Ben Wilson, LPC

Real intimacy is the best guarantee against future difficulties in your relationship. So the best guarantee against an affair ever happening again is to develop a relationship where you have real emotional, spiritual, physical and recreational intimacy. If your relationship was sexual quickly that probably became your default intimacy over the others. To be close a couple has to do conflict well. "Let's don't fight, let's go have sex," even if not said overtly is damaging to many a couple. That was the case for Ann and I. 

You can have trust without intimacy, but you can’t have intimacy without trust. Following an affair it is challenging to risk your heart again. Yet trusting requires risking your heart, being vulnerable to being hurt all over again. Rebuilding trust is risky business. Yet, not risking intimacy is a greater risk. One can build barbed war fences around the perimeter of his or her soul and not be hurt by the other again, but the soul shrivels and atrophies. 

Next week we are going to begin a lengthy journey through developing intimacy in your relationship. Most of us overestimate how good we really are at it. May it be a time of seeing the ways you block intimacy in your relationship and a time where you more fully release intimacy in your marriage.