How to Find Greater Closeness in a Relationship

As you think about all the ways in which you and your romantic partner get along, you may be able to tick off a list of common areas of interests, values, and views on life. All of these can contribute to overall satisfaction in long-term couples. However, the “big one” that really counts may not even show up as you go through these similarities.

Intimacy is one of the key factors that can promote the health of a close relationship. Although there are many ways to define this perhaps elusive quality, the desire for closeness seems to be one that forms a basic element. As summarized by Friedrich-Schiller-Universität’s Sebastian Pusch and colleagues (2023), “closeness represents the degree to which individuals expand their self-concepts to incorporate their partners’ resources, identities, and perspectives.” It’s hard to think of a better way to define closeness than this. Imagining your own identity as it becomes integrated into that of your partner (while leaving some left for yourself) certainly captures this very fundamental sense of connection.

What Happens When Couples Want Different Degrees of Closeness?

All of this is very well and good, you might say, but what if you and your partner don’t define intimacy in quite the same way? Perhaps you envision your life together as one that is truly “together,” and where you primarily engage with each other (and, of course, any children in the home). However, maybe your partner makes it clear that your life together needs to include plenty of alone time. These differing views on relationship closeness may have been going on for quite some time in your relationship and may be a source of constant tension. Somehow, you’ve managed to find ways to compromise, but the tension remains.

Pusch and his collaborators note that such discrepancies can ultimately erode the quality of a relationship. Even if people remain together under these conditions, each partner may long for greater similarity on this important dimension. Previous research demonstrating the detrimental effect of differing levels of closeness on relationship quality exists, but only from the perspective of one of the partners in a couple. The Friedrich-Schiller-Universität research team decided to take into account closeness discrepancies from the point of view of both partners in the dyad.

Before launching into the details of their study, first consider the possible types of match and mismatch between couples in degree of desired closeness. In a “negative closeness discrepancy,” people want more closeness than they have. A “positive closeness discrepancy” describes the situation in which people want less closeness than they have. The third option is a “just right” type of pairing in which partners are getting just as much closeness as they want.

As you think about these possible combinations, where do you think you might land? How about your partner? Adding complexity to the possibilities, and this is where dyadic research comes into play, do you think your partner would rate your closeness as a couple in the negative, positive, or just right combination?

Testing the Closeness Match Between Partners

The fact that “closeness experiences are dyadic and interdependent at heart” rests at the basis of the German research team’s dyadic approach. Their sample of 748 couples, part of an ongoing panel study of families, averaged 32 years of age and had been together for an average of nearly 8 years. The analytic method called for what’s known as “response surface analysis (RSA),” in which desired versus actual closeness of both partners were literally mapped onto each other in three-dimensional form. Rather than just compare averages, then, the authors were able to construct the shape of partner-by-partner data points.

Moving into the study methods themselves, you might find it interesting to see how you might respond. The “Inclusion of Other in the Self” measure consisted of a visual scale in which you choose from among a set of increasingly overlapping circles the configuration that represents how close to your partner you feel (actual closeness) and, separately, how close you would like to be (desired closeness). You might also conduct a thought experiment to see how you think your partner would respond (or you could ask them directly).

A set of relationship satisfaction questionnaires tapped into such facets of relationships as sexual satisfaction, happiness, loneliness, perceived levels of support, commitment, and degree of self-disclosure (e.g., “How often do you tell your partner what you’re thinking?”).

Among the German couples in this study, the first analysis of simple scores on the circle-based measure showed that both partners in each couple (all were male-female couples) were experiencing less closeness than they desired. However, this overall figure does not capture the fact that there were wide variations, with most couples (55 percent) experiencing no closeness gap at all. Another 40 percent reported a negative closeness gap, and only 5 percent showed positive closeness discrepancies. These data can help you gauge where you stand with respect to this sample, whose data are similar to those reported by other researchers, according to the authors.

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Turning to the relationship satisfaction aspect of the study, there was a direct predictive effect of negative closeness discrepancies on relationship satisfaction in both partners, independent of what the other partner reported. Fleshing out the findings in more depth and citing previous studies, the authors suggested that “One’s own closeness efforts (such as showing affection to the partner) needs to be reciprocated by the partner for intimacy and connectedness to arise.”

Despite the preponderance of data suggesting that negative closeness discrepancies are more common than positive ones, the authors speculated that it’s still possible for positive closeness discrepancies to be experienced in a couple on something like a day-to-day basis. You might want some “alone time” and, if you don’t get it, feel a bit perturbed, but this is easier to cope with than the constant longing you have toward a relatively distant partner.

Putting the Closeness Equation to Work for You

This comprehensive and innovative study of a basic feature of relationship quality could provide you with some ideas if you’ve been feeling that pain of wanting more than you get from your partner. It can be frustrating and hurtful to feel shut out from your partner when there’s nothing you can do to change things. However, the circles task could give you a new way to approach this fundamental dimension of your relationship with your partner. Perhaps find out where they stand on the actual versus ideal depiction of your relationship.

As one implication of their findings, the authors also suggest that it can be helpful to identify the situations and behaviors that serve to manifest closeness discrepancies. If you and your partner can identify specific types of events that lead one of you to retreat, this can help you learn in advance when it’s best to steer clear so that you don’t feel the sting of rejection. At the same time, you can also learn to identify which behaviors can indicate it’s time to give each other some space. Recognizing that such variations are normal and healthy can give each of you perspective so that you don’t assume the worst whenever your partner seeks some private time. Sometimes people, no matter how close, just need to zone out until they're ready to re-engage with their partners.

To sum up, people have differing preferences for closeness, and the odds are that you’d like more than you have now. However, by learning to interpret each other’s signals, it’s possible to bring those levels into greater and greater congruence over time.

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