Stay in the room with her

You can go through the whole thing with her and be somewhere else entirely. Planning tomorrow. Scoring yourself. Watching from six feet above like a coach with a clipboard. She can tell. She always can.

Attention leaves before you notice. One second you're with her, the next you're reviewing your own performance or wondering if she's enjoying it. That's the exit. The moment you start evaluating, you've left. Same thing happens at dinner, in the car, on a walk. You nod while running a separate movie in your head. Practice the return there and it gets easier in the dark. Notice you're gone, come back. No punishment, no speech about it. Just back.

Look at her. Not through her, not past her, not at the wall over her shoulder. Faces are where people live. It's harder than it sounds because being seen while seeing somebody is exposed work, and drifting off is the polite way to hide. Stay anyway. Say her name out loud once. Slow your hands down until they're actually feeling something instead of finishing a task. Speed is usually a man leaving in a hurry.

Presence doesn't stop when the moment does. Don't roll over and reach for something to look at. Stay five minutes. Talk, or don't talk, but be there in your body. Those five minutes carry more weight with her than anything that came before, and they cost you almost nothing except the urge to escape.

Tonight, when you notice your mind leaving her, look at her face and stay put.

Scripture treats knowing a woman as knowing, not performing. "Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth." Proverbs 5:18 Rejoicing takes a man who is actually present to rejoice in something. You cannot delight in what you are not looking at. The old word for intimacy was knowing, and knowing requires attention held long enough to learn somebody. That's the work. Not technique. Attention, given on purpose, again and again, to the person in front of you.