Intimacy Between Lovers - Part 2

Guarding against intimacy overload or too much intimacy:

• Take time for yourself is a huge way to prevent intimacy overload.
• Balance your needs with your family’s. Overcompensating in one area, such as emotional intimacy, leads to intimacy overload.
• Enjoy your own hobbies and interests. Avoid intimacy overload by staying in touch with yourself.
• Take time away from one another – “Let there be spaces in your togetherness.” Too much time together contributes to intimacy overload.
• Cultivate your own friendships, apart from your partner. This guards against too much intimacy.
• Know who you are as a person, separate from your partner. Losing yourself can be part of intimacy overload.
• Develop your own spiritual, personal, social, and professional selves. Again, not being in touch with who you are contributes to intimacy overload.

Bouncing back from intimacy overload

To recover from intimacy overload, mix autonomy and independence with interdependence and togetherness. When a healthy balance of connectedness and separateness exists, both partners feel happy with their relationship – and realistic expectations and mutual respect are evident. Intimacy overload eases up when each partner is free and yet still feels loved.