The Fear of Intimacy
The fear of intimacy is debilitating and emotionally crippling and while it is not built into us from the start, it is one’s stoic attempt to manage in the present the heartbreak of the past.
In a sense, it is not a fear of intimacy, after all, intimacy also includes being cared for and loved, and nobody is properly fearful of these things. Rather, it is a fear of the inextricable other side of intimacy: exposing oneself to another and allowing them to traverse, unsupervised, the emotional topography of our hearts, with no promise they will treat the gardens with care and consideration.
We are not born with this fear. It is a (quite reasonable) conditioned response based upon previous circumstances. Perhaps a parent packed up their things one day and never returned, perhaps a partner cheated, perhaps a dark secret confided to in a friend was used as ammunition for bullying in the schoolyard. Sources for this fear are many, but they coalesce around a single point: betrayal. With betrayal, one learns to hold back, wall off, and close up as the only means to defend against future hurts with any certainty.
This may be fine so long as we remain alone enough, taking refuge in our inner world, and receiving comfort from the fact that although we will never feel another’s love, we are protected from ever being hurt.
The fear of intimacy results in behaviours that are – perhaps unknown to those who do it – seriously self-sabotaging. Having been let down in the past, those fearful of intimacy construct walls of emotional obscurantism. ‘Nobody will breach these walls and assault my heart again’. Lacking a history of genuine and reliable love (as those fearful of intimacy often do), they do not recognise it when it arrives, and are drawn to undermine it, if only to prove to themselves that the love was not genuine or reliable in the first place.
To their credit, these tortured souls understand the inherent ambiguity of existence. Nothing is promised in advance. People may accept us as a flower, or throw us away like a weed. There is no way of divining the future. As such, they have made a choice (which we may agree or disagree with) that the candle is not worth the wick, and have declined the invitation for intimacy, if only to protect themselves from its more disastrous potentialities.
Those fearful of intimacy should not be berated for being cold, distant, or seeming unloving. Well, we could berate them, but that would only draw them further into themselves. What they need is the same thing that we all need, just perhaps with a gentler touch. They need to be shown a love that is steadfast and reliable, a compassion that is unwavering, and a tenderness that reflects the precariousness of their situation.
It requires a lot of courage (after many life lessons to do the opposite), to open up and let someone else in. That alone is an act of incredible bravery worthy of the highest honour in the pantheon of achievements in one’s life. When this courage is lacking, we can be there to provide the support and affection that was sorely missing earlier and help someone take the first tentative steps outside their personal citadel, and to reconnect with others.
Proper Candor 