I need hardly say that many of the herbal pills sold on the Internet are a complete con; in addition the genuine SSRIs that are available off-label in some countries for use as premature ejaculation “cures” have massive side-effects including nausea, headache, and withdrawal symptoms when the man stops taking them. It’s very clear from this that there is actually only one way to overcome premature ejaculation - and that’s for a man to train his body to respond more slowly to sexual stimulation, so that he doesn’t reach the “point of no return” (point of ejaculatory inevitability”) as quickly, meaning he can also stay below the point at which he will ejaculate for longer. This is the only way in which a man will be able to sustain intercourse for a longer period of time, possibly bringing his partner to orgasm in the process.

Overcoming premature ejaculation is not a difficult process but it does require some dedication and effort. Back in the 1950s, Masters and Johnson claimed 96% success rate for their squeeze technique although later researchers suggested that the true success rate is around 75%. The truth of the matter here is that the success rate for this particular PE cure depends entirely on the dedication of the couple to sustaining the techniques after the initial success has been achieved. Ongoing practice is required once a month or so for as long as the couple are sexually active. In this way a man and his partner can avoid premature ejaculation for as long as they choose to do so. It goes without saying that this in turn will reduce fear of intimacy for those men whose sexual dysfunction is predicated upon a fear of intimacy, a lack of trust, or any other dysfunction of attachment.

This terror can result in failed relationships and social exclusion. Sufferers experience feelings of isolation and loneliness, and an inability to connect with others.

The fear of intimacy has a number of causes. Experience of abuse or neglect tends to predispose a person to being afraid of allowing themselves to become vulnerable to a new relationship. The sufferer can inwardly fear abandonment which will bring about a guarded attitude, which will effectively prevent an intimate relationship.

People who are raised in families with little or no emotional intimacy are often afraid of establishing emotional contact with their spouses. The kind of family in which this occurs is often dysfunctional, with a background of alcoholism or some similar problem. In these families, intimacy is perceived as a threat to the unhealthy yet established behaviour operating within the system.

Fear of intimacy can also evolve from the embarrassment resulting from sexual abuse or early exposure to pornography.

The lack of intimacy will often result in individuals feeling lonely, unwanted, unloved, and emotionally deprived. In some cases, no meaningful relationship can take place, which can lead to emotional health problems such as depression and anxiety.

Sufferers are often self-centered or have low self-esteem or perhaps feelings of guilt. If left untreated, fear of intimacy can destroy any meaningful connections and lead to total isolation and loneliness.

The fear of intimacy is totally curable. Here are some of the methods you can use to solve the problem.

Always be genuine in your relationships. Always acknowledge your feelings and express them truthfully. If you feel angry or betrayed, or even annoyed, express your feelings openly. For example, you can use an expression like “I feel annoyed because I was expecting to see you there.” If you feel pleased or elated, express that too. You can say something like “I was delighted that you decided to come after all. I feel good when you are around.”

Instead of allowing fear of intimacy to ake charge of your life, step out and reveal your feelings. You may feel vulnerable or afraid at first but those fears will pass.

Learn to communicate about day to day affairs: you can learn intimacy by sharing your personal and everyday experiences. Also learn to discuss your experience of being betrayed in the past, and listen and sympathise with your partner’s experiences. If you do not have total mutual self-disclosure, then your relationship is unbalanced. One partner has opened up, while the other has hidden everything away.

Don’t play games, such as expecting your partner to read your mind or dropping hints instead of saying outright what you really mean. Talk about what’s going on in your life and how you feel and think. This way you build trust in your relationship, which helps you get over the problem. Don’t forget that, the longer your anxiety about intimacy continues, the worse it gets and the more difficult it is to conquer. So it is up to you to face up to the fear of intimacy and go out and get yourself a richer, more fulfilling life.

So fear of intimacy is basically fear of being emotionally close to another person, with the fear of being physically close often mixed in as well. (Scientifically, for what it’s worth, it’s defined as ”the inhibited ability of a man or woman, because of anxiety, to reciprocate feelings of personal significance with another man or woman who is highly appreciated or valued”.)

Fear of intimacy is often caused by past traumas, including sexual, emotional or physical abuse. As a result, fear of intimacy is also often associated with a fear of being touched.

Men and women with the fear of intimacy are – obviously – anxious or afraid of intimate relationships. They may believe, either consciously or unconsciously, that they do not deserve love or emotional support from other people. The three defining features of this type of fear or phobia (a word which just means a very intense fear) are:

• a lowered willingness to communicate personal information,
• uncertainty about feelings when personal information is exchanged,
• a sense of vulnerability around the person with whom intimacy might be possible.

Emotionally confident and secure individuals feel themselves to be lovable and worthy, and feel more or less comfortable with intimacy - and indeed with being alone, too.  By contrast, men and women with a fear of intimacy lack some of the sense of self-worth which would allow them to seek out connection with others; they may, however, see other people very positively and want their love and acceptance. They somehow can’t accept it, though. And a man or woman who is fearful around people may lack a sense of their own ”lovability”; as a result they might tend to avoid others because they fear rejection. Trust is, unsurrisingly, a big issue for people who fear intimacy.

If you have a fear of intimacy, you may well also have little confidence about the dependability of other people and a high level of fear about abandonment. It’s also common for fear of intimacy to be accompanied by a sense of discomfort with closeness.  

Fear of Intimacy And Relationships

One study found that women with depression have much more obvious fear of intimacy, and interestingly, that the intensity of a woman’s fear of intimacy is a reliable indicator of the longevity of a couple’s relationship: in other words, the more intense a woman’s fear of intimacy, the shorter, on average, a couple’s relationship. This is probably the best reason of all to deal with your fear of intimacy (and there’s no reason to think that men are any different in this respect).

Another study showed that peple who fear intimacy generally think there is less intimacy in their dating relationships than their partner – it’s almost as if they can’t face the idea of being intimate. Sadly, well-meaning but fearful parents can have a massive impact on our confidence as adults: people who, as children, are taught not to trust strangers always almost always have a greater fear of intimacy and report feeling more lonely in adulthood than people who were not taught to distrust strangers when they were young.

Child abuse is a major factor in the development of fear of intimacy – and that’s true for all kinds of abuse during childhood. When people who were abused as children grow up, they tend to be anxious about allowing others to see them as they really are, and have a lot of fear about being revictimized if they trust others (which is, of course, what happened when they were growing up). As a result, intimacy can feel very frightening, because to feel close to another person reminds a woman or man that trusting someone may lead to ”being taken advantage of”.

As a child, you wouldn’t have seen yourself as really separate from your family: that’s not how children think. As a child, you just don’t know that you have worth as an individual in your own right. Instead, you think that your parents’ behavior towards you reflects your worth. When that behavior is not always positive, you pick up messages about yourself that become the reality of who you think you are. And a big part of this is how much you think you’re worthy of love. And another, of course, is your belief about much people want to love you.

Since knowing you are lovable is a big part of being comfortable with intimacy, it’s not hard to see why fear of intimacy is such a big problem for so many people. Intimacy is about allowing someone else to see you as you are, about sharing who you are with another person. And sharing yourself in this way can be a problem if you deeply feel you are somehow unworthy, or defective, or unlovable because of your childhood emotional trauma.

What happens in adulthood is that you find a way of being in the world which is designed to protect you from being abandoned, rejected, or betrayed once again because of what you see as your unworthy, shameful being. Of course, to some degree we all grow up with negative messages. And because society doesn’t really provide us with ways to heal, or healthy role models who can teach us how to overcome our fears and beliefs about ourselves, our emotional wounding in early childhood makes us feel that something is wrong with who we are (this is called toxic shame).

Most families reinforce the wounds by teaching children in ways both spoken and unspoken to “keep up appearances”, or not to let others see you as you really are. So it’s not hard to see where a fear of intimacy can come from! And of course, as long as you continue to react, albeit unconsciously, to the emotional wounds of your childhood, and the conclusions you drew about yourself from the behavior of those around you, you’ll keep on repeating the same old behavior patterns as an adult. You’ll keep getting involved with people who turn out to be unavailable (after all, what better way to protect yourself from the fear of intimacy than to hook up with someone who isn’t ever going to be emotionally available to you?). You’ll keep setting yourself up to be abandoned, rejected or betrayed (after all, that’s what you’ve been taught, or learned, that life will always give you).

And you’ll carry on looking for love in all the wrong places, and searching it out in all the wrong faces. In view of this, is it any surprise that so many people have a fear of intimacy?