Why Intimacy Is Threatening

Source: Mushi, from Wikimedia Commons

I’ve been running a group for couples for nearly 20 years now and in a recent session this question came up: How do you stay connected to your partner when you have a household to run and children to raise? This is a common issue and something the group has grappled with many times over the years.

Yes, there are a lot of things that can limit intimacy in long-term couples, particularly when children are involved. There’s exhaustion, there’s having insatiable demands on your time and emotional energy, there’s routine, and there’s the very unsexy reality of being partners in a non-profit enterprise—your family home.

But in this recent group, I challenged them with what I think is an equally compelling issue, something that laps around the corners of all these reasons. Intimacy is threatening. We say we want it but we deploy any number of shenanigans to avoid it. Seen through this lens, focusing on the practicalities of life at the expense of vulnerability is as much a defensive strategy as it is a daily necessity. It has the added benefit of feeling morally necessary—the kids do need to eat after all, don’t they? We are let off the hook and not required to recognize how we are avoiding something we say we want, connection with our partner.

What makes intimacy threatening? Why do we come up with every excuse possible to avoid it? There is no one answer to these questions and your answer will be different perhaps from your partner’s. But the most common one I hear is: “I’m afraid to get hurt.” I’m sure that’s true, but let’s look at that for a moment. If you have to choose between a life half lived and one where there is a greater risk of hurt but also a greater chance for happiness, which would you choose?

Secondly, when you say you’re afraid to get hurt, just what hurt are you remembering? Most of us will flashback to childhood scenes of humiliation or teenage relationships where the pain cut especially deep. Yet you’re no longer that age; you’re no longer that defenseless. Further, do you think your partner wants to hurt you or won’t be able to hear your “ouch” in a compassionate way?

I’m not going to trot out a list of five suggestions for you to learn to interact with your partner in a more vulnerable way. I would rather focus on the truth that if you are like most of the couples who come into my office, you are working at least as hard to avoid intimacy as you are to achieve it. I think the best first step is for you to honestly own the ways you are afraid to be vulnerable, to recognize the defensive strategies you employ to protect yourself, and to ask yourself honestly: “What must it be like to live with me when I behave in this way?” There is no shame in being afraid to be vulnerable. But if your deeper self ultimately wants more connection and intimacy in your life, the first step toward getting it is to be accountable for the things you do to prevent its occurrence.