need advice for creating emotional intimacy

Hi! I'm looking for ideas to help me feel a stronger connection with my girlfriend, or to understand more clearly what it is that I feel is missing.

I have been dating her for about a year. We have a lot in common and she is pretty much everything I've hoped for in a relationship. She's nice and caring to me and others, healthy, shares my central values, intelligent, willing to raise a child with me, has a good job that she likes and is generally functional/responsible. That last one might sound like a low standard, but I've been dating for long enough that I know these characteristics are really difficult to find. On top of all that, she's in great shape and good looking to me. Our physical relationship is fine with me, but I wonder if we could have a more intimate emotional connection.

In the past, I've been attracted to people who were a little more aggressive or assertive. Although they weren't abusive, I'm not sure that this was the healthiest thing to be attracted to. For example, one of them would make (seemingly) insightful pronouncements about emotional situations, occasionally contradicting me. I pretty much just accepted this since it was too difficult to argue, even though, at times, I knew the pronouncements were one sided.

So, I'm trying to find a way to feel more emotional intimacy with my girlfriend without needing this aggressive behavior to feel more attracted. We answered some questions together from a self help book about ourselves and it didn't really help, but maybe different questions would be better. Anyone know of any you'd recommend?

I think my gf may be (unintentionally) somewhat emotionally dismissive. When either of us talks about differences of opinion or perspective, sometimes I think it seems like we both just say our opinion and go on to another topic. To some extent, I think she is indifferent about my perspective, figuring that she will be okay mostly doing things her own way and adjust to me here and there. I'm a little more concerned that we should try to communicate more deeply (even though I think we're a good match overall). I'm not sure exactly what I mean by deeper conversations, and I don't know how or when to initiate them, and I'm afraid of starting unnecessary arguments.

I also don't want to tell her about the concerns I've written about here too directly since I'm afraid she might want to break up.

Any suggestions?

How often do you communicate this to her?

We talk every day for an hour or so. We don't live near each other, so we only visit for about 3-4 days every month.

Oh, I just reread your post and saw you asked how often I communicate "this", not just how often we communicate. Well, of course I don't use the exact words as I wrote them there, but I try to tell her things I like about her every time it crosses my mind- pretty often I think.