Fear of affection

Fear of Intimacy Overview: Causes, Symptoms, and Treatments

To be intimate with someone is to share close emotional or physical ties. If you fear intimacy, you fear becoming too close to others.

Intimate relationships can be divided into four types:

Experiential. You share common activities, interests, or experiences that bring you together.
Intellectual. You bond through an exchange of ideas or deep, meaningful discussions.
Emotional. You share innermost feelings or form a spiritual connection.
Sexual. You have a close sensual relationship.

If you have a fear of intimacy, you may be deliberately avoiding intimacy or you may not realize you’re doing it.

Fear of intimacy doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t want intimate relationships. You may long for intimacy, though you can’t seem to allow yourself that vulnerability.

Continue reading as we explore some reasons for fear of intimacy and what you can do about it.

Fear of intimacy may be obvious, but it can be misinterpreted as anger, indifference, or coldness. Someone who fears intimacy may:

have low self-esteem
have trust issues
experience episodes of anger
actively avoid physical contact
have trouble forming or committing to close relationships
have a history of unstable relationships
be unable to share feelings or express emotion
have insatiable sexual desire
live in self-imposed social isolation

There are a number of things that might cause someone to fear intimacy. It may have to do with past experiences, especially those of childhood.

It’s likely a defense mechanism. You don’t allow yourself to become vulnerable or trust in someone else because you don’t want to get hurt.

Fear of rejection

Fear of intimacy may be rooted in fear of being rejected, so you never take those first steps toward building a relationship. You may fear rejection because it happened to you before or you’ve seen it happen to others and you don’t want to experience that kind of hurt.

Fear of abandonment

You might be worried that once you’re in an intimate relationship, the other person will leave. Fear of abandonment can be due to something that happened in childhood. It could be the death or separation of a parent or other close adult.

Avoidant personality disorder

Avoidant personality disorder, also known as intimacy anxiety disorder, is an anxiety disorder affecting about 2.5 percent of the population. It affects men and women equally and tends to start in childhood.

Symptoms of avoidant personality disorder include:

low self-esteem, shyness, awkwardness
fear of judgment or humiliation
avoidance of social situations
oversensitivity to criticism
exaggerated sense of potential problems

The cause of avoidant personality disorder isn’t clear, but it tends to run it families. One theory is that it’s caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors. It could be triggered by an instance of rejection or abandonment.

Childhood sexual abuse

Sexual abuse in childhood can lead to fear of intimate emotional or sexual relationships. Such abuse can make it challenging to trust another person enough to become intimate.

Symptoms of fear of intimacy linked to childhood sexual abuse may include:

inhibited sexual desire, difficulty becoming aroused
seeing sex as an obligation
feelings of anger, disgust, or guilt when touched
emotional distance during sex
inappropriate sexual behaviors
physical problems such as pain, erectile dysfunction, or difficulty having an orgasm

Other causes

Some other potential causes of fear of intimacy are:

previous verbal or physical abuse
parental neglect
separation issues involving overdependence on parents and family
fear of being controlled or losing oneself in a relationship

Fear of intimacy can have a significant impact on your life, particularly in a romantic relationship. Research shows that anxiety disorders can negatively affect the quality of a partner relationship.

Fear of intimacy may cause one to withhold affection or put up barriers to emotional or sexual affection. If your partner doesn’t know about or understand this, they may feel unwanted and unloved.

Other effects are:

social isolation
greater risk for depression and substance abuse
serial dating or having a lot of short-term relationships
sabotaging relationships by being difficult and overly critical

It’s always a good idea to start with a complete physical checkup, especially if you haven’t had one in a while. Once physical illnesses have been ruled out, a doctor can refer you to an appropriate mental health specialist.

Psychiatrists and psychologists are trained to conduct evaluations and diagnose anxiety disorders such as fear of intimacy or avoidant personality disorder.

Your approach to overcoming these fears depends on why you have them in the first place, as well as how severe the fear is.

You may have a very mild fear that you can deal with on your own or with some behavioral therapy. But if your fear is due to trauma, is severe, or is accompanied by depression, professional counseling is recommended.

Coming to terms with your fear of intimacy

Think about events in your life and try to understand where your fears come from. Are you unconsciously destroying relationships? And do you want more meaningful relationships?

Value yourself

All relationships come with a degree of uncertainty. Many intimate relationships are worth having, even if they don’t last forever.

Cut yourself some slack: You’re not perfect, but neither is any potential relationship partner. If someone ends a relationship with you, it says nothing about your value as a person.

Communicate

Be open with your partner. If it’s not too painful, talk about your fears and where they come from. If it’s too painful to discuss, explain that you’re willing to work through these issues with a medical professional.

Define your personal boundaries. Describe what helps you feel safe, as well as things that trigger fear. Tell your partner what you need and let them know you’re trying to overcome your fears.

Seek help from a professional

The main treatment for avoidant personality disorders is psychotherapy. Mental health professionals can help you understand where those fears originate and how to cope with them.

When your partner fears intimacy

If it’s your partner who has a fear of intimacy, keep the lines of communication open. Let them know you’re available to listen, but don’t push them into revealing the source of their fears. This may be too painful.

Support them in seeking therapy. Ask what you can do to help them feel safe. Be patient, because learning to cope takes time. It’s not easy, but keep in mind that their fear of intimacy is not about you personally.

Fear of intimacy is a mental health disorder that can lead you to sabotage relationships and isolate yourself. It takes time and patience, but with professional guidance, you can learn to overcome your fears and form meaningful bonds with others.

Understanding Fear of Intimacy

Fear of Intimacy: Understanding Why People Fear Intimacy

What is Fear of Intimacy?

Fear of intimacy is an often subconscious fear of closeness that frequently affects people’s personal relationships. This fear of physical and/or emotional intimacy tends to show up in people’s closest and most meaningful relationships.

Where Does This Fear of Intimacy Come From?

While there are times when we are aware of actually being apprehensive and distrusting of love, we are more likely to identify these fears as concern over potentially negative outcomes: rejection, the deterioration of a relationship or feelings of affection that aren’t returned. However, our fear of intimacy is often triggered by positive emotions even more than negative ones. In fact, being chosen by someone we truly care for and experiencing their loving feelings can often arouse deep-seated fears of intimacy and make it difficult to maintain a close relationship.

Why Do Positive Feelings Trigger a Fear of Intimacy?

It may be surprising to learn that the real resistance to intimacy often doesn’t come from the acts of our partners, but from a lurking enemy within us.

The problem is that the positive way a lover sees us often conflicts with the negative ways we view ourselves. Sadly, we hold on to our negative self-attitudes and are resistant to being seen differently. Because it is difficult for us to allow the reality of being loved to affect our basic image of ourselves, we often build up a resistance to love.

Where Do These Negative Attitudes Come From?

These negative core beliefs are based on deep-seated feelings that we developed in early childhood of being essentially bad, unlovable or deficient. While these attitudes may be painful or unpleasant, at the same time they are familiar to us, and we are used to them lingering in our subconscious. As adults, we mistakenly assume that these beliefs are fundamental and therefore impossible to correct.

How Does Fear of Intimacy Affect Us?

We don’t intentionally reject love to preserve a familiar identity. Instead, during times of closeness and intimacy, we react with behaviors that create tension in the relationship and push our loved one away.

Here are some common ways people distance themselves emotionally as a result of a fear of intimacy:

Withholding affection
Reacting indifferently or adversely to affection or positive acknowledgement
Becoming paranoid or suspicious of a partner
Losing interest in sexuality
Being overly critical of a partner
Feeling guarded or resistant to being close

How to Overcome a Fear of Intimacy?

In order to overcome our fear of intimacy, we must challenge our negative attitudes toward ourselves and not push our loved ones away. It is possible to challenge our core resistance to love. We can confront our negative self-image and grow our tolerance for a loving relationship.

We can overcome our fears of intimacy and enjoy more loving and more intimate relationships.

More on the Fear of Intimacy

Love is not only hard to find, but strange as it may seem, it can be even more difficult to accept and tolerate. Most of us say that we want to find a loving partner, but many of us have deep-seated fears of intimacy that make it difficult to be in a close relationship. The experience of real love often threatens our self-defenses and raises our anxiety as we become vulnerable and open ourselves up to another person. This leads to a fear of intimacy. Falling in love not only brings excitement and fulfillment; it also creates anxiety and fears of rejection and potential loss. For this reason many people shy away from loving relationships.

Fear of intimacy begins to develop early in life. As kids, when we experience rejection and/or emotional pain, we often shut down. We learn not to rely on others as a coping mechanism. We may even begin to rely on fantasy gratification rather actual interactions with other people; unlike people, fantasies cannot hurt us. Overtime, we may prefer these fantasy over actual personal interactions and real positive acknowledgment or affection. After being hurt in our earliest relationships, we fear being hurt again. We are reluctant to take another chance on being loved.

If we felt unseen or misunderstood as children, we may have a hard time believing that someone could really love and value us. The negative feelings we developed toward ourselves in our early years, became a deeply embedded part of who we think we are. Therefore, when someone is loving and reacts positively toward us, we experience a conflict within ourselves. We don’t know whether to believe this new person’s kind and loving point of view of us or our old, familiar sense of our identity. So, we often react with suspicion and distrust when someone loves us, because our fear of intimacy has been aroused.

Our capacity to accept love and enjoy loving relationships can also be negatively affected by existential issues. When we feel loved and admired, we start to place more value on ourselves and begin to appreciate life more. This can lead us to feel more pain about the thought of death. We fear both the loss of our loved one and of ourselves, and in the process many of us unconsciously pull back from our relationships. Fear of death tends to increase the fear of intimacy.

Even though the fear of intimacy is a largely unconscious process, we can still observe how it effects our behavior. When we push our partner away emotionally or retreat from their affection, we are acting on this fear of intimacy. Holding back the positive qualities that our partner finds most desirable is another way we act on this fear. We often try to make ourselves less lovable, so we don’t have to be as afraid of being loved. These distancing behaviors may reduce our anxiety about being too close to someone, but they come at a great cost. Acting on our fears preserves our negative self-image and keeps us from experiencing the great pleasure and joy that love can bring.

However, we can overcome fear of intimacy. We can develop ourselves to stop being afraid of love and let someone in. We can recognize the behaviors that are driven by our fear of intimacy and challenge these defensive reactions that preclude love. We can remain vulnerable in our love relationship by resisting retreating into a fantasy of love or engaging in distancing and withholding behaviors. We can maintain our integrity, learn to “sweat through” the anxiety of being close without pulling away, and gradually increase our tolerance for being loved. By taking the actions necessary to challenge our fear of intimacy, we can expand our capacity for both giving and accepting love.

Overcoming the Fear of Intimacy

Length: 90 Minutes

Price: $15

On-Demand Webinars

In this Webinar: What prevents most people from being able to sustain romantic, meaningful relationships that satisfy their needs and desires? Why do…

Learn More

About the Author

Tags: afraid of intimacy, couple, defenses, fear of intimacy, intimacy, love, marriage, Must Read, relationship

Overcome fear in love | PSYCHOLOGIES

26,688

Man and Woman Relationship Crisis

Key Ideas

Every relationship comes with fear. We are waiting for understanding, love and care. And just as much we are afraid of not getting what we want.
Perception distorted by fears shows even the partner's neutral actions as rejecting.
It is important to notice repetitive errors in a relationship and understand their cause.
You can build trust and get rid of fears in a couple if you remember that we create a bond together and learn to take an active position.

Some enter into relationships on tiptoe, others live under the yoke of jealousy, others hardly breathe so as not to frighten off their lover. There are strong fears that cover us like water or flame, there are almost imperceptible ones. But they are always there and inseparable from love.

“Our fears show how important relationships are to us,” emphasizes systemic family therapist Tatyana Potemkina. “Intimacy with a significant other is vital to us.

We enter into a love relationship with a set of expectations, fantasies and hopes directed towards a partner. We are waiting for acceptance and understanding, intimacy and appreciation, love and care. It is important for us to confirm our value and uniqueness in the eyes of those whom we consider close. And to the same extent we are afraid of not getting what we so passionately desire.

Therefore, the fear of being rejected or abandoned, unnecessary or insignificant, unloved or controlled, not meeting the aspirations of a partner or being a failure in his eyes always goes hand in hand with our expectations.

Take the risk

“A lot of young people come to me for counseling,” says psychoanalyst Catherine Odiber, “and most of them are afraid of suffering because of the wrong choice of partner. Patients of mature age have other fears: to be alone, to be manipulated, dominated, betrayed ... We forget that love is always a risk, because love contains the possibility of loss. You have to accept it in order to be able to love.”

There are many stories of deceit in psychologists' offices with the bitter conclusion: "I won't fall for that trap again. " To them are added stories about how two people did not open up to each other, fearing betrayal, about illusions that allow us not to meet face to face with our reality and the reality of the other, about the rejection of love for fear that it will not be eternal.

Delve into childhood

“A relationship of love can rightly be called an adult attachment, to which a person strives all his life,” emphasizes Tatyana Potemkina. How successful our search will be depends on the history of adult relationships, but primarily on early experience with the mother.

A child's ability to feel safe in moments of loneliness determines how he will love in the future. “Without this security, the fear of being alone will force you to build relationships with another person based on need rather than desire,” said child psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, author of The Ability to Be Alone.

Perception of relationships distorted by fears gives rise to a world where even neutral actions of a partner are perceived as rejecting

“If the primary adult was unavailable, or dangerous, or unpredictable when the child needed him, then the fear is born that the close relationship itself can be insecure and fraught with pain and disappointment,” continues the psychotherapist. - Insecure attachment - eternal doubt about whether I need another, whether I have the right to care, or tirelessly have to do something to deserve love. Or should I always be on my guard to run from suffocating relationships where there is no place for my needs.

Perception of relationships distorted by fears creates an unsafe world where even neutral actions of a partner are perceived as rejecting or threatening. And the threat makes us defend or attack, so conflicts and frustration are inevitable.

See repetitions

In insecure attachment, we constantly return to childhood experiences. At the same time, the fear of attachment is extremely rarely fully realized by us, Tatyana Potemkina emphasizes: “We react to the danger of rejection with protective feelings - shame, anger or resentment directed at a partner. The habitual mechanism gives a feeling, albeit painful, but predictable. Hence the repeated cycles of mutual misunderstanding in couples.

“I spent whole days taking care of the house and children,” recalls Evgenia, 42, whose situation Tatyana Potemkina considers quite common. - And when my husband returned, I wanted to talk to him. He sat down at the computer. It seemed to me that I was not appreciated, it was insulting, and I showered him with reproaches until he exploded.

Only after psychotherapy did Evgenia realize that she was driven by the fear of rejection, which originated in her children's family: her parents were stingy with praise and were often absent. Her husband, 42-year-old Yuri, also made a discovery for himself: “I realized that I can’t say that I’m tired and I need time to recover. After all, it’s like becoming the very weakling that my father despised.”

“There are overt and covert elements in every encounter,” says Gestalt therapist Yves Meresse. “It is in that which is hidden that unresolved attachment issues will play out again. The need to pay attention to how we were loved in order to notice what is repeated in our affective present.

Become a protagonist

When we recognize our fears, we are able to resist them. Mindfulness is the grain of sand that can jam the gears of a machine that repeats negative scenarios.

What type of partner am I looking for, what type of partner am I running away from? What in my behavior creates a problem for me or for the relationship?

What is repeated: excessive jealousy, emotional or sexual dependence, breakups on my initiative or on the initiative of a partner?

It is useful to identify what we lack and what we need, and without shame or guilt to confess these needs

These questions require us to become the actors of our story. 39-year-old Bella, who called herself a "serial castaway", decided to "pump up" her independence, the way we pump up muscles.

“Rather than looking for another friend to heal my wounds, I thought about what I love to do, who I enjoy hanging out with, and put together a program to feel good being alone. I practiced it for a year. At first it was difficult, as if I had weaned myself from addiction, and then it became nice to do something good for myself. For a year now I have been dating an amazing person, we continue to live separately, and so far it suits me very well.

It is useful to identify what we lack and what we need, and without shame or guilt to admit these needs - first of all to ourselves, and then, perhaps, to a partner. Some dare to share their fears. “If we dare to express them, realizing that we have trust in a partner, this strengthens the feeling of closeness, and therefore security,” notes Yves Meresse.

Building a connection together

It is possible to change the style of attachment and build trust in a couple, Tatyana Potemkina is convinced: “Most of us are able to recognize our emotional reactions and act deliberately. We learn to understand ourselves and others, to be sympathetic to the fact that we may have different views, we try to accept differences. We learn to help each other not only with activity, but also with empathy — that is, understanding the emotional state of a partner.”

Relationships are a two-way process. By changing the attitude towards a partner to a more open and sincere one, we change ourselves. A partner becomes for us a living person with his own strengths and weaknesses, and not an all-powerful parental figure, to whom there is always a reason to make demands or claims.

Sometimes we manage to do this in an already existing pair. But sometimes we go through a long search before we find someone who really suits us.

Here is the story of 53-year-old Nina: “Love for me has always been, if not a war, then something like a tug-of-war. Until I met Vitaly, who became my third husband. His kindness and generosity disarmed me. For the first time I feel trust. Not to him or to ourselves individually, but to us as a whole, and that's the whole difference.

Indeed, remembering that we create a connection together and learning to take an active position are the surest means available to rid yourself and your partner of fear.

Text: Elza Lestvitskaya Photo Source: Getty Images

New on the site

“I'm in demand as an intelligent conversationalist, but not as a friend. Why is this happening?"

You are a victim of the "dark forest syndrome": 6 symptoms

Selfharm: why people hurt themselves physically and how to help them

“I'm an infantile person”: 3 steps to grow up

“I'm afraid to go crazy because of the attitude of my parents, but they won't let me see a psychologist”

“My man is leaving for his ex. She needs his money”

“Married and happy – am I the only one?”: how to build and maintain strong relationships

How to deal with strong emotions: 2 tips – learn to help yourself

what is the fear of intimacy and why it arises

Fear of intimacy hides many other problems related to low self-esteem, traumatic experiences in relationships, and vulnerability. Someone decides to work through negative attitudes with a therapist, while others prefer to abandon the relationship. We understand what the fear of intimacy is, why it arises and what to do if your partner turned out to be counter-addicted.

How the fear of intimacy manifests itself

You may have come across the following situation: a person enters into a relationship (friendly or romantic), he is sincerely interested in his partner, but at one moment he suddenly becomes cold and begins to move away. This is one of the ways to avoid real emotional intimacy, such fear is one of the types of psychological protection. This type of attachment disorder is also called counter-dependence, or avoidance addiction.

Counter-addicts actually want to build close relationships, but unconsciously fear them and avoid them in a variety of ways.

One of them is the construction of "ideal images" that no one will match in real life.
The desire to become perfect oneself is also characteristic - this is how the attitude appears that only “perfect” people can build relationships. As a rule, in this case, a person fills all the time with some additional activities and at the same time it seems to him that he is doing “not enough”.

In addition, because of the fear of intimacy, some people tend to choose partners who are indifferent to them, because in this way they experience the desired emotions and feelings and at the same time maintain an emotional distance. Such a choice is unconscious, and the person himself constantly asks the question “Why don’t they love me?” or "Why do I never get reciprocated?".

Causes of avoidance addiction

Counterdependence is associated with a feeling of vulnerability, fear of being rejected.

“Because intimacy in a relationship makes a person feel more vulnerable and creates the potential for strong negative emotions, it is often avoided. This does not mean that such people do not have enough friends. They may even be considered popular, especially since they are likely to be successful and competitive. However, such people are unlikely to share their personal experiences with others and may occasionally feel socially isolated.”

Hal Schori, Clinical Psychologist and Professor of Clinical Psychology at Widener University

Most likely, the person was not accepted in a previous relationship, be it family, friends, classmates, former lovers. Of course, like many psychological traumas, the roots of the problem go back to early childhood.

“Most self-protection strategies are formed in early childhood. For a child, they represent the best solution that he resorts to in difficult situations. Subsequently, these strategies become unconscious and are automatically activated each time when we find ourselves in a situation similar to those childhood crises that were never resolved in their time.

Ilse Sand, psychotherapist, author of the book Fear of Proximity. How to stop being defensive and start loving”

Perhaps the child did not receive enough care from his parents (for example, they spent too much time at work), faced high demands on himself, because of which he believed that “love must be earned.”

“At the same time, it doesn’t even matter whether the parent really showed such behavior or whether his child just saw and felt it. For example, the mother worked hard and tried very hard to pay attention to the child, but it was not enough. ”

Ilse Sand

Another reason may be the parents' overcontrol, who forbade any form of independence. So, the child began to associate close relationships with lack of freedom, he felt pressure on himself. These feelings persist, and the notion emerges that emotional intimacy equals incarceration and independence.

It is also possible that the child separated from the mother too early, because of which he did not have enough care. He has some loss, and the trauma from it remains. Relationships are associated with pain, and it is easier for a person not to start them at all than to be rejected at some point.

How to cope with the fear of intimacy

In order to find the causes of fears and, accordingly, ways to work on them, it is worth contacting a psychotherapist. In the course of working with him, you will be able to:

Learn to recognize your own feelings

Since some people with avoidance addiction do not know how to recognize their feelings, one of the first steps in psychotherapy is working with their emotions. If a person also learns to express them correctly, he will be able to state his experiences, worries and discuss them with another person.

Learn to build personal boundaries

Personal boundaries are essential in building any relationship, even the closest. The task is to understand where these boundaries are and how to designate them. Due to weakly built personal boundaries, counterdependent people can avoid conflicts, because they become vulnerable in such situations.

Get rid of false beliefs

Counterdependent people have such false beliefs as "If I get close to someone, the person will see my imperfection and leave", "Love and care must be earned", "If I enter into a close relationship, then I will lose my freedom." Working with irrational attitudes is to reformulate them and realize these changes.

What to do if you're in a relationship with a counter-addicted person

Hal Schori, clinical psychologist and professor of clinical psychology at Widener University, suggests talking to your partner more often about your emotions, thereby showing him that it's safe to show them.

Learn more