Five Enemies of Intimacy
(and How to Defeat Them)

Every marriage faces challenges. Some are obvious, like financial stress or health struggles, but others slip in quietly, almost unnoticed, until you realize intimacy has been chipped away bit by bit. The good news is, once we can name these enemies, we can fight them together.

Larry and I have wrestled with every single one of these at some point. That’s not a confession of failure, it’s just real life. If you’ve experienced these struggles too, you’re not broken or unusual. You’re human. But just because something is “normal” doesn’t mean it’s harmless. Left unchecked, these enemies will try to defeat us. The goal is to defeat them first.

Before I share them, let me add this…when I talk about shortcomings, I’ll share my own. This isn’t going to be a husband-bashing session. That’s the last thing I’d ever want to do, and honestly, it could become another enemy of intimacy if I did. (Nothing kills closeness faster than public criticism.)

Busyness

Confession time: when our marriage wasn’t doing well, I threw myself into busyness like it was a survival strategy. If Larry and I weren’t getting along, I would take every speaking engagement I could find just to stay out of town. At the time, I honestly thought I was helping us. Less time together meant less arguing, right? Wrong. All it really did was delay healing and keep us stuck in the same unhealthy patterns.

It took therapy and some hard won tools for me to break that cycle. These days, I do everything I can to avoid being away overnight. I still travel for ministry, but I’ll drive home late rather than stay in a hotel if it’s at all possible. If I have a choice between flying back the next morning or catching a later flight the same day, I’m on that plane headed home. (Hosts are usually gracious and offer me the option to stay another night, but unless it’s absolutely necessary, I’m ready to get back to Larry.)

I’ve learned that avoiding your spouse doesn’t prevent conflict, it just postpones the inevitable. And living without margin eventually breaks you down in every area of life, not just marriage. The antidote is choosing margin on purpose. For us, that looks like protecting our day off together. With rare exceptions, I don’t use that day for coffee, lunch, or shopping with girlfriends. That’s our time, and it matters.

I also try to bring Larry along whenever his schedule allows, and if he has work travel, I go with him if mine allows. We’ve learned that presence feeds intimacy. And it’s true in marriage as it is in every part of life: what you feed grows, and what you starve dies. If busyness is the enemy, intentional time together is the weapon that wins.

Unforgiveness

Unforgiveness is one of the sneakiest intimacy killers. It doesn’t usually storm in loudly. It slips in quietly, stacking up little offenses like bricks in a wall. Before long, you can be sitting in the same room with your spouse but feel like you’re a hundred miles apart.

I know this firsthand. For years, I had a habit of replaying things Larry said or did that hurt me. (I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I could run mental reruns of certain arguments like they were my favorite TV series. Unfortunately, they weren’t nearly as entertaining for me as CSI.) The problem with unforgiveness is that it whispers, “You owe me.” It keeps a mental scorecard, and nothing kills intimacy faster than treating your marriage like a competitive sport.

What finally helped me was realizing that unforgiveness doesn’t just hold the other person hostage, it holds me hostage too. When I chose forgiveness, I wasn’t excusing the hurt or pretending it didn’t matter. I was simply laying down the right to replay it over and over in my head. Forgiveness created space for healing, and it tore down the walls that bitterness was trying to build.

The cure is forgiveness as a lifestyle. Sometimes that means forgiving big things, but honestly, it often looks like forgiving the small things daily…the tone of voice, the forgotten errand, the missed signal. It’s not always easy, but it’s always worth it. Forgiveness says, “I value our closeness more than I value being right.”

Comparison

Comparison is one of the fastest ways to drain joy and intimacy out of a marriage. It rarely kicks the door down…it tiptoes in quietly, often through social media. One minute you’re scrolling, and the next you’re staring at a picture-perfect couple who look like they’ve never had a disagreement, much less a blowout fight. Suddenly, your own reality—complete with laundry piles and mismatched schedules doesn’t seem quite so glamorous.

I’ve fallen into that trap myself, looking at someone else’s “highlight reel” and feeling discontent with my own story. But the truth is, every marriage has behind-the-scenes footage that never makes it onto Instagram. And if it did, we’d probably all be shocked. What looks flawless from the outside is often far from the full story.

I’ll never forget an example from many years ago. One of the women in our church—we’ll call her Rita—received an enormous gemstone ring from her husband, Tom. (Names changed, of course!) The ring was stunning, and many of the ladies in the church admired it. I would overhear them say things like, “Tom is always sitting so close to Rita in church with his arm around her… he gives her gifts… they just seem so in love. I wish I had that.”

But pastors often know things others don’t. What I knew—but could never say at the time—was that the ring, along with many of the other extravagant gifts, were not signs of a fairy-tale romance. They were Tom’s attempts to cover the damage of a string of affairs. The public displays of affection, the expensive jewelry, the seemingly perfect gestures were not born out of genuine intimacy, but out of guilt and a desperate attempt to mask the truth.

Behind closed doors, Rita was carrying pain that most of the church never saw. And if the women who admired her “picture-perfect” life had known the reality, they would never have wished to trade places with her.

That’s the danger of comparison: it tells us, “Your marriage should look like theirs.” But God didn’t call us to live their story…He called us to live ours.

The cure is gratitude. Gratitude shifts our focus from what we lack to what we’ve been given. When I pause to thank God for my marriage, I start noticing the little treasures I might otherwise overlook…Larry bringing me coffee in bed, making me laugh at the most random moments, or the way we hold hands in the car without even thinking about it.

The good news is that your marriage doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s to be healthy and happy. It just has to be nurtured. Gratitude re-centers us on the gift of this relationship, this story, this person God has given us. And when we practice gratitude, intimacy grows where comparison once tried to steal it.

Distraction

Distraction is one of the most subtle enemies of intimacy. It doesn’t usually show up in dramatic ways. It sneaks in quietly. It looks like scrolling on your phone instead of connecting, a laptop glowing at the dinner table, or one more “quick” scroll before bed that somehow turns into thirty silent minutes side by side. You can be in the same room physically, yet miles apart emotionally.

Larry and I have had seasons where distraction crept in. For me, it was usually my laptop. I’d tell myself, “I’m just checking one more email,” and the next thing I knew, I had tumbled down a rabbit hole of work or social media. (And let’s be honest, for some of us, social media IS a part of our work, which makes it even trickier to recognize when enough is enough.) Neither work nor social media are bad in themselves, but when they regularly steal time from your marriage, they start to chip away at closeness.

Here’s the hard truth: distraction sends an unspoken message. When I’m glued to my screen while Larry is talking, what I’m really communicating is, “This is more important than you.” And when he’s absorbed in a project while I’m sharing something that matters to me, it feels the same way. That’s not the message either of us wants to send. Sometimes we just have to catch ourselves, laugh about it, and say, “Okay, let’s reel this back in.”

The key is learning to be fully present. For us, that’s meant setting some simple boundaries, like no devices during certain conversations, or making the effort to really look each other in the eye when we talk. It’s amazing how something so basic can shift the atmosphere.

Being present doesn’t mean staring dreamily into each other’s eyes 24/7 (real life still happens…we have jobs, bills, and a house to clean). But it does mean choosing to put aside the lesser things so you can give your spouse your best attention. That simple choice builds intimacy in ways distraction never could.

Pride

Pride is one of the fastest ways to shut intimacy down in a marriage. It digs in its heels, folds its arms, and says, “I’m not budging until you do.” Pride refuses to admit when it’s wrong, refuses to say, “I’m sorry,” and sometimes even refuses to listen. And when pride moves in, intimacy quietly moves out.

I know this because I’ve lived it. There have been plenty of times I’ve thought, “Well, Larry needs to apologize first. I didn’t do anything wrong.” (Spoiler alert: I did. Maybe not the same thing he did, but something.) In those moments, pride didn’t protect me, it protected the wall between us. Instead of moving closer together, we stayed stuck in silence, both waiting for the other to blink first.

Humility, on the other hand, is a game-changer. Humility says, “I value our relationship more than I value winning this argument.” Sometimes that looks like being the first to say, “I’m sorry,” even when everything in you is convinced you shouldn’t have to. Sometimes it means biting your tongue when you’d rather have the last word (and for some of us, that might be harder than climbing Mount Everest). And sometimes, humility is as simple as listening all the way through without mentally drafting your comeback.

Here’s the truth: intimacy isn’t built on perfection…it’s built on grace. Pride demands perfection and throws up walls when it doesn’t get it. Humility accepts imperfection and extends grace anyway.

Choosing humility over pride doesn’t come naturally to most of us, but it’s one of the most powerful decisions you can make in a marriage. Humility tears down walls, bridges gaps, and says, “I need you. I want us. I choose closeness over distance.”

And let’s be honest, there’s nothing more attractive than a spouse who’s quick to forgive, quick to listen, and quick to admit when they’re wrong. Pride may feel like strength in the moment, but humility is what truly keeps love strong.

Speaking of Intimacy…

Larry and I are on a vacation week this week. While you’re reading this we are floating around in the Caribbean. I penned this post and scheduled it before I ever left, so I could focus on him while we were gone. If I could run away with him and still hold down a job, I would. But obviously I can’t. While it’s not possible at this point in our lives for me to run away with him forever, I’ll take a week here and there when I can get it. I am totally enjoying having him all to myself for a week, without distraction or busyness. Excuse me while I roll over, order room service and steal even more of the covers.