Intimacy vs. Sexual Activity
By: Elisheva Liss, LMFT
The well-groomed young couple settled into the matching navy, velvet club chairs in my office, and glanced at one another. After a beat, the young woman turned to me, and gingerly proffered:
“We’re here because we need to work on our intimacy.”
“General intimacy, emotional intimacy, or physical intimacy? Or all of the above?” I inquire.
They look at each other, and he replies: “Physical, I think.”
A generic opening to an intake session.
Depending on the vibe I get from the couple, I may offer them some permutation of the following shpiel:
A common colloquial practice within our communities, is to substitute the word “intimacy” for sex or sexual intercourse. It’s understood that many individuals or groups are uncomfortable with the explicitness or connotation of the word “sex,” but there can be some ambiguity with this particular choice of euphemism.
Intimacy is its own word, with its own specific, almost sacred, meaning. It implies closeness, a sense being open, a sequential revealing of one’s inner self to another, fueled by trust, connection, and understanding. There are a number of different relationships which can be characterized, healthily, as intimate, only one of them being sexual in nature. For example, you can have an intimate gathering of old friends, an intimate conversation with a mentor, and feel intimately connected to your family.
Sexual activity and intercourse, on the other hand, are not necessary always intimate. Some extreme examples are sexual violence, prostitution, or a one night stand with a stranger, which are all very much the opposite of intimate. Even within a loving and/ or committed relationship, not all forms of sexual activity are experienced intimately by either or both parties. (Nor, do they always necessarily need to be.)
Some couples want to work on general intimacy; they find their lives together to feel more like polite roommate- acquaintances than significant others. Other couples are more connected personally, but they want to improve emotional intimacy, and that aspect of their relationship may or may not be impeding their sexual relationship. And some have trouble in bed with technique or pleasure, but they have achieved a sophisticated level of emotional intimacy. This is why I need to know which form of intimacy is to be their focus. They don’t always have clarity on this themselves, yet, and in that case, part of the work includes trying to determine the answer in session, which will help us formulate clear therapeutic goals.
I think that one of the problems we tend to have, culturally, is that we expect a lot out of sex right from the get-go. For Orthodox couples who are beginning their sexual relationship on the wedding night, in one fell swoop, that is a tall, sometimes unrealistic, order. We want it to be: immediate, natural, holy, pleasurable, generous, exclusive, exciting, but safe, disinhibited but discreet, recreational but reproductive, and, of course, able to be turned on and off every couple of weeks, and then sustained through a couple of decades worth of pregnancies, night feedings, and parenting the brood.
All this, often right as they are first beginning to really know* each other properly, depending on how extensively they dated, and generally don’t have much experience with technique or even vocabulary.
[*Biblical carnal knowledge shares the identical root with the word for regular knowledge, yediah, but the Torah also has other words for nonintimate sexual engagement.]
Sex, like intimacy, is a skill, a practice that takes time to learn and develop. We understand and expect a learning curve in the interpersonal realm, yet we often have less patience and more fear when it comes to the sexual. Some babies walk and talk at an early age, and some are delayed. Still others are advanced cognitively, but slower with gross motor skills, and others demonstrate the reverse. Likewise, some couples discover sexual chemistry along the same track as their emotional chemistry, whether fast or slow, and others develop them at different paces. And just like some toddlers need a little help and guidance with those vital skills, some couples may need some support along the way, too. But unlike the skills of walking and talking, which are somewhat uniform, there is a lot of complexity and subjectivity in sexual experience, which needs to evolve within each relationship too.
A particularly painful but common scenario, is when one partner is making love, but the other one is simply having sex, and not especially enjoying it, just doing so as sort of a marital chore. Or as one spouse told me said: “He has a much better marriage than I do.”
In terms of physical intimacy, I like to group the needs into two basic sets: instinctive and psychospiritual. The instinctive need is more like a base animal mating appeal, and this could hypothetically be satisfied by any warm body of the desired gender. This is the need for sex. The psychospiritual need is more refined, and it stems from the human desire for mutual intimacy, wanting to give and receive pleasure, to desire and feel desirable, to connect and communicate heartfelt thoughts and feelings through our flesh. This is the need for erotic love.
There is a palpable difference between having sex and making love, and while a healthy marriage will usually crave the ability for intimate love-making, it’s actually possible for both to feel great.
There can be intimacy without sex, and there can be sex without intimacy, and there can be sexual intimacy. So whether you favor deeply intimate conversation, passionate, connective, lovemaking, or just a spontaneous quickie, it’s wonderful to learn the art of each, over time, and eventually have them all in your relationship toolbox.
I hope that those who read these words and relate, take them as encouragement to be kind and patient with themselves and their spouses, but also to research and reach out for appropriate help if they feel they are struggling in these areas; a little good help can go a very long way. Wishing all my dear readers the precious twin gifts of genuine intimacy as well as great sex.
Have you ever wondered how often people engage in sexual activity?
Or how often is optimal for healthy, happily married couples to aim for?
(I purposely used the euphemism “be intimate” in the title because often, people who ask this question in the framework of “supposed to” are uncomfortable with the more direct language of “have sex.” They may prefer to say things like : “be together, do it, make love, have relations, etc.” Whatever works:)
Couples therapists get this question a lot, especially from people who feel like they didn't or don't have enough information in the area of sexuality education.
It’s a legitimate curiosity, but the answer may be unsatsifying.
Firstly: “supposed to” is not a great framework for healthy sex. It works better when the focus is on mutual pleasure, not obligation or comparison.
Second: Frequency is not something that is mandated. Not psychologically, not legally, not Biblically.
It’s determined by and customized to each couple.
There is a Medrash that describes this, and is quoted by Rashi in this week’s Torah portion (I’m writing this the week of VaYishlach, but you can read it any week:)
When Yaakov sent gifts of livestock to his brother Esav, the Torah lists in great detail, the numbers and species of all the animals in the caravan.
Why do we care how many he-goats and she-goats there were?
The answer offered is that the ratio of male to female animals was determined by how often they needed to mate, which was determined by how strenuously they worked. The Medrash extrapolates an analogy to human mating schedules. (The paradigm used by the Talmudic literature is phrased in terms of a husband’s requirement to be available for his wife, not the reverse, but sex should always be consensual both ways.)
The Medrash says that men of leisure might be available daily, laborers twice weekly, donkey drivers once a week, camel drivers ones a month, and sailors/ those who travel for work, every six months.
Of course these are just some examples but Rashi goes on to explain:
“From here we learn that this need is not equal to every person [or couple.]” It depends on the couple’s individual schedules, emotional, and physical limitations and needs.
I’ve heard many people say that they were initially under the impression that couples only have sex when they want to conceive a baby. They were genuinely shocked to learn otherwise. This is not so ludicrous, when you consider the fact that many young people are taught about sex only in the framework of “how babies are made” if that much. Of course, most couples have far more sexual activity than they do children or attempts to conceive them.
It’s a legitimate query to ask how often couples have sex, but there isn’t a one size fits all answer.
Naturally there are some broad, cultural averages, and data. The most commonly quoted one is approximately once a week, but the numbers range significantly, and fluctuate within each couple based on many variables, such as stages of life like pregnancies, having babies and young children, medical or situational factors, and other variables that often make it challenging or more feasible. So please do not use that average to shame yourself or your partner for wanting more or less than that!
The healthiest answer to "how often should a couple be intimate is “as often as works well for both of them at each stage and season of life.”
Desire discrepancies and changes in libido over time are normal, but if you're finding that yours or your partner's are feeling disruptive to your relationship, please take the time to have a loving, strategizing conversation about it with your spouse, read up on the subject, and if necessary reach out for help.
Check out my course!
A Religious Families Guide to Healthy Holy Sex Education: Sacred Not Secret
Elisheva Liss, LMFT is a psychotherapist in private practice. Her book, Find Your Horizon of Healthy Thinking, is available on Amazon.com. She can be reached for sessions or speaking engagements at speaktosomeone@gmail.com More of her content can be found at ElishevaLiss.com