The Importance of Intimacy in a Relationship 

My ex is a vulnerable narcissist and he withheld physical and emotional intimacy. There was a major change from the moment we got married. The full mask came off. There was no physical intimacy over our two week honeymoon and I can count the times on one hand over our brief two year marriage. It was like pulling teeth to get him to speak to me or do anything together. However, when he wanted to put on a show for other people, he could pretend to be the life of the party and hold my hand and call me cute names. Once they were gone, he was back to staring at his phone or computer. When I tried to address it, he called me needy and tried to shame me for actually wanting to have a normal relationship where people talk and enjoy doing things together.

Looking forward to the next video. My ex-husband was definitely withholding of any and all affection by the time I knew divorce was imminent. He also was very critical of everything!! Down to what parking spot I’d choose. I don’t have a good picker I guess so staying single for now.

There is still FAR too much societal pressure put on people to have sex. It's important, but my view is that it's importance is massively overplayed. This leads perfectly normal people to worry they are not normal, if they are not 'performing' frequently. Love, intimacy, empathy, sensitivity,care, compassion can all be expressed in a thousand ways; so enjoy the love and treasure it, no matter how often you happen to be having sex.

Sex with a narcissist is the worst. There's no loving intimate connection. When you feel like you want to be intimate, That's when the narcissist chooses to punish you and leave you hanging. Being withheld intimacy from someone you love willfully the worst form of rejection.

Thank you Darren for this great video, your observations and advice are very supportive. I am looking forward to the next video on the topic of sex in relationships with narcisistic individuals.

The thumbnail got me thinking about Salt and Pepa's song "Let's talk about sex, baby Let's talk about you and me Let's talk about all the good things And the bad things that may be Let's talk about sex... let's talk about sex!"

Endless Sex, zero intimacy with a narcissist. This rape.

My partner and I are so lazy about sex now that we live together. It's like twice a month. She is not the type to change.

❤

Had a sex less relationship for 10 years. It made me feel unattractive, undesirable, unwanted, undesirable. We were however very good friends. But then I found a secret horde of pornography which intensified all the negative feelings I already had. I have sat down with myself and a therapist since and I realise I went into that relationship because I had previously had a very sexualualised relationship previously. But that's all it was, on his part anyway. But he was always quite abusive. At the time, I thought I deserved it (.my history as the scapegoat set me up for that). After the jon sexual relationship broke down, I went back to my previous liver, thinking it was love. We quickly married. It lasted 6 years, always highly sexualalised, but he was still abusive, even more so. He actually physically sexually assaulted me on one occasion and secretly videoed me, sending these yo another person he had met on some chat forum. After jim, I ended up with a psychopathic narcissist. Again, highly secualised. I dumped him. He hoovered. I fell for it. I then had a brief relationship with somebody else psychopathic but on that occasion, I was more guarded and responded to the flags I was seeing much quicker and quickly got out. But on one occasion, he initiated sex with me, then straight afterwards, turned around saying he hadn't really wanted it. He also kicked some of my other attempts to initiate sex... These were the first flags... I don't feel I've ever had real sexual intimacy. Perhaps a couple of times when they were in their idealisation stages. It's quite sad really. But sex can be so easily weaponised, and easily conflated with intimacy when it isn't. When I have been "in between" these relationships, I've been completely abstinent. For up to 5 yesrs. Nothing. I think some of this comes from being young: my narcissistic father used to call me a sl*G if a boy ever rang me. It's really messed up my perceptions around sex and intimacy. But we also have very contrasting societal attitudes to deal with too. Nobody talks about sex, and if you do (as a woman), you're a sl*G (because men often split women into either mother types or sluts), but then, the media promotes 9ver secualised images of women and that's what men find desirable....its all a mess. Realistically, sex is a human need and desire. We get pleasure from it as well as emotional intimacy. It is one of the most intimate acts. So why isn't it talked about openly, from a young age, as just that? Sidenote: I used to work in a setting focusing on sexual offending. This dichotomous and repressed attitudes is what usually led to their offending.....

Let people deal with this themselves. I say: No girlfriend, no problems. Let them do what they want and i do what i want. But i agree to that if you are into that sort of thing you should have alot of sex and good sex to keep yourself and your partner happy.