Are you the type of a man who panics when he hears his partner say she wants to take the relationship one step further? Don’t worry, that’s a normal reaction when you’re not ready yet to get serious about your relationship.

Intimacy avoidance, however, is a different matter. It means that you try to avoid close emotional contact with another person. You don’t just avoid intimacy, you actively find ways to escape from it. Continue reading to learn more about intimacy avoidance.

Overview

People engage in romantic relationships for a variety of reasons, including physical and emotional intimacy. When you’re in love, you want to spend as much time as you can with the person you love. You want to get to know your partner better. You want to be able to hold, hug, kiss, and make love with the person you like.

However, that’s not the case for everyone. Those who are struggling with intimacy avoidance view being close to someone as a dangerous thing. They strongly believe that the more a person gets close to you, the more it will hurt when that person betrays or abandons you.

You can think of it as a defense mechanism. Those who actively avoid intimacy do so because they want to protect themselves from being hurt or rejected. It’s not that they don’t want or crave for intimacy. It’s just that the fear of rejection and pain are far stronger than their need for intimacy.

What Can Cause a Person to Avoid Intimacy?

As with many other psychological issues, intimacy avoidance may be due to several factors.

Fear of being abandoned

You may be afraid that if you enter into a relationship, your partner will just eventually leave you. Fear of abandonment is usually rooted in a painful childhood experience such as being separated from a loved one or a parent.

Childhood sexual abuse

For someone who experienced childhood sexual abuse, trusting someone and being intimate with someone can be very difficult. When intimacy avoidance is due to sexual trauma, it may be accompanied by emotional distance during sex, inhibited sexual desire, as well as difficulty in achieving erections or orgasms. 

Fear of being rejected

When you’re so afraid of rejection, you may never take that first step toward developing a close relationship. It’s possible that you developed this fear because you already experienced what it’s like to be rejected.

It’s also possible that you fear rejection because you have seen firsthand how someone close to you got badly hurt after being rejected, and you don’t want to go through that kind of pain.

Avoidant personality disorder

Also referred to as intimacy anxiety disorder, avoidant personality disorder is a subtype of anxious personality disorder. This is usually characterized by an intense fear of being abandoned or rejected, low self-esteem, feelings of inadequacy, and sensitivity to criticism.

What are the Signs of Intimacy Avoidance?

Someone who is strongly afraid of emotional intimacy doesn’t usually express this fear out loud. If you suspect that your partner may be suffering from intimacy avoidance, here are some signs you should watch out for.

Trust issues

Someone who avoids intimacy usually has difficulties trusting other people. They may also believe that their trust will just be broken anyway, so there’s no point in giving their trust to someone.

Difficulties in forming relationships

Because of their overwhelming fear of rejection or abandonment, people with intimacy avoidance issues tend to find it extremely difficult to commit to a relationship.

In addition, because of the trust issues, low self-esteem, and feelings of inadequacy, an intimacy avoidant person may feel that he or she has nothing much to offer when it comes to relationships.

Inability to express emotions

An intimacy avoidant person usually has problems expressing his or her emotions. Those who avoid intimacy tend to appear cold and distant, and they don’t usually share their feelings.

Unstable relationships

If you look at the relationship history of someone who is intimacy avoidant, you’ll notice that there’s a history of unstable relationships or there’s no relationship history to speak of at all.

Avoids physical contact

Intimacy avoidance can cause a person to avoid any form of intimate physical contacts such as kissing and sex. It’s also common for an intimacy avoidant person to view sex as an obligatory act.

Spends more time with other people or at work

You may think your partner is a workaholic because she doesn’t have time for anything else other than work. However, that could actually be a sign that your partner is struggling with intimacy avoidance.

If she devotes all her time to her job, then she won’t have time at all to be with you or get close to you. If she’s always out with friends or if she prefers going on double dates, then she won’t have to spend time alone with you.

Feelings of inadequacy

Intimacy avoidance is usually accompanied by low self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy. Those who are intimacy avoidant may feel that they don’t deserve the time, attention, and love that they’re getting from their partner. They may also feel that they’re sexually inadequate.

Dealing with Feelings of Sexual Inadequacy

If you feel like you’re totally inadequate in bed, it can make you want to avoid sex and physical intimacy altogether. A lot of men with erectile dysfunction, for example, feel that they can never perform in bed as well as they used to.

In truth, however, you don’t have to let erectile dysfunction prevent you from being intimate with your partner. You should take Male UltraCore, the best male enhancement supplement that’s packed with potent natural erection enhancers.

Male UltraCore’s unique formula of natural ingredients allows it to offer sustained improvements in testosterone levels, as well as significant improvements in erectile function. That’s because Male UltraCore contains Horny Goat Weed, Tongkat Ali or Long Jack, Tribulus terrestris, L-arginine, Ashwagandha, and many more.

When you use Male UltraCore regularly, you will experience huge improvements in your sexual performance, and that should help eliminate any feelings of sexual inadequacy you may still harbor.

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