Men and Intimacy
Women often complain that men are not very much capable of emotional intimacy with them. In fact, it is difficult for men to experience intimacy as this implies that they express what is happening within themselves, and to do this would make them likely to get their masculinity questioned.
Nevertheless, this difficulty causes most men to establish friendship intimacy bonds only with their lover/spouse; contrary to women, for whom it is easy to share emotional intimacy with family members and friends. Masculine friendship exists almost exclusively within the boundaries of male friends groups and the purpose of these groups is to share men's activities together (sports competitions, drinking, etc...) implicitly excluding the possibility to talk about intimate subjects related to oneself. (Today, some men groups are being created so that men get some space for this type of sharing and support but these groups are not widespread yet.)
Moreover, men often can allow themselves to feel emotionally intimate with their lover only after lovemaking. They feel more open then, more communicative and more intimate. It's as if sexual activities succeeded to create a small temporary breach in the armor.
As women ask for emotional moments of intimacy outside the sexual relationship and ask for the presence of a feeling of intimacy before a sexual activity can occur, this situation often produces a misunderstanding about intimacy issues within the relationship. On one side, men have difficulty to be emotionally intimate outside sexual activities. On the other side, women often refuse access to these sexual activities if their lover does not show emotional intimacy first.
Two choices are possible then: either the man learns the technique of showing intimacy and romantism (rather than being truly intimate), or he is refused the sexual activities and so, his only access to intimacy. However, he just as much needs intimacy as the woman does. This need, often unconscious, is what sometimes causes a man to become emotionally dependant upon his lover or spouse and to ask from her much more time and attention that she can give to him, especially if she has occupations to take care of outside her relationship and has children.
So men need intimacy just as much as women do but they don't know how to go for it outside sexual activities. However, they feel guilty to not be able to fulfill intimacy requests from their partner, which causes them to want to go away from the relationship in order to not feel guilty any more. And this, even though this relationship is the only one that could give them a chance to fulfill their own intimacy needs.
In order to establish a better intimacy between a man and woman, it is first necessary to understand and to respect how each experiences intimacy. This will help to diminish frictions that are due to the non-fulfilled expectations and to improve the abilities of each partner to fulfill his/her own needs as well as the needs of the other.