ARE YOU AFRAID OF INTIMACY?

 

fear-of-intimacy

 

Are you Courageous Enough to Open up and Let Someone Into Your Being?

So you want to be in a relationship, or you finally found someone you actually like, but you realize you have deep-seated fears that are making it difficult for you to get too close. You find ways to sabotage It from the beginning, you start to pull the person apart, telling yourself I don’t this habit about them or this about their appearance or we don’t have the same interests, any minor thing that you can find to protect yourself from finding true love and connection.

The truth is you want to be intimate more than anything, you think about it, dream about it, and crave it. You’ve been close to people in the past, perhaps you were young and naïve and didn’t know what to expect and you ended up getting hurt, the pain was so unbearable that trusting someone again leaves you in frozen fear. You didn’t go through all that pain to keep repeating the same patterns. You’re not the same person you once were, it made you stronger, wiser, and more in touch with what your heart really wants.

Fear of intimacy begins to develop early in life. As kids, when we experience rejection and/or emotional pain, we often shut down. We learn not to rely on others as a coping mechanism. We may even begin to rely on fantasy gratification rather than actual interactions with other people; unlike people, fantasies cannot hurt us. Overtime, we may prefer these fantasies over actual personal interactions and real positive acknowledgment or affection. After being hurt in our earliest relationships, we fear being hurt again. We are reluctant to take another chance on being loved.
If we felt unseen or misunderstood as children, we may have a hard time believing that someone could really love and value us. The negative feelings we developed toward ourselves in our early years became a deeply embedded part of who we think we are. Therefore, when someone is loving and reacts positively toward us, we experience a conflict within ourselves. We don’t know whether to believe this new person’s kind and loving point of view of us, or our old familiar sense of our identity. So, we often react with suspicion and distrust when someone loves us, because our fear of intimacy has been aroused.

The reason people get frustrated is that they are not listening to their inner voice. Truth is not logic; you have to remind yourself to listen to your inner self. If you are angry for e.g. then be angry, don’t force yourself to smile and pretend you are fine when you’re not, don’t pretend you don’t feel rage and want to scream. You are only lying to yourself, and others. If you feel scared or lonely it’s ok to admit this to yourself especially, then you are being true to your soul. A person who can be totally angry, can be the contrast too, totally happy and loving. Its not only about expressing these emotions its what you gain from the experiences, that you are totally free to be in them without reservation then you are free of them.

No relationship can truly grow if you continue holding back, if you are consistent in safeguarding and protecting yourself only the personalities meet and essence of the souls remain alone, then only your masks are related not the true you. Do you really want to remain worlds apart? Let go of the false self. Sure there is risk involved, nobody knows whether the relationship is capable of true understanding and authenticity and if it will stay strong through challenges. You don’t want to play a role and treat love like a duty.

The risk is worth it because you will find truth mainly within yourself it allows you to go deeper with the person and frees your soul to all possibilities you become content and satisfied.

The only person you need to trust is yourself, it is the most important quality you can acquire in your life. Be in your feelings completely, listen to what’s really true to your heart and soul, and your body and intuition will never lie to you. We can’t trust others completely until we trust ourselves deeply. When we learn who we are and get to know ourselves very well, we are better at identifying toxic people instantly. Part of the fear of embarking on a new relationship is that we will repeat the same situation. If we don’t heal what attracted that situation to us, we will replay similar situations until we heal the false belief causing the problem in the first place.
Let go of your many facades they are keeping you from being your true and real self, which is what you yearn others to see, so take off your masks.

Your awareness is your key guidance to your emotions, the red flags you let slide, the conversations you kept avoiding, the lies you kept telling yourself i.e. it will get better if I try harder. We can’t predict how people are going to react, but we can trust ourselves and be responsible for our own actions.

Intimacy means that the doors of the heart are open for you to welcome people in, but its only possible fi your heart is open and not filled with repressed emotions and supressed sexuality. If you want to create intimacy you need to be authentic. So many people supress their emotions, in fear that that it makes them feel weak, and too vulnerable. To be vulnerable is to be deeply seen. It’s to love with your whole heart and to put yourself out there. We must accept our vulnerabilities, open ourselves to them and embrace them, because only then do we feel the safety net that is always there that mysterious presence that is beauty, love, kindness and truth.

Emotional intimacy is a sense of closeness to another person, a real sense of two-way empathy. When we’re emotionally intimate, we can share personal feelings, display affection, and not be dismissed or judged harshly, only feel accepted. It is also a sense of seeing life through the same eyes, sharing experiences in similar ways and feeling connected in knowing what one another would probably think being in tune with them on a soul level.
To be happy and content we must accept our vulnerabilities, open ourselves to them and embrace them, because only then will we trust ourselves and feel safe. Our closest, longest and most intimate relationship is the one we have with ourselves. By becoming vulnerable to yourself you move towards being vulnerable in your relationships and accept the vulnerability of the ones you love with deep compassion. If vulnerability is rejected it separates people no matter how much love there is because you accept the person as they are without expecting them to fulfil your fears.

Madeleine Marie
[email protected]
Love and Relationship Coach