Frustrated when it comes to emotional intimacy with your man

For most women spending time with our closest friends is a great source of happiness.  Longing to be understood and have a chance to share our dreams; our hearts and souls are warmed when they ask the very questions we want asked of us.

For no matter how much we’d love it to be different – seeking intimacy from the men in our lives can be like chasing the wind.

In her book ‘’The Men and the Girls”, one of author Johanna Trollope’s male characters says “Perhaps my self-sufficiency is really just detachment, that male sort of detachment that makes women so wild.” 

Richard Cohen, a Washington Post columnist writes “Women will tell you all the time they don’t know the man they live with. They talk of long silences and drifting apart and of keeping feelings hidden and never letting on that they are troubled or bothered or whatever.If it’s any comfort to women, they should know it’s not personal. Men treat other men the same way.”

Sociologist Janet Lever notes “Girls tend to feel more comfortable with a single best friend; boys prefer to play in teams”. Studies also show that generally speaking, the strongest drive for females is connection and the strongest drive for men is status.    

Clearly intimacy – or the lack of it – can cause tension in relationships between men and women universally. But there could be more than just gender involved when it comes to understanding why people either embrace or avoid closeness. We explore some of the other reasons here:

1. Unsafe childhood experiences

Children who feel unsafe in their families build up defences. If life at school also fails to build their confidence and self-esteem, they can enter the world as angry, insecure people not ready for adulthood; with a coping strategy that is to attack, control and manipulate. Or to withdraw and avoid challenges - without understanding why they behave as they do.

2. Sins of the fathers

Children learn from and model their behaviour on the behaviour of their parents. This applies not only to parenting style, but also emotional intelligence. If parents don’t have emotional maturity, their dysfunctional responses are perpetuated.

For better or worse, you can only bring your children to the same level of development that you have achieved. This does not mean we have to be perfect, rather that we owe it to ourselves and our children to face our issues and resolve to work on them.

3. Domination issues

For her book The Chalice and the Blade, Riane Eisler PhD conducted a study of human history. She suggests that there are two models for social relationships; the Domination Model and the Partnership Model.

Apart from claiming that the most violent societies of the 20th century all share the Dominator Model; for example Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s USSR and Idi Amin’s Uganda, Eisler also says this model is characterised by three core elements:

1. Authoritarianism – Strong male rule in both family and state or tribe
2. Rigid male dominance – Ranking one half of humanity higher than another
3. Socially accepted violence – From wife and child beating to warfare

The point here is that when a child is born into a society that leans more toward the Domination Model, habits of domination are instilled by the family from birth.

Moving forward

Taking gender as well as background into consideration, it would be safe to assume that if your partner was born into a society oriented toward the Domination Model and raised in an ‘’unsafe’’ family,  chances are fairly slim that you will easily get close to him.

This could be perfectly acceptable to you.

If not, if both parties are willing, there is the option to seek professional help. After all, learning to cope with differences (without seeing them as personal attempts at driving us crazy) is part of life for couples.

Of course if one partner feels that remaining in a relationship that lacks closeness is not an option, and the other is unwilling to reach a compromise, it could signal the end of the relationship.  

Parting shot

A study at Rutgers State University confirms that, given the choice, members of both sexes would rather spend time with a woman.

We suspect this is because women have the capacity to engage with others at a more intimate level.

Seeking to strengthen relationships, women have an inherent desire to truly understand the people we are connected to. This can only be good for our families, communities and ultimately all of humanity . . . yet another good reason to celebrate being a woman!