Love is a wonderful thing that makes life incredibly rewarding and slightly messy at times. Emotional intimacy is the ribbon that ties everything together in a relationship. When your initial lovestruck feelings fade, or you've been challenged with difficult circumstances, emotional intimacy brings the balance and center to everything.

But building that level of closeness and trust between two people can take a while — and it goes through seasons of highs and lows like anything else in life. Whether you have past experiences that make it hard to trust or you're going through a difficult season in your relationship, you can still work toward growing your capacity for intimacy with your partner.

Here are some helpful ways to rekindle your connection with your partner and grow your intimacy to strengthen and enjoy your relationship even more than you do today. 

What Is Emotional Intimacy and How Can I Improve?

Emotional Intimacy is your personal nature meeting with another to form lasting connections. And in a partnership and marriage, you've committed to love that that person regardless of what comes. It's a tall order, but creates the fabric for a happy and fulfilled life.

How to Become More Intimate with Someone.

When you want to grow intimacy, it takes every part of you, mind, body, and soul. When you think about your relational health in the same way as your physical health, you'll see that it takes the same elements of thinking through your needs, engaging your physical body, and feeding your emotional center. Once you've grasped these key elements, you can start to grow toward more connectivity and emotional support. 

While this reads easy on the screen, applying this to your life takes commitment and patience as you and your partner both give each other space to name what you need, make mistakes, and ultimately grow toward each other. 

4 Immediate Ways to Find More Emotional Intimacy.

If you're looking for some quick ways to start the conversation, here are four things that can bring you and your partner closer. 

1. Create a Safe Environment to Talk. 

Only you and your partner know how you feel safest to communicate. And since this is a two-way-street, you have to allow for some compromise. If your spouse prefers to write down his or her feelings,  then you'll need to let them communicate that way. But if you prefer speaking in person, ask the other individual to let you talk with them in a quiet space, once you both can be fully present. 

If your significant other doesn't want to meet with you or open up, you can initiate the trust by sharing something you've held on to — or let them know that you are there for them in small but meaningful ways. 

2. Prioritize time every week to connect over something you both enjoy doing.

A fun way to connect with your spouse is by carving out time to do something you connected over to begin with. Emotional intimacy doesn't always have to be serious — creating light-hearted and fun moments can help build the bridge to opening up on a deeper level. 

Some great ways to do this are —

• Making your favorite dinner together at home
• Playing your favorite board game that's been collecting dust
• Going to a performance by one of your favorite musicians
• Trying something new like visiting a museum or axe-throwing
• Just getting a babysitter and going out to dinner

3. Be physically intimate. 

While it may seem that this should come after emotional intimacy, sex is often two sides to the coin. If you're struggling with intimacy, having sex can help you feel closer. But if you're struggling to enjoy sex, you may not feel the intimacy you should. 

If you and your spouse can talk through your physical needs, what makes you feel the most loved or desired, and work to share that with each other, you may find spontaneous and planned moments both giving you more connection while deepening your relationship. 

As a woman, if you are having physical barriers to enjoying sex, learn more about how our vaginal melts can help support your physical wellness to living more fully.

4. Affirm your partner every day. 

Last, but not least, find simple ways to connect with and affirm your partner each day. Whether it's doing an act of service, like taking out the trash when they know you hate it, or sending a sweet or sexy text in the middle of the day, you can find tangible ways to affirm your love and care for each other. 

Building a healthy relationship and finding emotional intimacy can take time. Be patient with yourself and your significant other as you both leave preconceived expectations or past struggles behind and develop this level of trust with each other. In the end, it's worth any emotional pain to come to the place where you both feel valued, loved, and heard in the relationship!  

And if you find your relationship struggling to find that level of emotional intimacy, here's an excellent resource to learn more about developing healthy relational habits and healing from past issues.