Intimacy is a long-term mutual positive emotional involvement, interaction.
Fear of intimacy with another person is not uncommon. But not everyone knows how to get out of this situation, overcome their fear and learn how to build a harmonious relationship.
What is intimacy?
Intimacy is a long-term mutual positive emotional involvement, interaction. But when is it achieved? Sometimes you spend an entire evening or several weeks intensively communicating with a person, getting mutual pleasure from communication, but after that you can somehow feel nothing special in the morning and understand, for example, that there is no place for this relationship in your daily life. This is because real intimacy, and with it caring and openness, comes later. Close relationships are not only pleasant-scientists say that they have such a positive effect on our lives that they increase their duration.
Why not?
However, many people avoid close relationships and are afraid of them. And this fear is often unconscious. Some may avoid close relationships because of negative experiences and traumatic memories — they think that a new relationship can be dangerous in this sense. For example, this behavior is typical for those who experienced violence at the hands of someone they trusted as a child. Fear can also be a fear of loss. For example, the fear of the death of a parent. If a child has experienced a death in the family and has not worked out his grief with anyone, he can develop a fear of being abandoned, feel a lack of security. Such a child thinks: “If I stay away from people, I won’t lose anyone else.”
Children can also experience emotional neglekt (neglekt-latent aggression-ed.), when they are left alone with their own fears, humiliation and shame. This is not necessarily an extreme situation in a pathological setting. The lack of parental warmth and attention is enough reason for a child to decide that a close relationship is a waste of time and pretense.
Fear and its consequences.
If an adult is afraid of close relationships, then usually he does not realize his fear and continues to avoid deep relationships unconsciously. And if at some point the idea comes to them that they still lack intimacy, then they begin to blame everyone around them for selfishness, but they do not pay attention to themselves.
Ronald Fairbairn, a psychoanalyst, proposed a new model of mental structure, he called it the “anti-libidinal ego”. The part of our personality that is responsible for suppressing libidinal desires. In this case, libido is not about sexual desire, but about long-term human relationships and positive interactions with the outside world. This inner voice, created in our early experiences, is activated as soon as we feel the need to engage in social interaction and tells us: “It won’t work”, “You’ll regret it”, “Forget it, it’s not worth it”. And we all have this special ego, the difference is only in the “volume” of his voice. If you are afraid of intimacy, the anti-libidinal ego will deprive you of the opportunity to create an important deep relationship with anyone.
Dangerous connections.
It is said that women who are afraid of close relationships, enter into relationships with married men. I wouldn’t use this interpretation so often. According to my observations, such women are more often driven by the desire to compete with another woman.
Can two people who are afraid of a close relationship form a couple? They can, but there will be no real intimacy between them. From time to time, they will say, “Something is missing in our relationship.” Feelings of loneliness and emptiness will overcome them, but they are unlikely to be able to determine for themselves that the problem is the fear of being really close. And how even closer: don’t we sleep together and watch TV shows together? But something is missing.
Sometimes people say something else: we are so close that you don’t even need to say something-the other understands right off the bat. It sounds great, but it’s often the predictability of not-so-sincere reactions that people have gotten used to in the 20 or more years they’ve known each other.
How to get rid of the fear of intimacy.
Recognizing that there is a problem with this is the first and very important step. Intimacy is known when a person takes full responsibility for their problem. Look around: relationships with which people would you call approaching the definition of”close”? Who would you like to be close to? Understand your preferences, fears, and form an idea of what your relationship looks like. Remember that your partner should not play the role of a therapist. You can’t sit in front of him and say, ” Husband, you know, I realized that I have a fear of intimacy and I finally understood why. Perhaps you could just bear with my detachment, bitterness, and indifference, and work through this problem with me, eh? ” Life is not an easy thing, and in it our problem is our burden and our responsibility.
Meanwhile, another psychologist explained what the quality of life depends on. Mikhail Labkovsky says that one of the main obstacles to mental well – being is anxiety.