Send him a joke and a meme over lunch. Or give her a foot rub at the end of the day. Finally, takeaway five. Maintaining intimacy is hard work. So whenever possible, grant yourself and your partner some grace. Some unrelenting kindness and loving curiosity.

21:57That was LifeKit reporter Andy Tegel. Hey, you're a fan of LifeKit, right? Well, don't keep us a secret. Why don't you tell a friend about us? Send them an episode you think they'd like. And thank you for helping spread the word about LifeKit. This episode of LifeKit was produced by Claire Marie Schneider. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan, and our digital editor is Malika Garib. Megan Cain is our senior supervising editor, and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Margaret Serino, Sylvie Douglas, and Lennon Sherburn. Engineering support comes from Stacey Abbott.

22:33I'm Mariel Segarra. Thank you for listening.