Emotional Intimacy Quotes & Sayings

People cheat on each other in a hundred different ways: indifference, emotional neglect, contempt, lack of respect, years of refusal of intimacy. Cheating doesn't begin to describe the ways that people let each other down. — Esther Perel

I have to hold that up as a metaphor for everything, being prepared and then being brave enough to just be there. Just listen and follow, maybe jump. Everyone leans in, it brings them into your emotional vicinity because, you said "Risk creates intimacy — Mary-Louise Parker

Sex is a sacred act which sadly, over the past few decades, has been demeaned and demoralized until it means almost nothing to most people. Veray few still appreciate the emotional and spiritual connection that can and should take place when two bodies and souls are joined together. — Karen Amanda Hooper

I want a real relationship, one without intimacy issues; without trust issues, but with all my emotional baggage, I don't know if that's possible. — Ella Dominguez

Both men accepted that the nature of the request, its intimacy and self-conscious reflection on their friendship, had created, for the moment, an uncomfortable emotional proximity which was best dealt with by their parting without another word. — Ian McEwan

These include the need to express one's gifts and do meaningful work, the need to love and be loved, the need to be truly seen and heard, and to see and hear other people, the need for connection to nature, the need to play, explore, and have adventures, the need for emotional intimacy, the need to serve something larger than oneself, and the need sometimes to do absolutely nothing and just be. — Charles Eisenstein

Can the purpose of a relationship be to trigger our wounds? In a way, yes, because that is how healing happens; darkness must be exposed before it can be transformed. The purpose of an intimate relationship is not that it be a place where we can hide from our weaknesses, but rather where we can safely let them go. It takes strength of character to truly delve into the mystery of an intimate relationship, because it takes the strength to endure a kind of psychic surgery, an emotional and psychological and even spiritual initiation into the higher Self. Only then can we know an enchantment that lasts. — Marianne Williamson

That you and I don't use emotional condoms. We just let the messy goo of who we are fly free, threatening to impregnate us with insecurity of infect us with the pain of true intimacy. — Mo Daviau

For much of my life I would crave attention with a carnal intensity. From anyone. From everyone. That feeling of being chosen. I would flirt with anyone who was congenial and amenable - a ravenous, indiscriminate flirtation, or a feather-light, barely-there one - or allow myself to be flirted with, by women and men alike, to cover the emptiness I felt or to fill in the hole, the desired culmination being not so much physical intimacy as emotional affirmation. The boy who had once felt invisible would forever ache simply to be seen. — Charles M. Blow

You know what I find amazing is within Christianity it is not uncommon to find [married] people who don't have sexual intimacy, don't have emotional intimacy, don't have spiritual intimacy, don't pray together, don't do their life together, don't put their schedules together, don't put their budgets together, but they don't get divorced. So they can pat themselves on the back and say, 'We're good Christians.' They're divorced in everything but the paperwork. — Mark Driscoll

Friendship intimacy calls for whoever is on the receiving end of the information to offer "hefty helpings of emotional expressiveness and unconditional support." Yet, as Karbo points out, they can't be too opinionated. So if I'm enraged that Matt canceled our Friday night plans, again, she better huff and puff and agree it was lame of him, but she would never say "He's such an ass, I've never liked him." Such are the unwritten rules of friendship. — Rachel Bertsche

I think that most women know what happens that leads you to a point where you're not even looking for intimacy anymore. You're just looking for the physical side of it and not the emotional side of it. — Natalie Portman

If we are not taught about love when our brains and hearts are forming, we may never even recognize it when it stands in front of us. We may even run from it. We would miss out on the one thing that makes life worth living. — Kate McGahan

Terrified of being alone, yet afraid of intimacy, we experience widespread feelings of emptiness, of disconnection, of the unreality of self. And here the computer, a companion without emotional demands, offers a compromise. You can be a loner, but never alone. You can interact, but need never feel vulnerable to another person. — Sherry Turkle

I love telling stories. I love the intimacy between the writer and reader. When you write sketches it's over in two minutes. When you write a book the characters have to have a bit of emotional depth. — David Walliams

Parental behavioral factors - including fathers who are responsive and positive, mothers who favor "self-directed child behavior," and parents with emotional intimacy in their marriages - influence a child's development two to three times more than any form of child care. — Sheryl Sandberg

When two people respect each other, the ability to be vulnerable and to reveal hurt feelings can create a powerful emotional connection that is the source of real intimacy and friendship. — David D. Burns

Reaching up, he began using the exercise bar to do chin-ups. The repetitive act helped focus his mind as it multitasked. One thing was certain - he refused to never again experience the intimacy of being with Brenna. It wasn't the sex, though that had been the most amazing experience of his life. It was the way he'd made her laugh, made her smile, made her complain and then cuddle. All because she'd felt safe, reassured by the strength of their emotional connection.
He would not steal that feeling from her. And he most definitely was not going to surrender her to another male who could give her what she needed. The idea made him want to break something. — Nalini Singh

A new world of complex relationships and feelings opens up when the peer group takes its place alongside the family as the emotional focus of the child's life. Early peer relationships contribute significantly to the child's ability to participate in a group (and in that sense, society), deal with competition and disappointment, enjoy the intimacy of friendships, and intuitively understand social relationships as they play out at school, in the neighborhood, and later in the workplace and adult family. — Stanley Greenspan

A fact about photography: we can look at people's faces in photographs with an intensity and intimacy that in life we normally only reserve for extreme emotional states - for a first look at someone we may sleep with, or a last look at someone we love. — Adam Gopnik

Men come to sex hoping that it will provide them with all of the emotional satisfaction that would have come from love. Most men think that sex will provide them with a sense of being alive, connected, that sex will offer closeness, intimacy, pleasure. And more often than not sex simply does not deliver the goods. This fact does not lead men to cease obsessing about sex; it intensifies their lust and their longing. — Bell Hooks

I didn't know what I wanted. Maybe I never had. The emotional distance was never worth the togetherness, and yet I didn't learn. Nothing had changed. Had he reached for me, I would have forgotten to behave sensibly. Desire has no reason, and the need for intimacy had never stopped. I had not conjured up the images in years, his lips on mine, his hands, the urgency of our hunger. Now I was tormented by the memories. — Patricia Cornwell

For the first time in history, middle-class women do not need men in the traditional ways - for safety, for money, for a life. So they're demanding instead what they always wanted but couldn't ask for: emotional connection, presence, intimacy. Sex with enough foreplay, enough seduction, enough closeness to please them. Men are baffled not only because the needs they are being asked to fill differ so from what their fathers and grandfathers understood to be their jobs but also because full-fledged intimacy requires strengths and skills they've never learned. Moreover ... they're strengths and skills that were once left solely to women: Men didn't have to develop them. This maturational mismatch may be contributing to distrust among lovers of all ages. — Dalma Heyn

If we are sharing challenges and concerns, laughter and life stories, dreams and dramas with someone other than our mate, we are making precious, intimate connections with someone other than our mate. We need to keep not only physical, but emotional and intellectual connections strong and active with our beloved. — Cathy Burnham Martin

Beware of relationships that substitute intensity for emotional intimacy. — Adelyn Birch

The miraculous intimacy we shared did not have the time to generate into resentful emotional bondage — Josephine Hart

Physical intimacy is easy. Emotional intimacy is hard. — Hannah Simone

With so much unknown in this life, how little it takes for a face, a grove of trees, an outcropping of stone to become familiar. — Larry Watson

Sex taken violently under threat is an emotional train wreck that derails not only the law but, more importantly, the sanctity of the soul. Rape strips its victim of her power to make determinations about perhaps the single most intrinsic value in her existence: the right to share intimacy. That loss of control and power of self-determination is a scar on the soul, a pox on the spirit. (58) — Howard Swindle

Caring for others tends to be the first cut when we review our personal time budget. It does not necessarily fulfill the goals of my ambition; it will not pave the way for my success; it takes away from my own depleted emotional resources. It is an imposition in every way. To some of us, it is an inconvenience from which we unashamedly run. We have become experts in maintaining a grand scope of friendships and amateurs in genuine intimacy and care. Unwittingly, we have sacrificed everything on the altar of self-sufficiency - only to discover that we have sold our souls to isolation. — Sandy Oshiro Rosen

When it comes to sexuality, romantic love plays a large part in feminine sexual scripts. Research suggests that women make sense of sexual encounters in terms of the amount of intimacy experienced; love becomes a rationale for sex. If i am in love, women often reason, sex is okay. Men more easily accept sex for its own sake, with no emotional strings necessarily attached. In this way, sexual scripts for men have involved more of an instrumental (sex for its own sake) approach, whereas for women it tends to be more expressive (sex involving emotional attachments). There is evidence to suggest that women are moving in the direction of sex as an end in itself without the normative constraints of an emotional relationship. By and large, however, women are still more likely than men to engage in sex as an act of love. Many scholars suggest that romance is one of the key ways that sexism is maintained in society. — Susan Shaw

Instead, he was still acting distant from her in many subtle ways, and although they continued to sleep in the same bed, there had been no intimacy whatsoever. Such behavior raised an old concern of hers that Daniel was either incapable or unmotivated to offer the kind of emotional support she felt she needed, particularly in period of stress, no matter what the cause or whose fault it was. (Stephanie) — Robin Cook

What is emotional intimacy? It is that depp sense of being connected to one another. It is feeling loved, respected and appreciated, while at the same time seeking to reciprocate. To feel loved is to have the sense that the other person genuinely cares about your well-being. Respect has to do with feeling that your potential spouse has positive regard for your personhood, intellect, abilities and personality. Appreciation is that inner sense that your partner values your contribution to the relationship. — Gary Chapman

Whatever the surface appearances, most human beings come equipped with convoluted emotional machinery. With intimacy, the wreckage starts to show, damage rendered in the course of passions colliding like freight trains on the same track. — Sue Grafton

When a child shuts down his painful emotional side, he also loses the ability to express his joyous side. Emotions are a whole. With anger comes the ability to express delight; with sadness comes the ability to express lightheartedness. This is the breadth of emotion that allows an adult to experience intimacy with a spouse, with God, and with his children — Henry Cloud

When writers are self-conscious about themselves as writers they often keep a great distance from their characters, sounding as if they were writing encyclopedia entries instead of stories. Their hesitancy about physical and psychological intimacy can be a barrier to vital fiction. Conversely, a narration that makes readers hear the characters' heavy breathing and smell their emotional anguish diminishes distance. Readers feel so close to the characters that, for those magical moments, they become those characters. — Jerome Stern

We would not want the joy of physical and sexual intimacy to fade after years together. We need to also remember to keep our intellectual and emotional intimacy every bit as sacred. — Cathy Burnham Martin

Every person is a puzzle with a password. By solving the puzzle, the potential for emotional and physical intimacy is realized. — Zack Love

Technology offers the illusion of companionship without the demands of intimacy, and communication without emotional risk, while actually making people feel lonelier and more overwhelmed.

"A song that became popular on YouTube in 2010, 'Do You Want to Date My Avatar?' ends with the lyrics 'And if you think I'm not the one, log off, log off, and we'll be done.' "

from a review of Alone Together by S. Turkle — Michiko Kakutani

A hug is a display of love that begins on the physical end of the spectrum but bleeds into the emotional end of the spectrum if you let it, if you give into it. It's the most innocent, pure form of physical human connection there is. It only takes two willing people, who don't even have to know each other, to participate. Two willing people who want that exchange. It's so easy, but there are people who never get them. People who never get them," she repeats softly, it's a confession. — Kim Holden

Intimacy transcends the physical. It is a feeling of closeness that isn't about proximity, but of belonging. It is a beautiful emotional space in which two become one. — Steve Maraboli

Too much intimacy, too quickly, can cause women to become needy and men to pull away. Just as men have a tendency to rush into physical intimacy, women make the mistake of rushing into complete emotional intimacy. — John Gray

Sharing the emotional part of us with others creates closeness and intimacy. Also, being accepted by someone else for being who we are helps us accept ourselves. This is always a marvelous experience. — Melody Beattie

In a healthy relationship, vulnerability is wonderful. It leads to increased intimacy and closer bonds. When a healthy person realizes that he or she hurt you, they feel remorse and they make amends. It's safe to be honest. In an abusive system, vulnerability is dangerous. It's considered a weakness, which acts as an invitation for more mistreatment. Abusive people feel a surge of power when they discover a weakness. They exploit it, using it to gain more power. Crying or complaining confirms that they've poked you in the right spot. — Christina Enevoldsen

The fears that assault us are mostly simple anxieties about social skills, about intimacy, about likeableness, or about performance. We need not give emotional food or charge to these fears or become attached to them. We don't even have to shame ourselves for having these fears. Simply ask your fears, "What are you trying to teach me?" Some say that FEAR is merely an acronym for "False Evidence Appearing Real."
From Everything Belongs, p. 143 — Richard Rohr

Physical intimacy isn't and can never be an effective substitute for emotional intimacy. — John Green

Loving is limbically distinct from in love. Loving is mutuality ; loving is synchronous attunement and modulation. As such, adult love depends critically upon knowing the other. In love demands only the brief acquaintance necessary to establish an emotional genre but does not demand that the book of the beloved's soul be perused from preface to epilogue. Loving derives from intimacy, the prolonged and detailed surveillance of a foreign soul. (207) — Thomas Lewis

I look for stories that tell transformative, emotional journeys, have big emotional worlds, feel very relevant and true to the times we're living in - even though they might be of a different time - have a sense of real intimacy with larger forces at work, where there's some kind of social injustice and inequity happening that needs to be conquered or addressed. I find historically that's the formula for a lot of successful operas. — Jake Heggie

Death is, and must be, deeply emotional. To intentionally cause death is to engender a form of intimacy, one that we're not used to thinking about. To kill without emotion and without respect, or to ignore the intimacy inherent in the act, is to rob it of its dignity, and to rob the life that you are ending of its significance. By robbing death and life of significance we reduce ourselves to the machines Descartes dreamed about. And we deny our own significance. — Derrick Jensen

Should we "expect" our physical, sexual, intellectual, and emotional intimacies to automatically continue throughout a marriage? Nope. At least, not in my opinion. But I do think we should be able to expect both partners to protect and preserve the sanctity of these intimacies. That, to me, is part of honest loyalty. — Cathy Burnham Martin

In the interest of ultimate honesty," Celine cut in, "I'm pretty sure that everyone present would appreciate it if you two got a room."
"I wouldn't," Dean grumbled.
"I am unbothered by displays of physical and emotional intimacy," Sloane volunteered. "The nuances and statistics underlying courtship behavior are quite fascinating."
The edges of Celine's lips quirked upward as she met Sloane's gaze. "You don't say."
Sloane frowned. "I just did. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Electronic communication is an instantaneous and illusory contact that creates a sense of intimacy without the emotional investment that leads to close friendships. — Clifford Stoll

This is particularly true of those who "love too much" and those who tend to lose themselves in their relationships. Sometimes our love becomes distorted by our feelings of insecurity and our fear of abandonment. This is the often the case with those who become overly controlling and overly smothering of their partner. Others become emotionally abusive because of their fear of intimacy. — Beverly Engel

We humans, male and female, exist behind emotional barriers as lonely, autonomous souls longing for freedom and love. Our yearning or Sehnsucht is for release from isolation, rejection, and death. We are autonomous but not free. We nevertheless fear intimacy and its theological counterpart, holiness. If it breaks through to us, it may destroy us. If we fall into a sea of holiness, we may drown. We have eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, have recognized our nakedness, and have clothed ourselves. We do not want to be found naked, and we know that if intimacy breaks through our barriers, our shame will be made visible. We cannot bear to let go of the false freedom of being an autonomous agent. — Duane Garrett

Sex and Intimacy Intimacy is the fiber that binds us to the people we love, and is built on time, investment, and honest communication. In a healthy long-term relationship, intimacy increases with time and many men and women are fortunate to have a lover who is also their best friend. Sex and romance are crucial for long-term intimacy. The stronger the sexual connection, the stronger the emotional intimacy will be. It is important to nurture and feed your relationship both emotionally and sexually. — Laura Berman

Without trust, our relationships lack an essential ingredient for emotional intimacy. We need to be able to totally trust our partner with our deepest thoughts, dreams, fears, and secrets. — Cathy Burnham Martin

We recognize that same-sex marriage makes some people deeply uncomfortable. However, inertia and apprehension are not legitimate bases for denying same-sex couples due process and equal protection of the laws. Civil marriage is one of the cornerstones of our way of life. It allows individuals to celebrate and publicly declare their intentions to form lifelong partnerships, which provide unparalleled intimacy, companionship, emotional support, and security. — Henry Franklin Floyd

Denial protected us, screening out certain experiences & feelings until we grew strong enough to relate to them...Yet it also dropped a curtain over our experience, obscuring it, leaving us with a sense of missing pieces. For instance, when we achieved something, we felt like an imposter. Or, though we had a relationship with a significant other, we often felt alone and unrelated to anyone. — Maureen Brady

It can be difficult to leave a long-term relationship, even when our inner-wisdom tells us it's time to let go. At this point, we can choose let go and endure the intense pain of leaving behind the familiar to make way for a new chapter in our life. Or we can stay and suffer a low-grade pain that slowly eats away at our heart and soul, like an emotional cancer. Until we wake up, one day and realize, we are buried so deep in the dysfunction of the relationship that we scarcely remember who we were and what we wanted and needed to be. — Jaeda DeWalt

The fact that each being has its own accordant suffering means that no matter who we are, whether we have a prominent place or the humblest place in society, we all experience suffering. Reflect on all of the ordinary suffering that each and every living being experiences. Many of us face the unbearable suffering of the death of a child. All of us will experience being separated from our parents, either by emotional estrangement or by death. If we are married or in a long-term relationship, that relationship will either break up or end with the death of one of the partners. Many of us have families that do not behave like families due to alcoholism or other kinds of addictions, and we grow up lacking stability and intimacy. Even if we do have a more stable family life, we will still experience the suffering of disagreements, arguing, and fighting. — Anyen Rinpoche

Emotional intimacy is most meaningful and profoundly felt when we share our true selves with our partner and when we create a loving space for our partner to do the same. — Elaina Marie