Intimacy is an important part of a healthy relationship, but intimacy means more than sex. It is the experience of knowing your partner deeply and allowing yourself to be known by them. Couples create intimacy when they share their inner worlds, respond to one another emotionally, spend meaningful time together, express affection, and remain curious about each other.

Intimacy can gradually diminish without either partner intentionally choosing it. Work gets busy. Children need attention. Phones and television fill quiet spaces. Conversations become focused on schedules, responsibilities, and what needs to happen next. Eventually, couples may realize that they function well together but don't necessarily feel connected to one another. Intimacy, however, can be intentionally created and strengthened. Here are seven places to begin.

1. Share More of Your Inner World

Good communication involves more than exchanging information. Tell your partner what you are thinking about, looking forward to, worrying about, or struggling with. Share the experiences that are shaping you—not just the events of your day.

Try moving beyond “How was your day?” Ask questions such as, “What has been on your mind lately?” “What was the best part of your day?” or “Is there anything you've been thinking about that we haven't talked about?”

Intimacy grows when partners continue discovering one another. Even after years together, there should still be more to learn.

2. Protect Time for Your Relationship

Relationships rarely thrive on leftover time. When your partner consistently receives whatever remains after work, children, household responsibilities, friends, and technology, emotional distance can gradually develop.

Create protected time when your primary purpose is simply to be together. Put away the phones. Turn off the television. Take a walk, sit outside, have coffee together, or spend 20 minutes talking after the children go to bed. It doesn't always need to be elaborate. Presence is often more important than the activity.

3. Become Emotionally Available

Pay attention to what happens when your partner shares something vulnerable. Do you immediately offer solutions? Become defensive? Minimize the concern? Explain why they shouldn't feel that way? Or can you remain curious about their experience?

Emotional intimacy develops when partners experience each other as emotionally available. Sometimes one of the most connecting responses you can offer is simply, “Tell me more. I want to understand.” You don't have to agree with everything your partner feels to communicate that their experience matters to you.

4. Increase Everyday Affection

Physical intimacy doesn't have to begin in the bedroom. Holding hands, hugging, kissing goodbye, sitting close together, touching your partner as you walk past, or cuddling on the couch can create small moments of connection throughout the day. These seemingly ordinary interactions communicate something important: I notice you. I enjoy being close to you. You matter to me. Don't underestimate the cumulative effect of everyday affection. Small moments of connection, repeated consistently, can shape how a relationship feels.

5. Date Each Other Again

Dating shouldn't end when a relationship becomes committed. Regular date nights create intentional space for the relationship apart from work, parenting, household responsibilities, and other demands. They also communicate something important to your partner: our relationship deserves time and attention.

Dates don't have to be expensive or elaborate. Go to dinner, take a walk somewhere new, have breakfast together, attend an event, or return to something you enjoyed doing earlier in your relationship. What matters is creating experiences where you can turn toward each other rather than simply manage life together.

6. Create New Experiences Together

Familiarity creates comfort, but too much routine can make a relationship feel predictable.

Try a new restaurant. Take a class. Visit somewhere you haven't been. Cook something neither of you has made before. Explore a new part of your city. Start a hobby together. New experiences give couples something particularly valuable: new shared memories.

A healthy relationship shouldn't consist only of remembering the experiences that originally brought you together. Continue creating experiences that give you something new to talk about, laugh about, remember, and share.

7. Talk About Sexual Intimacy

Couples sometimes expect satisfying sexual intimacy to happen naturally, yet hesitate to actually talk about sex.

Create space for conversations about what each of you enjoys, misses, wants, or finds difficult. Talk about affection, desire, frequency, initiation, preferences, and boundaries without turning the conversation into criticism or pressure.

Approach sexual intimacy with curiosity rather than assumptions. Consider asking each other:

“What helps you feel close to me?”

“When do you feel most desired by me?”

“What do you miss about this part of our relationship?”

“What could we do to make our sexual relationship more connecting for both of us?”

Sexual intimacy is strengthened when both partners can talk about it with openness, respect, curiosity, and emotional safety.

Intimacy Is Created in Moments

Couples sometimes wait for a vacation, romantic weekend, or special occasion to reconnect. But intimacy is usually created through much smaller experiences.

A meaningful conversation. A longer hug. Putting down your phone when your partner begins talking. Laughing together. Asking a question and genuinely wanting to hear the answer. Reaching for your partner in bed. Trying something new together. These moments may seem small individually, but together they communicate something powerful:

I see you. I know you. You matter to me. And I am still choosing this relationship.

Intimacy is not something a relationship either has or doesn't have. It is something partners continually create with one another.

From Insight to Action: Take the Temperature of Your Relationship

Family therapist Virginia Satir encouraged couples and families to use regular “temperature readings” as a way of checking in with one another. I often ask couples I work with to practice a temperature reading once a week. It is a simple way to take the pulse of your relationship, create space for conversations that might otherwise be missed, and stay connected to what is happening in each other's lives.

Set aside some uninterrupted time this week. Put away distractions and take turns responding to each of the following five prompts:

1. Appreciation: Share something you appreciate about your partner or something they did recently that was meaningful to you.

2. New Information: Share something your partner may not know yet. It could be a situation, thought, feeling, idea, experience, or something you have been thinking about but haven't mentioned.

3. Puzzle: Share something that has been on your mind or that you are trying to understand. It might be something you are struggling with personally or something you are curious or uncertain about in the relationship.

4. Complaint and Request for Change: Identify something in the relationship that you would like to be different. Try to focus on the relationship need underneath the complaint, rather than simply telling your partner what they are doing wrong. When you raise a complaint, also offer a possible solution or request that could help address the concern.

5. Wish, Hope, or Dream: Share something you are looking forward to, hoping for, or dreaming about. It might involve your relationship, family, career, personal life, or your future together.

Make It Your Own

Once you have practiced the temperature reading for a while, consider adding prompts that are particularly meaningful for your relationship. The goal isn't to rigidly follow a formula. The structure simply creates a regular opportunity to notice what is happening between you and talk about it before important things go unspoken.

One couple I worked with created a question that I particularly liked:

It invites partners to end their check-in by identifying something they want to be intentional about together. Your answer might be more affection, patience, having fun together, making time to talk, sexual connection, or being more supportive during a stressful week.

Whatever you choose, keep it simple. A weekly temperature reading is not intended to solve every problem in your relationship. It is an opportunity to regularly turn toward one another, pay attention to the relationship, and decide together where you want to place your energy in the week ahead.