Simple ways to create bedroom intimacy

Your bedroom is a sanctuary that restores your body and perspective with sleep, your mind and emotional equilibrium with solitude (whether reading in bed, meditating, writing in a journal, or just trying on clothes), and your spirit and life force with sex. Whether private or shared, this room has the job of meeting your emotional need for intimacy -- with yourself as well as with another. Honoring intimacy as a real need will guide you in designing, decorating, and maintaining this room in support of that need. It also means you won't live in this room exclusively: you don't work in it, you don't eat in it, and you don't visit with acquaintances in it -- unless you're sick and bedridden. The bed is the most intimate piece or furniture in your home. And that's where a lot of problems in and confusion around the bedroom congregate. Intimacy is not always appropriate -- it needs to be protected. Thus the designation of sanctuary.

Rules of the room
1. Adequate fresh air circulation.
2. Natural 100 per cent cotton (or linen) bedding.
3. Two side tables (with compartment) for all beds larger than a single.
4. Bedside lamp and clock with lighted display.
5. A way to reach someone outside (cell phone, panic button, etc.).
6. Bench, wardrobe valet, or chair for extra blanket, robe, or tomorrow's clothes.
7. Security windows that can be restricted from opening wider than four inches.
8. No TV in the room.

Common ground
If you are not in a productive relationship but would like to be, you need to set up your bedroom to support the functions of a sanctuary for two. Keep the room free of clutter and tasks that conflict with intimacy and get a bed that is large enough for two to stretch out comfortably.

For couples who share this room, conflicts of decor and space usage that are not worked out to each partner's satisfaction might reflect the power struggles and dissatisfactions that will eventually rot the bonds between you. Some women keep this room so frilly and ruffled, no man with any self-respect could call it a sanctuary. Conversely, men who decorate around the theme of a conquering lair strike a discordant chord with the women they are hoping to lure. You are not looking so much for a compromise in this room (where one concedes to the other) as for middle ground (the place where you can both agree). The balance lies somewhere between your individual selves, where your union resides.

Page 1 of 4 -- Learn exactly how to create an inviting bedroom space both parties will love to be in on page 2.

 

---

Excerpted from The Emotional House by Kathryn L. Robyn and Dawn Ritchie, copyright 2005. Excerpted with permission by Raincoast Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.