The Death of Intimacy

Hi friend,

My partner Drew and I have been together for five and a half years now, which is the longest relationship of my life.

That might not sound like a lot to you, but I assure you it’s very significant to me, although actually the amount of time we’ve been together isn’t really the significant thing, it’s just a cool external marker of what we’ve accomplished together.

I’m so proud of this relationship because we’ve faced and overcome extraordinary challenges together, and come out stronger for it. I’m proud because we’ve gone to far deeper, darker, more vulnerable, and ultimately more expansive places than I’ve ever been with anyone else, and we’ve grown so much as individuals and as a couple throughout it all.

Today I want to share some reflections and insights from this relationship, so if that’s not you jam right now, feel free to skip it!

Going back to the beginning, Drew and I knew that we had something special within a few weeks of meeting, and we decided to risk everything to move across the country together during Covid after having only spent a few months together. Then we got engaged soon after, and have been fiercely dedicated to each other ever since.

Telling this version of our love story could easily give the impression that it’s been easy, but I assure you it has not.

Partnership is a lot of work, and we’ve been working incredibly hard on ours, especially over the last few years. 

Because the truth is that love, chemistry, and commitment are a good starting place for a relationship, but they’re enough. 

Falling in love is wonderful and intense, but for the first couple of years of a relationship you’re still mostly in love with your idea of the other person, and all your triggers and insecurities are being softened and buffered by the love drugs being pumped out by your brain. 

In my opinion, the real work of a relationship doesn’t start until later, when those chemicals calm down— when you start to be able to differentiate the truth of who your partner actually is from your projections about who you thought they were (or believe they could be), and when the jagged edges of each of your vulnerabilities are no longer being cushioned and protected by hormonal bumper rails.

Similarly, I believe commitment creates a powerful container in which safety, connection, and vulnerability can blossom, but far too many people let that commitment stand in for the necessary work of actively and intentionally nurturing the relationship, or interpret commitment as permission to go on autopilot.

Put another way… love, chemistry, and commitment can get you to the part of the movie where we’re told they live happily ever after, and the credits role.

But if you want to stay together for the long term—and you want to actually thrive as intimate partners, rather than shifting into the realm of friends, roommates, co-parents, or business partners—then these things must be only the beginning.

In fact, after years of experience helping other people improve their relationships, I’ve discovered that there are three main pillars that must be present for any couple to thrive long-term:

1. Each individual must be committed to continuously healing and growing into their own most authentic and expansive self… even when that’s hard for their partner.

2. Each individual must be committed to supporting their partner’s ability to heal and grow into their most authentic and expansive self… even when that’s hard for them personally.

3. And both parties must be committed to consistently and deliberately nurturing the connection between them, and learning/growing in whatever ways are needed to continue supporting that connection.

Personally, I am amazing at that first one, and have historically been complete shit at the second one. Drew, on the other hand, is naturally gifted at the second one, but has a harder time with the first one. 

Luckily however, while we’ve both been working hard to improve and strengthen our skills in those first two areas as needed, one thing we really have going for us is that we’re both really fucking great at the third one.

Our mutual commitment to our connection sits at the heart of our love story.

We’ve been through so many hardships since meeting, from a global pandemic and personal mental health issues to work stress, conflict cycles, and bumping into each other’s triggers, boundaries, and deepest core wounds.

But when we’re disconnected, our shared goal is always to restore safety, trust, and intimacy, and when one of us is closed off, the goal is always to get back to mutual safety and open-heartedness. 

Because Drew and I are both unabashedly invested in feeling intimately connected, close, and secure, I know that no matter how hard things get we will both crawl over broken glass to get back to each other. 

And while our relationship is far from perfect, I believe this mutual commitment—not to just staying together, but to staying intimately connected to each other—is the reason we’re still here and still in love, five and a half years later.

Unfortunately, I also believe this is something a lot of people get wrong about relationships. 

In a world that teaches us about soulmates and fairytales, it’s easy to assume that love and commitment should be enough to sustain an intimate connection, or that once you’ve found “the one,” the hard work is done and you can just sit back, relax, and live happily ever after.

But this view of relationships really just encourages us to take each other for granted, abandon curiosity, sweep things under the rug to avoid conflict, shrink ourselves to avoid rocking the boat, and stop growing as individuals and partners. 

In the long run, this sets us up to feel like we’ve abandoned ourselves for the sake of the relationship, while simultaneously accepting a relationship that feels less and less intimate over time, until we feel so small and lonely that the relationship itself feels like an insurmountable obstacle to our happiness.

If you’ve ever experienced this, or know someone else who has, then you know how confusing and heartbreaking it feels, and how easy it is to find yourself looking back and wondering… how did this happen? When did this happen?

When did we stop trying to get to know each other? When did we stop being lovers? When did we shift from affection to irritation? When did I start feeling so lonely? How did we grow so far apart?

The answer is that we fall out of love the same way we fall in love, which is—as author John Green puts beautifully— “slowly, and then all at once.”

This slow death of the intimate connection between partners is why so many people (and men especially, in my experience) end up feeling completely blindsided when their partner seems to suddenly, out of nowhere, be done. 

No big blow-up. No glaring incompatibilities. Just the slow and steady erosion of connectivity, vulnerability, trust, affection, or attunement, until the only things holding you together as a couple are the house, the kids, the social expectations, or the desire to not hurt each other.

All of this is to say that most people know relationships take work, but they’re not often clear on exactly what kind of work they require, or what that work looks like.

For an intimate relationship to survive and thrive in the long term, all partners must tend to each of the three pillars, but perhaps none is more important than this one: intentionally and consistently investing in the health, depth, and strength of your intimate connection with your partner.

If you and your partner want help improving your relationship or reconnecting, I still have one spot left for couple’s coaching— this is a limited time offer for steeply discounted coaching, so send me a message for details or to Apply Now!

Big hug,

Jessi