Men and Intimacy Issues: Unpacking Fear - Sex & Porn Addiction Treatment

People naturally seek intimacy with others. It helps to feel connected and form meaningful relationships. But when it comes to men and intimacy issues, some fear closeness and push other people away, keeping them at a distance.

Maintaining surface-level relationships may help you feel like you’re in control of your life, but it also may signify a fear of intimacy.

Intimacy issues can stem from a variety of fears and traumas. But fearing intimacy isn’t a life sentence to being alone, as long as you’re willing to confront and overcome your fears.

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What Is a Fear of Intimacy?

A fear of intimacy is when you’re afraid to share a close relationship with another person. You have walls around your heart that prevent you from forming meaningful and lasting bonds. This barrier restricts you from being vulnerable and emotionally close to someone else.

When it comes to men and intimacy, pushing people away isn’t always a conscious decision. If you fear intimacy, you likely want to feel understood and have lasting bonds with others. Your fear is rooted deep within you and is a way to protect yourself.

Your fear may be the reason you’ve sabotaged your previous relationships. Keeping people at arm’s length means they can’t reject you. The safety is in not trying to connect with others, fearing the possibility of rejection.

If you have an intimacy disorder, it prevents you from forming long-term, meaningful relationships with others. While your defense mechanism of pushing people away may seem protective, it hurts you in the long run. You feel like you can’t fully be yourself around others or feel close to someone. An intimacy disorder can make you feel alone.

Intimacy looks different for every person. Even if you fear intimacy, you may still long for one or more types of intimacy.

The 5 types of intimacy are:

Physical. Physical intimacy is about holding hands, hugging, and providing caring touch to another person.
Emotional. The ability to be fully yourself without fear of rejection.
Intellectual. The ability to connect about and discuss topics, like books, political opinions, or social views.
Spiritual. Sometimes religious, but often the willingness and openness to share special, unique, and meaningful moments with another person.
Experiential. The willingness to try new and exciting things with another person.

Past experiences inform current relationships. If you’ve felt abandoned, rejected, or abused in the past, these fears can seep into your life and make you question if you can achieve successful relationships.

Common Signs of Intimacy Issues

Intimacy issues aren’t the same for everyone, and they don’t just affect people in relationships. You can also struggle to get close to friends or family.

Signs you may fear intimacy include:

Debilitating trust issues
Lack of self-confidence
Dating many people in a short amount of time
Avoiding physical or sexual contact
Lack of communication in your relationship
Difficulty expressing your feelings
Sabotaging relationships
A history of short relationships or no relationships
Perfectionism or obsession with how people view you

If these things sound familiar to you, you may fear intimacy. But where did this fear originate? Trauma may be the answer.

What Causes Intimacy Issues or a Fear of Intimacy?

Unresolved emotional trauma is the root cause of many intimacy issues.

Trauma, like abuse, neglect, or bullying, impacts everyone differently. Some people can recover quicker if they have the tools to help them do so. For others, the symptoms of emotional trauma stick with them. You can even experience intimacy issues because of childhood trauma that you’ve never processed and healed from.

Experiencing trauma in your past doesn’t automatically mean that you’ll fear intimacy, but it’s a pervasive underlying factor for many people with this fear.

Other causes of men and intimacy issues include:

Fear of Rejection. Approaching intimacy with someone new means stepping into the unknown. You’re scared of getting hurt, so you refuse to take the first steps.
Fear of Abandonment. Losing a parent or loved one at a young age can lead to abandonment issues. You fear someone will leave if you get too close, so you avoid vulnerability entirely.
Depression and Anxiety. Mental health issues can make you fear judgment from others or manifest in social anxiety. It can keep you from starting new relationships or finding connections with others.
Low Self-Esteem. Some people feel they must reach high standards before they can be loved. This “perfect” standard is never actually achievable. It only furthers self-loathing.
Lack of Communication. When you’re scared to get close to someone, you may struggle to communicate your needs. You don’t know how to express your insecurities or feelings, so you can appear aloof or distant. The other person feels pushed away.

How Is Fear of Intimacy Related to Sex Addiction?

Not everyone who experiences trauma develops a fear of intimacy. Likewise, not everyone who fears intimacy develops an addiction. But some people do.

Isolation doesn’t feel good. Your brain wants to make you feel better by seeking out sources of dopamine. There are many sources of dopamine, including sex. Some men turn to sex to feel emotionally better.

You deepen a unique neural pathway as you continue to turn to sexual pleasure to feel better. This pathway links suffering, stress, and apathy to sex and intimacy. Using sex or watching porn as a coping mechanism becomes an addiction.

Sex addiction and porn addiction are intimacy disorders.

Unfortunately, by the time you recognize how these addictions are negatively impacting your life, you likely already have an addiction and need treatment.

Overcoming a Fear of Intimacy

Overcoming intimacy issues isn’t likely something you can do on your own. Yes, you can work to change behaviors associated with the fear of intimacy, but healing from the root cause of the problem is necessary for true recovery.

Strategies to overcome fear of intimacy include:

Start on Small Things. Do little things you would usually avoid doing with other people. Try telling them about your feelings or sharing a special moment. Starting with small tasks means the bigger things will become easier with time and experience.
Confront Your Fear. While it will be uncomfortable at first, start expressing your feelings more. It could be just to yourself at first, then to a partner or therapist later. Accept the uncertainty. It is inevitable, but it doesn’t control you. Speaking and naming what you’re afraid of can take the power away from it and give you the power of choice back.
Revisit Your Past. Your primary caregivers modeled what relationships looked like to you. Think back to your relationships with them. Try to understand what types of relationships they modeled to you. Consider whether you’ve recreated negative relationships in your adult life as a result.
Seek Help. Fearing intimacy means it isn’t easy for you to trust others. Still, working one-on-one with a mental health professional can help you get on track to overcoming your fear. To truly heal, you need to address the root cause of your fear and any behaviors that result from it.
Value Yourself. Give yourself time to process. It’s emotionally exhausting to recognize you’re experiencing an intimacy disorder, work through past trauma, and look at your relationships with a new perspective. Have compassion for yourself and work on cultivating self-love.

Treatment for Intimacy Issues at Begin Again Institute

Overcoming a fear of intimacy is possible. With professional intimacy disorder treatment, you can work through the traumas of your past and develop healthy relationships with yourself and others.

At Begin Again Institute, we help people with various intimacy disorders. During our 14-Day Men’s Intensive, we’ll help you identify and begin healing from the root cause of the disorder, while giving you tools to combat negative behaviors.