From Hidden to Healed: A Counselor’s Take on True Intimacy
/Knowing and Being Known: The Heart of a Healthy Relationship
As someone trained in marriage therapy, I often find myself trying to offer couples what I never received—or even knew to ask for—when I got engaged at 20. Now, more than two decades into marriage with four kids and a lot of personal growth behind me, I can honestly say I spent many of those early years hiding. I hid behind work. I hid behind anger. And, at times, I hid behind alcohol.
I didn’t know how to show up in my marriage. I didn’t understand what intimacy really meant, or how essential it was to building a secure, meaningful connection. Today, I believe healthy marriage comes down to one core experience: the ability to know and be known.
The Real Root of Disconnection
When couples come into my office struggling, the surface issues often sound familiar—finances, sex, parenting, household responsibilities, family dynamics. But underneath these surface-level conflicts often lies something deeper: a lack of true intimacy. One or both partners feel emotionally alone in the relationship. They aren’t known, and they don’t know how to deeply know their spouse. Fear and shame often are the culprits at keeping a person in hiding. Trust feels extremely difficult and sometimes impossible.
Creating intimacy is not about perfect performance—it’s about brave connection. It's about building a relationship where you feel safe enough to reveal the parts of yourself that you normally keep hidden, and where your vulnerability is met with compassion, not criticism. Of course, this feels nearly impossible when both partners are running on empty—between work, kids, money, stress, and household demands. But without that safety and mutual knowing, we end up in parallel lives, disconnected and discouraged.
Six Areas of Intimacy
I often explain intimacy through six overlapping areas: mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, experiential, and sexual. When a couple begins to grow in all six areas, their relationship deepens in satisfaction, trust, and resilience.
At first, I thought each of these areas were independent of the others. There is a cultural myth that women need emotional intimacy while men need sexual intimacy. Spoiler alert…this is not true. Each area is interdependent on the others, and when one area is dysfunctional it prohibits the others from being fully engaged. I like this visual below, where each area is a gear interlocked and interdependent on the others.
Let’s briefly explore each one.
1. Mental Intimacy
Mental intimacy is where most couples start—it’s the day-to-day exchange of thoughts, opinions, ideas, and updates. “How was your day?” is a common opener. But over time, many couples get stuck here. While it’s an important part of connection, mental intimacy alone isn’t enough to sustain a meaningful bond. Engaging topics at deeper levels, getting to know the others thoughts, opinions and beliefs is essential.
2. Physical Intimacy
Physical intimacy involves non-sexual touch—hugs, holding hands, cuddling, playful contact. Many men in particular crave this type of connection but often default to seeking sex instead. Unfortunately, we live in a culture that tends to sexualize all touch, leaving many women saying, “Not every touch has to lead to sex.” Healthy physical touch, separate from sexual expectations, communicates care, presence, and affection.
3. Spiritual Intimacy
This is often the most misunderstood and vulnerable type of intimacy. Spiritual intimacy is not about checking off religious boxes—it’s about serving something greater than yourself and finding safety and sanctuary there. It’s not about performing, but about showing up honestly in our spiritual lives. For many couples, spiritual intimacy begins not with doing more, but with feeling safe enough to be spiritually known.
4. Emotional Intimacy
Emotional intimacy is the most frequently neglected area, especially among men (at least down here in the South). Many of us simply weren’t taught how to share our internal world. A lot of men say something like ‘I’m just not an emotional person’. False. You may not be emotive, but you are emotional (unless you’ve had a labotomy). We don’t know how to express our fears, hopes, wounds, or longings. And honestly, it can feel terrifying - often like taking off the kevlar vest and putting a loaded gun on the table. But learning to hear and hold each other’s emotional worlds is one of the most powerful experiences in a marriage. One key practice: postpone judgment. When your spouse shares, resist the urge to fix, explain, or defend. Just listen, reflect back what you hear, and let them know they’ve been heard.
5. Experiential Intimacy
This type of intimacy ranges from the mundane to the adventurous. Meaning, waking up in the middle of the night to help your spouse attend to a sick or scared child is just as important as that trip to the beach. Essentially, it is doing life ‘with’ your partner. There are occassions where being an intentional about pursuing something adventurous or new is needed, but it’s more often the little things that add up. It asks questions like, is my partner going to show up for me and with me? Do they have my back? Are they willing to step out and step into living?
6. Sexual Intimacy
Sexual intimacy is often the most visible area—and sometimes the most distorted. Many couples expect sexual connection to come easily, but true sexual intimacy isn’t just physical. It’s about being naked and unashamed, emotionally, spiritually, experientially, mentally and physically. When the other types of intimacy are neglected, sex can become strained or disconnected. But when all six areas are growing together, sexual intimacy becomes a beautiful, affirming expression of deep mutual love.
Starting the Healing Journey
There’s an old saying in therapy: “In relationships we have been wounded, in relationships we will be healed.”
Each of us comes into adult relationships with some of these gears being broken, stuck or damaged. For instance, if you grew up in a home where there was an absence of physical touch and affection, imagine that gear having some rust on it and being stuck. If physical touch was damaging as a kid, it’s more like that gear has a crack in it.
In addition to that, shame and fear are like sand and gravel in a gearbox, slowly grinding the whole thing to a hault. Individual healing and help in each area is necessary for the intimacy in the relaitonship to flourish. It’s never enough to just work on the relationship. It starts with you.
Practical Questions to Explore
If you want to start growing in these areas of intimacy, begin with a few courageous questions. Take time to reflect and talk about them together, or with a trusted counselor if needed.
Ask yourself:
How do I tend to hide from my partner—especially during conflict?
What parts of my story or inner world does my partner not really know?
What do I want in our relationship, and what am I afraid of?
Ask your partner (when both of you are ready):
What is it like to live with me?
What is the deepest hurt or frustration you carry in our relationship?
How do you try to protect yourself from me?
What do you wish I gave you more of?
What do you long for in our relationship?
Don’t Stay Hidden
Committed relationships are not about perfection. It’s about connection. It’s about learning to know and be known, layer by layer, year after year. If you’ve been hiding—out of shame, fear, exhaustion, or just lack of tools—you’re not alone. But you don’t have to stay there.
A healthy, connected relationship isn’t built in a day, but it does start with a decision: I will show up. I will listen. I will take the risk to be known.
If you and your partner need support walking this road, our counselors at Red River Counseling are here to help.