But the best sex on this Friday night, according to Houston relationship expert Mary Jo Rapini, goes to those couples who share the greatest depths of intimacy, and that’s getting harder to find in the micro and macrocosm in this day and age. “We’re losing the ability to be intimate in our society,” Rapini tells KTRH News, and says it’s affecting marriages. “As a therapist, what I see is that it’s not a lack of sex that is ruining relationships, it’s a lack of intimacy.”
Don’t conflate sex and intimacy, defined by dictionary.com as “a close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationship with another person or group.” Oh, but it goes so much deeper than that.
So, so much deeper.
“If you’re going to be intimate with someone you have to risk being vulnerable,” Rapini counsels, and that in a nutshell, she suggests, is why intimacy is so hard to attain and so rewarding when you get there. To be vulnerable, to lay the real you that no one else knows on the line, to be rejected or accepted, is an act of courage many can’t summon the strength to master. But acceptance can take you to a place of unconditional love, and that is the ultimate reward of intimacy. Rapini says in our fast-paced, hectic, nine-to-five worlds, we’ve lost our focus on what’s important. “More and more, couples are meeting on apps, they’re looking for sexual partners, they’re not looking for people they can partner with and work with to build a life together.”
Tonight don’t just share a bottle of wine. Share secrets.