“People think sexuality is just about pleasure, and at its best, sexuality is pleasurable. But it also requires us to be open, exposed and, above all, vulnerable,” says Dorit Bar, a social worker and sex and couples counselor. “We all have a vulnerable side, and when we express it, the gaps in desire between partners shrink by at least 50%.”
Bar, who founded the Intimini school and developed an approach she calls the Language of Intimacy, joined Ynet’s “Sex Appeal” podcast to discuss why intimacy frightens so many people, and what couples may be sacrificing emotionally and sexually because of that fear.
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‘We don’t know how to say what we feel’: Why emotional silence follows couples into bed
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What is the difference between sexuality and intimacy?
“In my view, both sexuality and intimacy are expressions of love. When I express love sexually, I’ll probably do it through touch, flirting, expressing desire or attraction. I’ll show you that I want you. I might place my hand somewhere, or we might have some form of sexual interaction.
“Intimacy, on the other hand, is the foundation of all relationships. Sexuality is something I’ll usually share with a partner, whether in a long-term relationship or a short-term connection. But intimacy is something I can create with you right now. In fact, there is already a certain degree of intimacy between us because we’ve recorded several episodes together over the years. That allows us to go straight into this subject, talk about it and feel comfortable together.”
Bar says intimacy requires something that sex does not necessarily demand: time, presence and emotional openness.
“Intimacy is based first of all on time, on staying, on spending a lot of time together, and on opening the heart,” she says. “You can have sex without opening your heart. A lot of people do. That happens in hookups, where it’s more obvious, but sometimes it also happens in long-term relationships.
“These are people whose sexuality has become routine, mechanical and repetitive. There is nothing particularly exciting about it, nothing that comes from the connection in the present moment. You could call it sexuality that isn’t connected to the heart.”
What does that mean?
“Intimacy means I’m using more parts of my being. When I say ‘heart,’ I don’t mean only the physical organ. I mean all my emotions.
“If I’m sitting next to you while we record this episode and I say, ‘I’m excited and also a little nervous,’ that is intimacy.
“If this were a date instead of a podcast, and I told you, ‘I want you to know that I’m excited and nervous about meeting you,’ that would deepen the encounter much more than if I kissed you after 10 minutes.
“Intimacy is emotional closeness first. Sexuality can exist with emotional closeness or without it, but its quality becomes infinitely greater when emotional and physical closeness are combined.”
Why intimacy can feel more frightening than sex
Why are people so afraid of intimacy?
“Because it hurts. A moment ago, when I told you I was excited, I could feel my heart beating a little faster and I felt exposed. I didn’t know how you would respond, whether you would accept what I was saying or be cold and distant. But because I felt that your heart was open, I was able to continue.
“We are afraid to feel pain. We are afraid that other people will see our pain, and we aren’t practiced at exposing our feelings. Most people grew up in families, societies and cultures that don’t really ask how you are and genuinely want to know the answer.
“We constantly ask people, ‘How are you?’ But usually we aren’t really expecting an answer. When I practice the Language of Intimacy with people, the approach I developed, I discover that people are missing the words.”
Dorit Bar
(Photo: Elad Navon)
It is a familiar exchange between parents and children: A child comes home from school or preschool, a parent asks, “How was it?” and the child replies, “Fun.” The conversation ends there. Bar says adults often communicate in much the same way.
“We don’t know how to ask deeper questions,” she says. “We ask, ‘What was fun?’ Instead of asking, ‘Was there anything that frightened you today? Was there something that especially excited you? Was there something that felt particularly pleasant?’
“We don’t know how to ask questions, and we don’t know how to express the emotions we feel.
“We know how to express anger, happiness, fear and sadness, but there are another 50 shades of emotions and sensations, and we’re missing that range at the level of language itself.
“I might feel a pang in my heart, tightness in my stomach, a lump in my throat or trembling in my legs. Then there are emotions such as helplessness or vulnerability. We lack a language for them. So when people say they’re afraid of intimacy, in my eyes what they’re really saying is, ‘We never practiced intimacy.’”
That difficulty becomes particularly consequential when couples try to talk about sex.
Bar gives the example of a woman speaking to her partner about changes she is experiencing during menopause.
“The conversation isn’t necessarily about giving clear instructions such as, ‘Touch me harder’ or ‘Touch me more gently.’ It might require saying something much deeper, such as, ‘I’m going through menopause now and my vulva is drier than it used to be. I’m really afraid of penetration right now and I need a moment to prepare for it.’
“Saying something like that requires a very high level of exposure, even though this is my husband, even though he knows me and loves me.
“I use menopause as an example because that is where I am in life now, but it could also be a woman who has just gone through pregnancy and whose experience of her pelvic area and vulva is different after giving birth. Or it could be a man experiencing premature ejaculation who, in many cases, refuses to talk about it with his partner.”
What Bar sees repeatedly, she says, is what she describes as “emotional muteness,” among both women and men.
“Afterward, we see gaps in desire: ‘She doesn’t want to sleep with me,’ ‘He doesn’t want to sleep with me,’ ‘Why doesn’t he want me?’ or ‘He isn’t attracted to me anymore.’
“But those are conclusions. Beneath the surface, unless there is a physiological or medical issue, which is a different matter, there may be all kinds of subtle emotions that simply were never discussed.
“It might be, ‘I’m having erectile problems because I’m stressed,’ or, ‘I don’t orgasm with partners.’ So many women don’t orgasm with their partners, but they don’t tell them and don’t take care of their own orgasm.”
Put down the phones and allow silence
So how can couples begin talking about those more delicate emotions?
“If there is already intimacy within the relationship, my recommendation is simply to sit down together for a while. No television, no screens, no phones. Make something to drink or something to eat, settle into an atmosphere of rest, and don’t immediately try to fill the silence with words or screens, which is what we usually do.
“Intimacy needs an atmosphere, and that atmosphere is mainly quiet and calm. It doesn’t require anything special.
“People are afraid of silence, but silence is a source of inspiration. When we make room for it and aren’t frightened by it, new words emerge, new ideas, new dreams, feelings I haven’t shared and sensations I haven’t shared. I love silence, I admit it.”
True intimacy, Bar argues, also requires allowing a partner to see the less flattering parts of us.
“When we expose all our feelings, we agree to let the other person see us in all 360 degrees. We all have wonderful, beautiful sides that look good, but we also have ugly sides, where I feel small, petty, jealous, bitter or victimized.
“Over the years I realized that if I don’t tell my truth, then even if people stay with me, they aren’t staying because they know me. They’re staying because of some mask I presented to them, not because of me.
“Today, everyone who knows me understands that people in my life have to encounter my truth, even if they don’t always like it. That’s fine with me. It means that the people who are truly close to me, and there aren’t many of them, are themselves people who love truth. Intimacy and truth, in my view, are almost synonyms.”
Does that mean couples should always tell each other everything, even when the truth could hurt or contribute nothing to the relationship?
Bar says that depends on whether the relationship has built what she calls a genuinely safe space.
“If there really is a safe space within a relationship, I can say to my partner, ‘You know, a new producer came into our office today and I felt attracted to her. I have absolutely no intention of doing anything about it, but I feel that if I don’t tell you, I’m going to create some kind of barrier between us, so I would rather tell you.’
“When I choose to say something like that, and obviously it is a personal choice that isn’t right for everyone, I have to understand that it might press a button for my partner.
“But that is what a safe space means. A safe space is one in which we know how to move through conflict without destroying the relationship.
“I know my partner may hear this and feel pain. Maybe she’ll say, ‘Good for you.’ Think about the degree of honesty a couple like that can reach. They might eventually sit together in a café or bar, look at people and say, ‘Wow, he’s handsome,’ or, ‘Look how gorgeous she is.’”
‘Being in a relationship is dangerous’
For many people, fear of intimacy follows heartbreak, betrayal or a devastating breakup. Opening up again means risking the possibility of being hurt again.
“Who hasn’t been through that?” Bar says. “Everyone has experienced heartbreak because of a breakup or because of something painful that happened inside a relationship. Some people chose to remain in that relationship and others chose to leave.
“I want to say that intimacy, being in a relationship, is dangerous. We have to take that into account. It’s dangerous for our hearts. We’re going to feel the entire range of emotions, and we are also going to get hurt.
“But if a relationship is going to remain harmonious, happy, open and growing, we want intimacy to continue.
“We already spend most of the day at work. How much time do we really have left to be together as a couple? Not much. So it’s best for that time to be intimate.
“For that to happen, we need to learn to identify emotions, acknowledge them, learn not to project them onto the other person, and learn to share them within a safe space. A safe space is something you build. It doesn’t simply appear the moment you enter a relationship.”
So where should couples begin?
“I would start by remembering moments in your life when you could have been intimate and chose not to be. Moments when you could have told your partner what you were feeling but didn’t.
“Start collecting those moments, not because you need a collection, but because you need to see how much you are missing.
“To begin practicing intimacy, you need a lot of motivation because, as we’ve said, most people are afraid of intimacy. They aren’t accustomed to encountering pain or feeling that their heart is exposed, because they don’t have the skills.
“So it isn’t enough to listen to a podcast episode that raises your awareness. You also have to notice this inside your own life. Collect the missed opportunities, then decide that you want to create space inside the relationship where you can begin practicing intimacy.”
One option, she says, is to go back and repair moments of missed connection.
“I might say to my partner, ‘You know, yesterday when you asked how I was and I said I was fine, the truth is that I had such a difficult day. I needed you all day and I didn’t know how to ask for you because I knew you had a long day of meetings. I just felt lonely.’
“In other words, you can be intimate after the fact too.”
What if your partner puts up a wall?
Bar stresses that her advice is intended for couples who love one another, want to stay together and, at a basic level, want to grow together.
If only one partner has become interested in building more intimacy, she suggests first listening to the discussion together.
“Lesson two is to start collecting those missed opportunities. If you listened together, you can share them with each other. I even recommend laughing about them.
“Lesson three is to begin turning moments that weren’t intimate before into intimate ones. One sentence here, another there, no more than that. But it brings incredible depth.
“Instead of answering, ‘Fine,’ tell your partner one real thing that happened today, at work, with the children or in the project you’re working on.”
And when a partner does open up emotionally, Bar says the other person should resist the urge to fix the problem.
“Just listen or breathe. Sit quietly and don’t say anything. Look into their eyes, place a hand on them, or simply reflect back what you heard.”
Her fourth recommendation is to deliberately create time for intimacy, at least twice a week for roughly an hour each time.
She suggests avoiding both the bedroom and busy public environments.
“If we’re talking about emotional intimacy, it could be on a bench outside, on the grass or at the beach. Somewhere with as few distractions as possible, because I want us to experience the silence.
“It could be walking the dog. It can be anything that isn’t really an activity and isn’t in an overly public setting. I know people who take a blanket and go to the park. It should be the simplest thing in the world.
“The goal is to create time when we know that right now I am genuinely available to hear you, and you are genuinely available to listen to me. There is no expectation that this meeting will lead anywhere except closeness of the heart, that feeling that you are here with me now.”
The description reminds Bar of the early stages of dating.
“When we were dating, we usually weren’t living together yet and didn’t have children, and it felt like we had all the time in the world.
“What did we do? We took a blanket, sat on a bench, went for a walk, went running, went to an event and then sat together for a while afterward.
“Creating intimacy is really about strengthening the same bond that brought us together in the first place, and continuing to nourish it.”
When emotional intimacy enters the bedroom
One benefit of intimate communication within a relationship, Bar says, is that sexuality itself can also become more intimate.
“Most people’s sexuality is either routine, boring and repetitive, which is the worst case, or, in the slightly better case, it is connected to instinct and need. Then it tends to focus on the genitals and on orgasm.
“That isn’t bad, but there are other possibilities within sexuality.
“There is sensual sexuality and there is intimate sexuality. When lovemaking includes intimacy, maybe we’re lying together in bed but we don’t immediately take off our clothes and we don’t immediately touch each other’s genitals. We caress each other and talk a little.
“We combine touch with emotional communication. Then we start talking about feelings: What frightened me? What excited me? When did I feel helpless? What makes me happiest?
“The best things to talk about are things connected to the relationship itself, things that actually happened.”
Those conversations, she says, can change the quality of the physical connection that follows.
“Ultimately, a conversation like that brings hearts closer. Then, when touch comes after the conversation, the clothes come off slowly. The touch is much more sensual and much deeper, and there is eye contact.
“I don’t only want to know what gives you pleasure. I also want to know what allows you to feel loved and seen right now. What pace do you need me to touch you at? What will allow you to open completely?
“These aren’t necessarily questions I have to ask aloud. I can ask, but I can also simply feel because our bodies will feel comfortable enough to communicate with one another.
“When something feels good, I move toward you. When it feels less good, I move away. When I feel comfortable, my body opens and I pull closer. When I don’t, my body closes.
“It isn’t that complicated. Mainly, you have to read the room, as they say, and leave a little light on so you can actually see your partner instead of being only in the dark.”
For Bar, emotional openness and sexual pleasure are deeply connected.
“In my eyes, sexual orgasm is also a result of opening the heart. The more open my heart is, the more open my vulva is too.
“More than anything, I want people to stop being afraid of pain and to see that when pain comes out and is released, it makes room for pleasure.”