Without trust, our relationships lack an essential ingredient for emotional intimacy. We need to be able to totally trust our partner with our deepest thoughts, dreams, fears, and secrets.

If we are sharing challenges and concerns, laughter and life stories, dreams and dramas with someone other than our mate, we are making precious, intimate connections with someone other than our mate. We need to keep not only physical, but emotional and intellectual connections strong and active with our beloved.

We would not want the joy of physical and sexual intimacy to fade after years together. We need to also remember to keep our intellectual and emotional intimacy every bit as sacred.

Should we “expect” our physical, sexual, intellectual, and emotional intimacies to automatically continue throughout a marriage? Nope. At least, not in my opinion. But I do think we should be able to expect both partners to protect and preserve the sanctity of these intimacies. That, to me, is part of honest loyalty.