So you want a step-by-step guide on how to be emotionally intimate with your woman? Me too. It would be so much easier if we could make a checklist, do the tasks and be finished with the job. But the checklist only has one task, and you can never finish it.

Men have come to accept — even celebrate — their wives’ careers and paychecks while learning, step-by-step, how to bathe the baby and baste the turkey. But there is no Julia Child’s style primer on closeness, no chart with diagrams: Insert A into slot B, and there you go. Intimacy achieved. Let’s go have a cold one.

Oh, that was a good fantasy; Mission accomplished. Debrief in the bar.

“Even a generation ago, if a man was a good breadwinner and he had no profoundly negative attributes, if every night he came home, had a martini and watched TV all night, then went to bed, he was fine,” says marriage and family therapist Terry Real, author of How Do I Get Through to You? Closing the Intimacy Gap Between Men and Women. [...] Real says he counsels a lot of men who would prefer the bullet-point version of how-to-achieve-intimacy-now. “I say to them, ‘She wants you to be more relationship-skilled than you were raised to be. You’re a smart guy — this isn’t rocket science.’” But for a lot of husbands trying to rise to the demands of their 21st-century wives, the lessons of intimacy are worse than rocket science. They’re poetry.

Nah, forget about poetry. I believe it is possible for any guy to achieve some level of emotional intimacy with his woman. All it takes is a little planning. If you want to be successful, you’ve got to make time for one on one conversations where she can talk about her feelings, and you can listen. Do this regularly - don’t wait for her emotions to overflow. When the kids are put to bed, or other times when you are alone, give her a hug and ask her how she is and what’s on her mind right now. Then just listen to her. Ask her questions but don’t judge and don’t solve. Just listen.

Do you fear she’ll never stop? Don’t worry, she will. And you’ll have plenty of time left for that beer.

Source: Psychology Today - The Emperors New Wows