Helping men find the key to intimacy

"I know he loves me, but he just doesn't know how to be close to me."

In more than 40 years of working with married couples, I must have heard these or similar words literally hundreds of times. For all our commitment, hard work and often success in our marriages, somehow we men are just not able to really meet our wives needs for intimacy. It's a real dilemma for many couples.

I guess dilemma is a pretty good word. For many men it isn't that we don't want to be close to our wives. It isn't that we don't try. It is almost as if we lack some secret knowledge about human relationships that keeps us from building the intimacy that our wives, and we, need.

And perhaps that, in reality, is the problem. Though the knowledge we need may not actually be secret, it is probably a mystery to most men. It is knowledge we often did not have the opportunity to learn, and wasn't considered all that important for men to have anyway.

Males in American society are taught about doing. We learn how to observe, reason, decide, act and succeed (though, I suspect, not how to fail). We are taught that we show love for others by such doing, and that others recognize and appreciate the love we show in this way.

Of course, we don't receive all this instruction in any formal classroom or by reading books. We learn about being male by watching our fathers, grandfathers, older brothers, male teachers, etc. And they, of course, learned in the same way.

All this learning, however, includes very little about being intimate. Most premarital father/son talks, for example, go something like this: "Remember, son, it's your job now to take care of her. She's depending on you." (At least, that's how it goes in the movies.)

Now, perhaps there was a time when that was enough. ("Don't worry about that saber tooth tiger, dear! I'll handle it!") But, I suspect, long before there were many family therapists to write about it, men were finding we had been ill‑prepared for what our wives really wanted in marriage.

Well, what do we do when we find that we don't have the training for the "job" we need to do? I guess we could do what we do know how to do, and hope it will be good enough (lots of men try this, and it does work for a while). Or we could angrily decide we just can't do the job and quit (some men try this, too).

On the other hand, we might just get the extra training we didn't get in the first place. Granted it's not easy to learn something so new, but it can be done.

And perhaps that's the approach we men need to take to the "job" of being married. Being successful is going to require that we learn the set of attitudes, skills and behaviors called intimacy. Though they haven't previously been part of society's job description for males, maybe it's about time we realized that things are due for a change.

Well, guys, seems like we've got a job to do. And a tough one, at that. But, you know, when you think about it, the pay can be pretty good. A rich, deep and growing intimate relationship is one of the most rewarding experiences we can ever have.

Let's get to work.

• Dr. Ken Potts is on the staff of Samaracare Counseling Center in Naperville and Downers Grove. He is the author of "Mix Don't Blend, A Guide to Dating, Engagement and Remarriage With Children."