This morn­ing, at my MOPS group, our speak­ers were a local cou­ple, and they talked about inti­macy in mar­riage. I know that when many peo­ple think of inti­macy, they think of sex. How­ever, this cou­ple talked about inti­macy out­side of sex. They talked about being open, hon­est, and vul­ner­a­ble with each other. They talked about spend­ing time together as friends and just being. It was great to see a cou­ple mar­ried 31+ years dis­cuss these issues. They also dis­cussed their ear­li­est mem­o­ries of inti­macy as being with their par­ents (her with her mom, and him with his dad).

The more I thought about inti­macy in rela­tion­ships, the more I thought about nurs­ing and breast­feed­ing. It’s a very pri­vate, inti­mate, and open rela­tion­ship that a child and a mom have while nurs­ing. Look­ing at my rela­tion­ships with both K and A, I can say that I really see a close­ness in my rela­tion­ship with K that I don’t have yet with A. Hav­ing spent at least a cou­ple hours a day nurs­ing him almost every day for the past 2 years has def­i­nitely devel­oped that rela­tion­ship. I also see an inti­macy in my rela­tion­ship with A that I didn’t have with K. Because A has been such a high-needs baby, I have so much time with him. It’s also been pretty intense time over the past seven months.

After hear­ing the cou­ple speak today, I began to think about my boys’ future rela­tion­ships, and I hope that in some way, hav­ing this rela­tion­ship with me will be the begin­ning of a life­time of expe­ri­ences that allow them to expe­ri­ence inti­macy (in many ways) with those in their futures.