# Intimacy and Respect



## married female (Mar 30, 2010)

New to forum - have some questions. From the looks of some of these answers I'm not to thrilled to be posting here, but I'll give it a shot. 

What does intimacy mean to a man? 

I'm not a prissy kind of woman. I don't get my nails done or gossip with 'girlfriends' or read 'celeb' magazines. I'm not really into romance either. I enjoy sex. I love my husband. But when he is looking for emotional intimacy I have no idea what he wants. 

Respect. I want it too. 

My husband feels I don't give him enough respect. I'm not sure what he means by that. I also want respect and I don't feel I get that from him. So what does 'respect' mean for a husband? And how does that supposedly differ from a woman's need for respect? 

Thanks.


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## Harvard (Aug 11, 2009)

Not sure what you mean about not being thrilled about the comments on here.

My suggestion is to ask your husband what respect and intamcy means to "him" every marriage is different along with our needs in each marriage. 

emotional intimacy is not something you can learn, you either got it or you don't but you can certainly show him more general attention when you are together and I think that will help.


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## artieb (Nov 11, 2009)

It doesn't matter what _intimacy_ or _respect_ mean to men-in-general, what matters is what they mean to _your_ man. The problem is he may not know exactly, and thus may have trouble communicating it.

What would respect mean for you? What is it you need that you don't get?

I've suggested the book _Please Understand Me II_, by David Keirsey, to some other people. Using the Myers-Briggs type inventory, you can do the standard test, and then it has chapters which explain what your score means. What's useful about this is that you can read the chapters that apply to each other. Take turns: you read the chapters about him out loud, and he can tell you if something doesn't feel like him. He can read the chapters about you out loud, and you can tell him if something doesn't seem quite right.

Often it can be hard to explain what you think to someone whose thinking is very different, because what you think is so obvious it doesn't have to be mentioned is completely alien to them. A book like this helps the electrical engineer in love with the performance artist understand how an engineer thinks, and vice-versa.


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## MEM2020 (Aug 23, 2009)

It is fine to tell your partner how you feel at a high level. However you need to be able to give specifics if you want them to even try to change.

I think he needs to give you examples of how HE has been intimate with you in the way that he claims he wants you to be with him. Or if he ISN'T doing it he needs to open the conversation with "even though I don't do this for you, I want you to do it for me."

I also think he needs to be specific about respect. Is his issue the lack of certain behaviors on your part or the presence of behaviors he considers disrespectful?






married female said:


> New to forum - have some questions. From the looks of some of these answers I'm not to thrilled to be posting here, but I'll give it a shot.
> 
> What does intimacy mean to a man?
> 
> ...


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## turnera (Jan 22, 2010)

Respect to many men means that you admire them for providing for you, for holding a steady job, for being admired in the community or at his work.

Go to marriagebuilders.com and print out two copies of the Love Buster questionnaires. Fill them out. You'll find what each of you do that the other is unhappy about, so you can work to stop doing it. After that, print out the Emotional Needs questionnaire and fill it out - that one is more to the point as far as what respect will mean to him. But it does no good to work on meeting the ENs, if you haven't stopped the LBs first. 

Him telling you that he wants more respect is him telling you that you Love Bust him. Good information to know, so you can tackle it before he goes looking for someone else (on purpose or not) who WILL make him feel respected. It's one of the main reasons men have affairs.


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## SimplyAmorous (Nov 25, 2009)

Urban Dictionary: respect

What does intimacy mean to a Man? 

For many men, they express & experience love through making love/being intimate, with their wives.


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