Most people learn to develop intimacy in relationships at a young age, typically with their family members and then other loved ones. As people age, intimate relationships grow beyond platonic and also develop into romantic relationships. Intimacy deepens relationships and draws you closer to others.
Intimacy takes relationships beyond the surface level. But, some people struggle to share their emotions with others, be vulnerable, or form meaningful connections. If you feel lonely, frustrated by, or afraid of close relationships with others, you may be experiencing an intimacy disorder.
Intimacy disorders can make it difficult to maintain romantic relationships and healthy friendships, resulting in feelings of shame and despair. But, treatment for intimacy disorders is available.
Types of Intimacy
Intimacy is a natural closeness that builds between people in a relationship. It reflects trust, emotional vulnerability, and mutual acceptance. Intimacy makes people feel seen and understood by others.
Every relationship is unique, so intimacy may be characterized by one or more types.
Types of intimacy include:
- Experiential. Quality time together is the heart of this intimacy type. It’s about sharing common interests, like hobbies or enjoying experiences, that bring you together. You enjoy creating memories that further your connection.
- Intellectual. This type includes deep philosophical discussions where the other person just “gets” you. You share opinions and ask questions, even if you find yourself on opposite sides of an argument. You find connection through stimulating conversation and solving problems together.
- Emotional. When you have a relationship in which you can be deeply vulnerable with someone about your feelings, it indicates emotional intimacy. Even when confessing your darkest secrets, you feel safe, cared for, and understood. Conversations may revolve around your values and morals or seeking advice on difficult circumstances in your life.
- Sexual. This intimacy encompasses a close relationship with physical touch and sensuality. It usually starts as an emotionally supportive relationship that evolves into a trusting, physical connection.
In addition to creating closeness in a relationship, intimacy improves people’s general well-being. It helps combat stress and loneliness and has even been linked to lowering the risk of chronic illness.
Understanding Intimacy Disorders
So what happens when you can’t properly form intimate connections? Intimacy disorders make it difficult to be vulnerable with others. You may fear getting too close to or sharing ties with another person. It’s not only limited to emotions but also includes physical intimacy.
People with intimacy disorders struggle to be their true selves. You may feel you have to put on a “fake” version of yourself to get close to others.
Sometimes, you will deliberately or unconsciously avoid intimacy with other people. Although you may want intimate relationships with others, you can’t overcome the fear.
“Intimacy disorder” is an umbrella term to include different types of disorders. They include:
- Sexual Anorexia. Sexual anorexia is an obsessiveness with avoiding sex. It usually stems from childhood trauma, like sexual assault, sex abuse, or sexual repression.
- Love Avoidance. Marked by a desire to stay in control of the frequency and intensity of emotional connection, love avoidance is indicated by exhibiting a “bachelor for life” persona, as well as many intense on-and-off relationships.
- Love Addiction. Those with this type of intimacy disorder have an unhealthy fixation on others that results in obsessive compulsions. People experiencing love addiction tend to select unhealthy partners because healthy relationships cause them anxiety.
- Sex Addiction. Like sexual anorexia, sex addiction, which includes masturbation or pornography addiction, can stem from a history of trauma or toxic relationships. It drives a person to constantly seek sexual gratification to overcome or cope with negative emotions.
While research about intimacy disorders is limited, you’re not alone in experiencing these issues. Some researchers estimate that 2.5% of the population experiences avoidant personality disorder, also known as intimacy anxiety disorder.
You may want to feel close to your partner and find that you simply cannot. You are in the room, the conversation is happening, and something in you has gone quiet. That experience has a name and a cause. In the conversation below, Matthew Russell, MA, LPCC, a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist at Begin Again Institute, explains why emotional numbness develops, how it becomes tangled with compulsive sexual behavior, and what it takes to feel connected again.
Causes and Risk Factors
While intimacy disorders can stem from various factors, they typically derive from trauma. A lack of nurturing in childhood causes difficulty in forming meaningful connections in adulthood. This is just one way that childhood trauma may present itself in adulthood.
Types of trauma that can result in intimacy disorders include:
- Physical Trauma. This can include physical abuse by a family member or other adult in childhood, physical abuse by an intimate partner, or a physical attack by a stranger.
- Emotional Trauma. Emotional trauma is how the mind can respond to and attempt to protect itself from extreme emotional stressors, causing ongoing symptoms, including fear for one’s safety.
- Sexual Trauma. This trauma is marked by experiencing sexual abuse in childhood by a family member or trusted adult. It can also include sexual assault perpetrated by an intimate partner or a stranger.
- Betrayal Trauma. This occurs when you are betrayed by a person or organization that you trusted. The betrayed person may doubt their judgment and ultimately not trust anyone else anymore. This outcome may also be a result of any of the above types of trauma.
Trauma manifests in fear. It’s an automatic attempt to protect yourself from further danger, but it does more long-term harm than good. Rooted in a fear of rejection or abandonment, intimacy disorders develop from past experiences. If you lost a parent at a young age or experienced rejection from a romantic partner at a young age, it affects you into adulthood. Your brain holds on to the memory and tries to protect you from future traumas.
Matt Wenger, Clinical Director at Begin Again Institute, said intimacy disorders are almost always rooted in trauma, specifically trauma that occurs before the age of 20. He said this trauma leads to core beliefs of being bad or unworthy of love, which makes people want to keep others at arm’s length.
“The pain of these traumas can also lead to negative coping that one may feel the need to hide from others, thus widening the gap further and confirming to themselves the negative beliefs they already had,” he added.
Symptoms and Signs
Intimacy disorders can manifest in myriad symptoms. While some people may use sex as a tool to avoid emotional intimacy, others may be triggered by sexual activities due to trauma and avoid it completely. If you’re concerned you or a loved one may be experiencing an intimacy disorder, look for these signs.
Signs and symptoms of intimacy disorders include:
- Compulsive sexual behavior
- Insatiable sexual desire
- Fear of long-term commitment
- Struggle to form or maintain relationships, platonic or romantic
- Feelings of anger, fear, disgust, or guilt when touched
- Actively avoiding sexual contact
- Difficulty being vulnerable with others
- Discomfort expressing affection
- Feeling emotionally distant during sex
- Struggling to trust
- Difficulty becoming aroused
- Social isolation
- Feeling depressed or anxious
- Having a history of unstable relationships
Effects on Relationships
Intimacy furthers a connection with someone else. It fulfills the natural human desire to bond with another person. When you have an intimacy disorder, it creates challenges in establishing and maintaining intimate relationships. The fear of potential hurt can cause you to put up barriers in your relationships. You struggle to fully trust the other person.
When your partner feels you don’t trust them, it can cause a rift in the relationship. They may interpret your discomfort with intimacy to be a reflection of their own shortcomings. It can further their insecurities and make them doubt the authenticity of the relationship.
What Happens When an Intimacy Disorder Is Left Untreated
If you’re experiencing an intimacy disorder, it can cause great distress if unmanaged. The more you suppress the fear and anxieties, the worse your symptoms will become. It can affect your self-esteem, causing you to feel unlovable, unworthy of affection, or unable to start new relationships.
Your inner frustration may cause you to lash out at your partner, sabotaging your relationship. You may turn to infidelity to suppress insecurities. Left untreated, your relationships will suffer as a result of the disorder.
Without seeking help, you may turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms. Substance use or social isolation can cause long-term physical or mental health problems. You may experience depression or anxiety and lose interest in hobbies or spending time with the people you love.
Treatment for Intimacy Disorders
Healing from these disorders often requires intimacy disorder treatment. A mental health professional can help you understand why and how the disorder developed, unpack the root cause, and work through the trauma.
Regular counseling sessions, group therapy, or residential treatment programs, like the programs at Begin Again Institute, are all effective options for treating intimacy disorders.
While professional help may be the most effective treatment, there are some coping methods you can try on your own that can help.
At-home coping strategies include:
- Reflect on your own behavior and relationship history
- Journal about times you have felt fear or anxiety in a relationship
- Confide in a trusted loved one
- Join a support group or network
- Find places where and people with whom you can be your authentic self
- Prioritize self-care
- Invest time in hobbies you enjoy
- Set goals and review them
- Have compassion for yourself
Find Healing at Begin Again Institute
An intimacy disorder can make you feel exhausted. You may feel that you must be someone you’re not or hide your true feelings out of fear. It can make you feel like you’re missing out on meaningful relationships, causing you to feel lonely or ashamed.
If experiencing an intimacy disorder has caused distress in your life, there is hope for healing. Begin Again Institute offers residential treatment programs specifically tailored to treating intimacy disorders. The program helps men find and heal the causes of their concerns and stop the destructive behaviors that prevent true intimacy. If you’re ready to change your life, give us a call today.
Video Transcript: Why do I feel numb and disconnected in my relationship?
“Why do I feel numb and disconnected in my relationship?”
A clinical conversation with Matthew Russell, MA, LPCC
Certified Sex Addiction Therapist, Begin Again Institute
Lightly edited for clarity.
Why this question comes up so often
Greg (00:06): Thank you for being with us today. I’m Greg with Begin Again Institute, here again with Matthew Russell, one of our therapists. Today we’re talking about something a lot of people who call us ask: why do I feel numb and disconnected in my relationship?
It’s an exploratory question, and a hard one, because the answer could be a number of things. Matt is going to give us the clinical perspective, and how intimacy disorder might be playing a role in the answer.
For anyone who has sat across from a partner they love, someone who loves them, and felt empty, like there’s a pane of glass between them: you’re not alone. There is likely an explanation for why a person, particularly a man in many cases, feels emotionally numb and disconnected in his most important relationship. So, Matthew, what’s happening clinically when a man feels emotionally numb or disconnected in a relationship he genuinely cares about?
Emotional numbness as a defense mechanism
Matthew (01:35): You have to think of emotional numbness as a defense mechanism, and a learned one, probably learned a long time ago. Feeling pain is uncomfortable, so naturally we learn how to manage that pain. We fend it off, we compartmentalize, we build a wall, or we find maladaptive coping strategies.
So the metaphor of a wall, or a pane of glass, is real, because that is exactly what’s happening. They are pushing emotions away. They’re not allowing themselves to connect, because connecting and being vulnerable is dangerous. It could lead to rejection or abandonment, and that’s not what they want. It’s better to not feel, not connect, and stay numb, than to take the chance of being abandoned or rejected. And that comes at a cost.
Do that for a long enough period and it becomes their norm, and they don’t know how to connect even when they want to. You may have met this person and connected with him at one time, but over a period of time that connection was lost for a variety of reasons.
Thinking of it as a defense mechanism is a healthy way to set it up, because it takes away the blame and it takes away some of the shame. Something is going on here. What is it? What is causing it? That’s a healthier way to look at it, and you can take it with a healthy element of curiosity.
Greg (03:11): That’s great advice. When people are exploring something like this, there’s always an element of shame or self-judgment, and framing it as a defense mechanism takes those pieces away. It’s a reminder of all the work we do here, which is focused on the why. If you’re feeling that way, there is an explanation. Let’s go explore what that is with curiosity, and with less self-criticism and self-judgment.
So, looking at the why: is this where compulsive sexual behavior, porn addiction, and sex addiction come into play?
How intimacy disorder becomes porn and sex addiction
Matthew (04:00): This is the start of it. What’s really initiated is an intimacy disorder. Intimacy disorder is the umbrella, and what branches off of it is porn addiction, compulsive masturbation, affairs, many facets. They learn that being vulnerable is risky and scary, and that they can get their needs met elsewhere artificially, as a relational substitute. And it works. It also becomes addicting. It becomes a pattern, and it hijacks the nervous system. You go down that trajectory and it turns into a full-blown addiction.
Greg (04:46): Something you said really stands out. This starts with an intimacy disorder that results in, and shows up as, addiction. In other words, the person watching this, exploring his own behavior and trying to figure it out, isn’t necessarily a sex addict or a porn addict, this labeled construct that’s often stigmatized and certainly not a fun thing to call yourself. Rather, he has become engaged in addictive behaviors that were meant to deal with something: an intimacy disorder, which comes from trauma, which comes from something else.
Not a bad person, not a terrible addict, but a person engaging in those behaviors to solve some problem, some pain. That’s a helpful way for people listening to consider themselves if they’re in that position. So we’re talking about men and the way they might be feeling inside. This whole concept of numbness and disconnection: what’s going on inside a man? How would you describe that clinically?
What the numbness feels like from the inside
Matthew (06:11): A description I hear often is this void, this hole, this flatness that they can never get filled no matter how much they try, which is usually acting-out behavior. A sense of loss, like they’re living their life but they’re not really connecting with it. They’re not really living. They’re watching it, going through the motions, and there’s no value to it. It’s almost like a form of dissociation. They’re so numbed out that they’re present but not present. The lights are on but nobody’s home. And that’s what the spouse and the kids feel too.
Let’s also take into consideration that at this point there’s probably a dual life they’re trying to sustain, and a dual life is exhausting. Having a private life and a public life, where one has to stay secret at all costs, is taxing. So the bandwidth, if you want to use an internet metaphor, isn’t there. They don’t have enough bandwidth for meaningful relationships. They don’t have enough bandwidth to maintain a marriage. They don’t have enough bandwidth to be a good father.
They’re just in survival mode now. They’re doing the best they can while trying to maintain this addiction that’s keeping them alive, so to speak. So circling back to how they feel: they feel dead inside. They don’t feel like themselves. They’ve lost any resemblance of who they once were. Who was that? That’s usually what the men who come here are experiencing.
Why this is treatable, not permanent
Greg (07:54): That is a sad and painful way to be, and it also sounds exhausting. One of the things I love about the work you do here with our clients is that you help men realize that fact, and then figure out the why underneath it. People aren’t fated to feel that way. That comes from something.
The men we’re talking about weren’t born that way. They went through a set of adverse, traumatic experiences that resulted in them feeling that way. So there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. There’s treatment for that. We do it, others do it. But you have to go back and figure out what that is, and treat it, in order to change the way a person is feeling, which will change the behaviors that are causing problems for him and his relationship. It’s a very hopeful concept.
So is there a connection between this numbness and the ability to be present as a father and a friend? Does this extend beyond the marriage, beyond the relationship with your partner?
How it affects parenting, friendship, and daily life
Matthew (09:20): With this addiction, it’s going to be in all facets of a man’s life. Not only are they devoid in a marriage that has now been significantly emotionally neglected, they’re not able to be the parent they want to be. The desire is there, but they can’t. They don’t have the bandwidth, they don’t have the energy, they just don’t have it in them. And that in and of itself is frustrating.
Now they’re internalizing it. “I hate myself. I can’t even be a good father. I can’t even be a good husband. I want to be, but I can’t.” So they go toward this counterfeit version of love, of connection, through porn, through affairs, through whatever. It’s temporary, but it’s not meaningful, it’s not lasting, and it’s just a constant cycle. They have needs, and they’re getting them filled elsewhere, but they still feel that emptiness.
Greg (10:17): So what does it take to fix it? How do you get out of this situation?
Why connection is the antidote
Matthew (10:24): Genuine connection. That’s the hard part, because they have to be vulnerable. They have to push through and let themselves take that chance of being abandoned and rejected. And when they do, with people who really care about them, they find the opposite is true. They find compassion. They find understanding. They find that they are valuable, despite what they tell themselves.
We have to really explore what they think about themselves and turn that narrative around, because all the things they think they are are not true. And how do you do that? The antidote is connection. The antidote is healthy, meaningful relationships.
Meaningful relationships bring us a natural reward. But in a state of addiction, that natural reward doesn’t even touch it, because we’re so hijacked on artificial rewards, on that dopamine system. So we have to go through a time of abstinence, to let yourself reset. And again, the answer is connection. Meaningful connection.
Greg (11:41): So the answer is connection, but the current state of behaviors, the addiction, the infidelity, the porn addiction, the emotional affair, whatever is causing the numbness and disconnection, is in the way. You have to go seek treatment for that in order to get the connection, which is the answer to the whole thing. That’s what I’m hearing you say.
What the therapy room provides
Matthew (12:06): Right. And what better place than a therapy room, where you can take off the mask, be yourself for the first time in probably a very long time, and be in a space where you’re going to be accepted no matter what. They’re here to help. That’s the start. What is that therapy relationship like? And then that needs to be mimicked in other places, with men who maybe struggle with the same thing.
Absolute positive regard is what we call it in the therapeutic world, but love is maybe another way of saying it. We are all human, we all have flaws, we all have struggles. Let’s walk it together. That’s the meaningful connection that can start in the therapy room.
Greg (12:47): I love hearing that. It’s what I hear from clients who come through this program all the time, that for the first time they were able to take that mask off and be truly themselves, vulnerable, with other men going through the same stuff, supported by guys like you who get it. It’s such a powerful opportunity.
There may be partners watching this. For the person trying to figure out a loved one who feels disconnected and numb, who might be engaging in problematic behaviors, what do you want her to understand about what’s happening to him and in their relationship?
What partners need to understand
Matthew (13:33): That numbness, that wall you feel, is not representative of you. It’s not because he doesn’t love you. It’s because his nervous system has been hijacked, and he learned a long time ago, with high probability before he met you, to numb himself out. Now it’s compounded to a point where he’s checked out.
He’s checked out not because of you, but because of the maladaptive coping strategies he has used over time to manage himself. So we have to get him out of that loop. He needs time and support. You need time and support. But what I want you to know is that that numbness is not because he doesn’t love you. It’s because of the addiction.
Takeaways and hope for the relationship
Greg (14:18): The addiction that for him is solving some problem underneath, some pain, some need that is unmet, having nothing to do with her. I love how you say we have to get him out of that loop. She has to do her own healing. And then together they have a chance.
What I take away from this is that emotional numbness and disconnection in a relationship doesn’t have to be permanent. It doesn’t define the person, and it doesn’t represent some fated status that can’t change. It’s a protection strategy, a self-defense mechanism the brain learned, often really early on, and it can be unlearned.
If intimacy disorder is at the root of this numbness and disconnection, and if these behaviors came from something, then we can treat that something, and they’re not necessary anymore. The numbness and disconnection can go away, and the relationship can move forward to a really beautiful place. That’s what we hear the men who come through our program talk about after they’re done. Matthew, thank you for that work, and thank you for sharing your thoughts with us today.
Like many people, Ryan walked many paths before becoming a therapist. He wrote for a music magazine, worked as head-roaster for a coffee company, made live and recorded music, and worked in libraries. But it wasn’t until he discovered his own mental health struggles that he found his true calling. Through trauma work and psychotherapy he came to understand that many dysfunctions are deeply embedded in our culture, and that long term healing requires courage, resilience, and a supportive community.
