Fear Of Intimacy

Chile, I have met enough people in my life with a fear of intimacy to last me a few lifetimes.

To be honest with you, I have even struggled with it in my past. Then I started to realize how much this fear was holding me back by crippling my experiences and causing me to be unaccepting of really good unions. Fear of intimacy steals so much from us. It also coerces us to steal from ourselves through self-sabotage.

But first, let's talk about what intimacy really is. I say this because you will be surprised how many people do not know the true definition of intimacy. You will be surprised at how many people feel that sex and intimacy are the same things.

Oh my dear, they certainly are NOT. You can fuck somebody five times a day for 20 years straight and STILL not experience intimacy with and from them. This is also why I cringe when I see the memes and articulations of women desiring to walk funny and be in pain after getting dicked down. Sweetheart, that carnal beating that you just co-conspired against your pussy on is trauma. We're talking full court pussy abuse. Pussy trauma that YOU will have to heal once it becomes time to pay the piper.

Intimacy is defined as the magnitude in which we genuinely share our true selves with other people, particularly in close and connecting avenues. Intimacy is the extent to which we allow ourselves to let people "in" and lower our guards (and in some cases-our masks) to really show up as our authentic selves and NOT our representatives.

There are various avenues of intimacy that we utilize throughout our lives. The four main types of intimacy are: intellectual, sexual, emotional, and experimental. In laymen's terms, we express our intimacy through sharing ourselves sexually (sexual), sharing our true ideas and thoughts (intellectual), sharing our innermost feelings (emotional), and through shared experiences (experimental).

When we have a fear of being emotionally, intellectually, sexually, and/or experimentally naked with others (in safe and comfortable spaces), a fear of intimacy tends to manifest. These fears are not personal to the individuals we are attempting to share spaces with (unless they have indeed hurt us and forced a wall to be built, of course). This is because the issue often rears it's ugly head when we have these fears and are confronted with situations and relationships that we feel may be too close or intimate.

Why do people fear intimacy?

A lot of people ask me why do folk fear something that is actually good for them. I always tell them that it is never this cut and dry. Fear in any capacity blinds you from seeing the good in anything. Intimacy is no different. Especially when you can experience the closeness of being able to "fuck" someone and get the pleasure without the trust and security that comes with intimacy. To have a fear of intimacy is to know abandonment in intimate settings. Remember that intimacy and sex are apple and bananas (wink). Intimacy relates to the closeness and vulnerability in our relationships. The truth is that many of us have had trauma regarding the closeness and vulnerability we have experienced (or failed to experience) in our preceding relationships-particularly those with our first caregivers.

Fearing intimacy is a melting pot of a state of being fearful of engulfment (being consumed or dominated by someone), abandonment (particularly if this has been experienced before) and loss. Sometimes it can be one of the aforementioned and sometimes it can be all of them heauxs. When I see people with unhealthy fears of intimacy, I typically see people with unhealthy desires for control.

In my case, being abandoned by my father at a very young age and not having the power to do anything about it, empowered me to always have control of my feelings and just how much of myself I would give my partner. I would only give surface parts of myself because I was always waiting for them to leave-and THIS time, if a nigga left me it wouldn't phase me because I didn't give him anything real to take. This also led me on a path of sabotaging a lot of relationships and unnecessarily hurting a lot of people. My justification was that I was always upfront from jump. Yes, I'd tell my suitors that I didn't want anything serious and to please not push that on me. So when the relationship began to heat up and I'd jump ship to abandon those mushy ass feelings developing, my excuse was always: "I told you what it was...so what's the problem?"

The problem was my fear of a man totally engulfing my heart and me giving my full vulnerable self to him was heightened by the understanding that he could abandon me and drop me flat on my face just like my father did when I was three years old.

And THAT shit wasn't happening on my watch. Not if I had control over it. Fuck that shit.

So this caused me to do what a lot of people who have a fear of intimacy do: Push people away.

These fears are generally rooted in past childhood experiences and triggered by our present day relationships. If you had controlling ass parents, you may develop a fear of engulfment because you are really afraid of "losing" yourself in another person or being controlled by them. If you experienced the early loss of a beloved parental figure or caregiver, you may develop a fear of opening yourself up so wide emotionally again only to have another loved one snatched away from you with little to no control.

Are you starting to see how this shit manifests?

Many times, people who fear intimacy are not made of stone and lack an ability to become intimate. Many times, these people have done it already and through energies and entities outside of their control; they paid a hefty price for it. This is one of the reasons that I call fears of intimacy a defense mechanism. We are (in our heads) defending ourselves from future instances of allowing others to hurt us again. Especially if our first rodeos of hurt occurred when we were of an age where someone else possessed the reigns of ensuring we had safe spaces to be vulnerable in.

Fear of intimacy are seen the most in individuals who have been taught not to trust strangers, experienced bullying early on in their lives (particularly from their parents or close family/friends), survivors of sexual trauma, and history of depression. Children of parents who were substance abusers, possessed various health illnesses (especially mental health illness), and neglected their children grapple with intimacy the most. This is because they do not desire to repeat the traumas of their childhood and they have been taught through learned behavior that people who are the most close to you hurt you the most.

In adulthood, these fears are manifested in our relationships through serial dating (player shit), relationship and self sabotage, difficulty expressing needs in the relationship, a fear of commitment (more player shit), perfectionism (proving that they are loveable), and difficulty expressing physical contact.

So...how's your relationship with intimacy?