Intimacy makes relationships stronger by bringing partners together. While not every relationship needs sex, most marriages benefit from both partners feeling comfortable with each other and working actively to grow closer. For some, a good sex life is an important part of building intimacy with their partner and strengthening their marital bond. If you want to screw up your marriage, let all intimacy leave your relationship and don’t do anything to try to bring it back.
The problem with having a lack of intimacy in your marriage is that it can lead to feelings of dissatisfaction, and those feelings could result in you or your partner craving intimacy wherever you can find it. You might overcompensate with overfriendliness, and while it might be charming and fun to make friends with the cashier at the grocery store, things can quickly turn sour when one of you cheats or starts to look elsewhere. If you’ve ever gone through a dry spell with your partner, you might have experienced the following thoughts. Are they not attracted to me anymore? Am I doing something wrong? Are they getting what they need from someone else? In all reality, sometimes the answer to one or multiple of these questions is yes. Sometimes it has nothing at all to do with you and would have happened regardless, but other times, lack of intimacy in the relationship got the ball rolling.
You can also damage the intimacy of your relationship by disregarding your partner’s needs or only thinking about your own. Remember, every relationship is different and intimacy looks different to different people. It’s less about sex and more about making your partner feel wanted and appreciated. If you want to screw up your marriage, don’t worry about making your partner feel fulfilled or sexy or wanted.
Life can quickly change and get busy. If you want to screw up your marriage, don’t work to maintain the intimacy in the relationship during the busy times. After a long day of work at a job that you really don’t want to do (or that maybe you’re doing from home due to quarantine), the last thing you might want to do is talk about the things that are bringing you stress. It is definitely easier to tune out, look at Twitter, and call it a night. Those conversations help bring partners closer together because they require vulnerability, transparency, and attention. If you want to screw up your marriage, if you at all have the option of skipping out on these conversations and opportunities to grow closer to your partner, take it.