Intimacy is the ability to share your genuine self with another person. It’s an experience of closeness and connection.
Intimacy avoidance, sometimes called fear of intimacy or avoidance anxiety, is the fear of sharing close emotional or physical relationships with another person.
Are you encountering the latter in your relationship?
People who experience this avoidance are sometimes unaware of its presence. They might push people away, but it’s usually unintentional. They often cannot understand that they’re sabotaging their relationships.
Fortunately, there are ways to cope and work through intimacy avoidance. The first step? Understanding what intimacy avoidance is and why it happens.
What Causes Intimacy Avoidance?
Our minds often entwine the fear of intimacy with a fear of abandonment, loss, or engulfment. These fears often exist because of past trauma. We may also link fear of intimacy to general anxiety disorders. Let’s take a deeper look at what these fears mean:
Fear of Abandonment or Loss
Anxiety revolving around the fear of abandonment means the person experiencing this fear worries their partner will leave. It often results from experiencing abandonment by an adult or parental figure. If a parent or an adult important to a child’s life leaves or becomes physically or emotionally distant while the person is a young child, it can cause this kind of trauma.
Fear of Engulfment
When a person experiences fear of engulfment, they are afraid of losing themselves to a relationship. It’s often rooted in a fear of being controlled or dominated. If someone grew up with a family that had unhealthy emotional attachments that sometimes lead to feelings of insecurity, or even violence, the person is more likely to have a fear of engulfment.
General Anxiety Disorders
These fears and anxieties can be branches of social phobia or social anxiety disorder. This means the person is afraid of judgment from other people, is afraid of being “put under a microscope”, or a fear of rejection. Along with these anxieties can come a fear of being touched or a feeling of shyness when faced with intimate, personal connections.
Signs of Intimacy Avoidance in a Relationship
Regardless of the type of relationship, romantic, platonic, or familial, fear of intimacy can present itself in several ways. It often appears paradoxical, in fact. People who experience fear of intimacy often sabotage the relationships that mean the most to them. Signs of intimacy avoidance in your relationship may look like:
- Fear of commitment: This can appear as serial dating, refusing to become intimate or level up a relationship, and replacing it with another relationship that feels more distant, and therefore safer.
- Perfectionism: This usually happens when a person has idealized a “perfect” relationship. Those with intimacy avoidance often fear that their relationships are broken and unfixable.
- Difficulty expressing themselves: This isn’t always related to someone lacking the vocabulary to do so. More often, it’s related to their fear of closeness and vulnerability.
Coping Mechanisms to Help Your Relationship
Intimacy avoidance does not have to rule your connections with others. If you believe you or your partner have these symptoms, here are some coping strategies to try:
Accept Uncertainty
There are no guarantees in life or relationships. This is scary, but you and your partner are strong enough to see it through. Putting your trust in someone else is hard, but you have the courage to make it happen. Focus on the day-to-day instead of trying to force a particular outcome.
Show Compassion
Intimacy avoidance is a battle with your own mind. It’s a scary place to be! Show one another that you’re there to support each other, not harm. This may sound overly simplistic, but a simple show of compassion or solidarity can make a monumental difference to someone afraid of abandonment and rejection.
Talk to a Therapist
There’s no real reason to tackle this issue by yourself. Your relationships are worth saving, they’re worth having, and you’re worth the work it takes to get there. Please consider couples therapy and reach out to us for help. We can assist you and your loved ones with the coping mechanisms you need to overcome intimacy anxiety.