Written by Jonathan Zalesne At the Colorado Center for Couples and Families, we work primarily with couples in relationship distress. One of the questions on our intake paperwork is “how satisfied are you with the sexual intimacy in your relationship?” Very often, the response to this question is, “not satisfied.” Typically, when there is conflict and discomfort in a couple’s relationship, we also see dissatisfaction in the couple’s sexual relationship. There may be many reasons for the dissatisfaction, but the three most common reasons that I see are because of a lack of intimacy in the emotional relationship, “sexual desire discrepancy,” [...]

Written by Jonathan Zalesne Often when people think of intimacy, their minds immediately jump to sex, but there are actually a lot of other ‘types’ of intimacy that can increase closeness in a relationship that do not involve sex. Sometimes, increasing these other areas of intimacy does increase the amount of sexual intimacy a couple shares. There is a strong connection between emotional intimacy and sexual intimacy. Often, individuals in relationships need to feel a sense of emotional intimacy before they desire to be sexually intimate with their partners. (This is more true for women than of men). If you want [...]