Can You Build Intimacy Without Sex? | Therapist's Tips On Deepening Your Relationships

Great video!
Hoping mickey will do a video on flirting and starting new relationships/dating anxiety

sure. genitals arent the only way to intimacy. even more so if they disgust you

I realized I’m mostly asexual later in my life after years of being single and not missing the physical element but enjoy and miss the psychological-emotional intimacy element of being in a relationship.

aspec person dating an allosexual here. really excited to talk about implementing some of this! it's been hard for me to realize some people conflate physical and sexual intimacy, but it's good to remember there's so many forms.

Having abandonment and bit of trust issues makes intimacy really tricky. Even though I'm rationally 90% sure I can trust my partner, there's still a blockade when trying to sharing more personal stuff about myself

I love this! My partner and I are not asexual and that's a big part of our relationship intimacy but definitely not the only one. My partner absolutely LOVES Dungeons & Dragons and I've been interested in it for a while, a few days ago they taught me all about the game and helped me build a character. It took like 3-4 hours and it was more fun than any restaurant date night I can remember. Especially seeing them get so excited about getting to teach me something they love. Sex is a form of intimacy but building a D&D character together 100% is also a form of intimacy. I love gardening and I've been teaching them stuff about that. I fully agree that putting the screens away can help a lot. You have to fully interact with each other to actually do the thing. I know from experience, even if you're not asexual you cannot keep a relationship going in a healthy and happy way for years and years if your only form of intimacy at all is sex.

A very cute (and sapphic 💕❤️) way that I take part in my partner’s interests is by choosing the designs for their acrylic nails when they get their nails done every month 💅🏾

love the hair!!

What? I thought sex was just like, fake, addiction, lust kind of intimacy. That's so strange

I'm disabled and it's very painful to have sex. Plus I've been abused and raped many times, so sex isn't a thing I feel comfortable with. That being said, I've been with my partner for 8 years and it's the healthiest, most intimate relationship I've ever been in. I wouldn't change it.

I can’t tell you enough how grateful I am to have come across your channel, thankyou for being a bright light in this world and for talking about these topics with such grace, understanding and openness xx

I've never thought experiencing media together was a form of intimacy.

The thing I miss the most as a single woman is videogame nights with a partner or watching anime together and now it all makes sense!

I really appreciate this because while I already understood a lot of this there were a couple new things I realized while watching this one of them being that when I’m planning on buying something I really like to talk to my important people about it and it’s sometimes soothing my anxiety about buying it by explaining to someone else why i think it’s good but this video made me realize that it’s often more a bid for intimacy and it’s more about wanting to share that moment with someone and share my thoughts on this thing with them and also to invite them into being excited about the thing.

I really love this video. I would love to see more. I'm an aspiring author that wants to write good, healthy romance and stuff like this helps

I’m so sorry but the title just made me think are the allosexuals ok HAHA
But thank you for the vid I appreciate people talking about non sexual intimacy :)

So how do we explain to our partner that we need more of this intimacy in order to be open to sexual intimacy?

Thank you for talking about this! -a biromantic asexual neurodivergent woman who loves your videos 😊

Thank you! Saving it for a rewatch. Would love more on this subject ❤

My relationship is better than ever and we almost never have sex

I haven't watched the full episode as of writing this comment... but can you please provide some hope to those given the political climate? Please.

I'm too tired to watch the video now but being a-spec and only really enjoying sex as a way to connect emotionally and being physically close to someone I love, as opposed to having that drive that makes me want a person sexually maybe this will help me navigate the conversation around this?

Yes more advice please. I feel like I’m at a stalemate with my partner. I feel like the only one who has made an effort to have vulnerable bonding moments and I’m burnt out. I have no desire to be physically intimate because the emotional/mental intimacy is nonexistent.

My partner is really great(doesnt pressure me to do anything), but ive been in an abusive relationship before and i dont know how to stop feeling so guilty when i tell my partner i dont wanna have sex

Not aspec (i think?) and I'm glad to see I'm already building these intimacies with my partners and friends :D
I also find non-sexual kinks another way I've built intimacy with people. Lots of aspec folks in the comm :)

This is great for me as someone working through avoidant attachment.

WOOHOOOO i need this video

I'm aroace, and this kind of intimacy - shared experiences & mild touching - is what I have wanted in life. But because these aren't considered "real" by most of the population (including, unfortunately, a lot of other people in both aro & ace circles), it feels like I'm unlikely to truly find it.

My partner and I are both demisexual. We were best friends for years before becoming a couple.

I'm happy we are asexual, because in times of stress and lack of sex, we still have the ability to be intimate by holding each other.

Can you have sex without intimacy? Well certainly, but it will always leave alot to be desired. Especially from the woman.
Never look at her as a piece of meat, treat her like a angle, show compassion, protect her heart, let her dive deep into your eyes and soul

So I don't know if this is relevant to anybody on here, but I spent my twenties discovering sex, which was really not about intimacy to me, and I met my long-time partner in my early thirties with whom sex also works, but to me the real thing is that I can share my mind with him which I have never been fully able to do. To me this is so much stronger than anything else, I don't have to hide my emotional ups and downs and that I am too intelligent (yes, I now how contemptuous this sounds, but this really exists) for a lot of people to bare (really too deep thoughts - and I was told so that it makes people uncomfortable) which I had to hide for many years, because it was just not compatible for men...(I am a cis woman btw if that matters). Two years into our relationship I was diagnosed with brain cancer, but going strong (got lucky with a slow growing one), but my libido is just not the same, so a lot of the times our intimacy now is that I am able to share all the things with him I am interested in, all the things I read about, and if we had not had the mental connection in the beginning I am sure he would have bowed out after my diagnosis - at least that is what I imagine about the other men I used to know. And yes, movies, art movies - where there is a lot of symbolism to interpret - which is my expertise - we go to the cinema almost every week and then talk about the movie.

This is great as a demisexual with vulernability issues. I've found that talking about special interests can be a great way to connect with other neurodivergents, but sometimes it's too much for neurotypicals or they don't see it as an attempt to connect. Do you have any tips on navigating that?

love love love this video shared it with my partner, im going to rethink how im going to teach them a recipie. hahaha

Mickey I need help with this. My husband and I are in couples therapy, I also see that same therapist for individual therapy sessions. I love my therapist. This has been our biggest issue as a couple and it's what has driven us to couples counseling more than once over the course of our 4 year relationship. My husband grew up in a traditional Asian household and that has come with a lot of challenges in our relationship because he's had to do a lot of work in unlearning toxic misogynistic things that he grew up knowing. Our sex life has been a true nightmare for me, for the most part. We have a daughter together, and throughout the journey of becoming pregnant and becoming a mother to a daughter, I've had to do so much work in the realm of healing my trauma brain. I've been diagnosed and am currently medicated for BPD, ADHD, CPTSD, depression, anxiety, and ARFID. I've also done a lot in the realm of EMDR therapy this past year and that has come with the uncovering of terrible tragic traumatic memories coming out of the haze that is my childhood growing up in a conservative fundamentalist Christian household, some of those difficult memories including instances of SA which has helped to explain a lot of the reasoning behind why my libido is so chronically low.
With that context, my husband and I have argued incessantly about sex. He feels entitled to sex in a relationship, that's the best way I can describe it. He has what he describes as a very high sex drive and as he says "he has needs" and I have a very low libido, I've always had a lower sex drive than the male partners I've had throughout my life and it's always served to make me feel inadequate. This is no different, my husband often makes me feel like there is something wrong with me because I don't want to have sex as much as he'd like, and as a result he says he feels undesirable and unloved because I'm not jumping his bones on a regular basis. He asks to have sex almost every single day, and when I say no because I'm not feeling it, he never fails to become upset and frustrated. When I explain to him that this reaction to me saying no makes me feel objectified and inadequate, he says I'm a hypocrite because I always expect my feelings to be validated but his feelings aren't being validated in that moment. Regardless of the hundreds of times that I've made the distinction between not being horny and not desiring him, as in just because I'm not horny doesn't mean that I find him undesirable or not attractive. I love my husband, when we have sex, it's wonderful sex. I am satisfied with the quality of the sex we have, but when I don't want to have sex, seeing him become so frustrated and upset with me makes my anxiety absolutely skyrocket. I've explained this in every possible way I know how. It feels like it's inevitable that I'm going to end up giving up on trying to make him see me and I'll end up divorcing him. This is so scary and so not what I want. As I said, I love my husband, he's a wonderful partner in almost every other regard except for our sex lives. He's a wonderful father to our daughter, he's not the "babysitting" type of dad, he's a real fantastic parent to our girl. I just don't know what else to do. I feel so lost. 😢

But my bf doesn’t kiss… and it’s hard bc I’m very physically affectionate with friends. Only thing that separates friendship from relationship for me is sex & kissing……

Do you think you could maybe do a video on relationship ocd…or various types and aspects of OCD and what it is❤️‍🩹

Administrative intimacy 😌