Become Closer to Your Spouse by Doing These 10 Awkward Things

These tips are likely to make you rather uncomfortable but it’s a good kind of uncomfortable because it’s these moments that help to create intimacy. They help you to get know one another in a deeper way and bring you closer.

1. Ask personal questions

Psychologist, Arthur Aron, used a technique in his laboratory to get two people to fall in love. It involved answering increasingly personal questions with the idea being that mutual vulnerability fosters closeness. If you both agree to ask personal questions, you won’t have to feel that you’re being too nosy. Go and sit in a café, drink some coffee and ask those hard questions like “When did you last cry in front of another person?” and “How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?”

2. Gaze into your partner’s eyes

This may seem too easy but uninterrupted eye contact can be weird because we are not used to staring directly at someone. Even if it feels awkward and first and you have a tendency to start giggling, you need to keep your focus completely on your partner. Science suggests that there is a link between gazing into a partner’s eyes and feeling more connected.

3. Break the fart barrier

A sure sign that you have reached a certain level of intimacy is when you feel free to break the fart barrier. I know a couple who had just got married and were driving off to start their honeymoon. The husband kept stopping the car to ‘check the engine’. He would fart loudly before climbing back into the car. Many people, especially women, feel it is bad manners to fart in company. There is a time and place for everything, including farts but when you live together, you should feel free to let it rip.

4. Turn on some makeout music and kiss

Put on some music to get you in the mood, turn down the lights and kiss your partner. Kissing can be more personal than sex. The lips have nerve endings that arouse love chemicals like oxytocin. This gives us that weak-kneed feeling and can bring back a real feeling of closeness.

5. Have awkward sex

In every love scene in a book or movie, couples fit perfectly together and enjoy a passionate encounter with no sweating, not a hair out of place and no messiness. In fact, all kinds of awkwardness may happen when having sex. When you both feel safe while having sex, no matter how awkward, sweaty or messy it gets, it says something about your relationship.

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6. Reveal one new thing each of you wants to try in bed

You may find it very uncomfortable to talk about this. What can make it easier is to take an interactive sex questionnaire like Mojo Upgrade which helps you to discover fantasies you might enjoy together. This is a free questionnaire that only takes about 10 minutes to complete. You complete it separately, indicating your level of interest in a list of sexual fantasies. After you have finished, the answers are compared and if you both gave a positive response to an activity, it is shared.

7. Love your partner for that flaw 

No partners are perfect and it is fatal going into a relationship thinking you will ‘fix’ them or change them. You must date someone who has flaws you can live with or even appreciate. If her obsessive shopping or his awkward social ticks are not upsetting in the least but rather loveable instead – that’s a sign of true intimacy. Our good points may attract someone to us but our flaws determine whether we stay together or not.

8. Spend time alone with your partner’s parents

The idea of spending time alone with a partner’s parents can be intimidating. You fear that you’ll say something wrong and that they’ll hate you. Spending time on your own with them is usually not as bad as you imagine and you will find your partner usually appreciates not being caught between pleasing you and them. Just don’t bring up your sex life.

9. Voice what’s on your mind 

If you are always saying, “What are you thinking?” to a partner, it can be very irritating and you may just get the answer “nothing much”.  But if you can both make a habit out of voicing what you are really thinking, it can draw you closer. You won’t have to fear that your partner will think you are completely crazy because what he or she says is just as wild.

10. Go on an adventure together

Perhaps it has not been your lifelong dream to go on a safari. You are afraid of wild animals and can think of nothing worse than having a lion a few meters away while you’re sleeping. Stepping out of your comfort zone to do something your partner loves, can take you to a new level of closeness. Adrenalin rushes can do great things for your intimacy.