What to Do When You Have Intimacy Issues

The heart of intimacy is allowing ourselves to be known by others, but intimacy issues can block this kind of joy in our lives. We all want our intimate selves to be met with support, empathy, and welcome as opposed to rejection and judgment.

There are few pains one can experience in life that dig deeper than the feeling of being isolated from others and feeling like you don’t exist in the minds and lives of others. As relational creatures made in the image of a relational God, being isolated from other people hits home more than many other negative experiences we can go through.

All of us carry the desire not only to be seen, but also to be known, heard, loved, and cherished. We want to be with people with whom we have a sense of safety and of being welcomed.

When we feel that connection with someone that allows us to open ourselves to them and invites them into our lives, it’s a huge risk to put ourselves out there without necessarily knowing how they will react to us. But to build trust, we need to take baby steps of faith. When that trust is rewarded and we feel known, heard, loved, and welcomed, that sets the stage for a deeper connection and more self-disclosure.

Different types of intimacy issues

There are different ways to be intimate with another person. What has been described above is emotional intimacy. When the word “intimacy” is used, the first idea that comes to the minds of many is physical intimacy. Physical or sexual intimacy is a form of intimacy in that we are disclosing ourselves, our bodies, and our desires. We are also identifying ourselves with the other person.

Apart from sex, physical intimacy also takes the form of hugging, holding hands, cuddling, kissing, or even a gesture as simple as patting or rubbing someone on the back. Physical intimacy isn’t limited to sexual intimacy – you can be physically intimate with members of your family and friends because intimacy is a broad category that includes many actions and situations.

Physical intimacy is often an extension of our emotional state. God created us to have emotions, minds, spirits, and bodies. Our bodies can be used quite effectively to express what we are feeling and thinking, as well you hug a friend who has just experienced a loss.

Through that hug, you are communicating sympathy and your sadness, but also the desire to comfort them and show them you are there with them in their pain. Physical intimacies such as sex were intended to communicate our giving of ourselves to another person, a deep self-disclosure not meant to be shared with others, hence:

The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.’ That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame. – Genesis 2:23-25, NIV

There is also a reminder in 1 Corinthians 7 that a husband and wife belong to each other, and there is no room for a third person in that intimate relationship.

There can be different types of physical intimacy issues, including finding it hard to express affection physically. This can range from not liking it when people touch you or not liking to touch others, to having struggles with sexual intimacy due to impotence or because an affair in the relationship makes it difficult to give yourselves to each other without reservation.

With emotional intimacy, one may have trouble letting other people inside their inner worlds, or they may not know how to handle the emotions and stories of others.

What causes intimacy issues?

There are many different reasons why physical intimacy or emotional intimacy can be problematic. Some of the reasons for these intimacy issues include:

Being hurt by people When people hurt you and breach your trust, it can become hard to open yourself up to others. In the situation of a marriage, for example, an affair can disrupt both emotional and physical intimacy because of the shattering of trust implied by the affair. If your spouse tells other people things you shared in confidence, that can make trusting them difficult.

Conflict and anger Emotional and physical intimacy require vulnerability and openness to the other person. One is hardly going to be vulnerable with someone they think may use your private information to hurt you further by weaponizing it. When conflict and anger abound, it’s unlikely that we are feeling seen and cherished, nor does it feel safe to share ourselves.

Not making time to connect Trust and a sense of comfort with someone take time to cultivate. Being busy can undermine whatever connection we may have or desire to create with others. If we don’t make time to connect and create space for intimacy, it’s unlikely to happen automatically.

Learned behavior Sometimes, it’s not that we’ve been hurt or that anything has gone wrong in any particular relationship, but we may have intimacy issues because it’s what we know and have learned. If having a stiff upper lip is part of your heritage or what you learned is proper, it may be hard for you to be vulnerable with other people.

You may not like PDA (public displays of affection), for instance, because it feels inappropriate, whether for cultural or other reasons. If you’re in a romantic relationship where your partner desires PDA, that can cause problems in the relationship. Perhaps you want to be vulnerable and entrust yourself to others and let them into your world, but you simply don’t know how to be vulnerable because you never learned how.

You just don’t care, or they don’t care When you don’t care about other people, and they don’t care about you, that takes away a large part of the incentive to be vulnerable with someone else. Why would you throw your proverbial pearls before swine who will trample them underfoot (Matt. 7:6)?

When you sense that the other person doesn’t care, you won’t open yourself up to them; the opposite is true because if people sense you don’t care about them, they won’t open themselves up to you either.

Inability. With physical/sexual intimacy, it might be the case that you can’t engage for several reasons, such as the fact that perhaps you’ve been traumatized sexually in one way or another, whether through experiencing sexual assault or childhood abuse. Or perhaps due to stress, medication, and so on, you are incapacitated, or you just don’t desire sex.

Getting Closer – Addressing And Embracing Intimacy

To address intimacy issues, it’s important to first recognize that you have intimacy issues. This is something you can realize on your own, or you may come to see it through your relationships and interactions with others. We may have gone through hurt, or perhaps never quite learned how to open ourselves to others. But without intimacy, our relationships are missing something important, and we are depriving ourselves of an enriching experience of others and ourselves.

Seeing intimacy as a good thing The first steps are to recognize that we have an issue and to see intimacy with others as the good thing that it can be. Intimacy can be scary, whether that’s from the perspective of never having done it before or having done it and been burned once or twice, but it is still a good thing worth pursuing.

Vulnerability is scary because we fear what happens if things don’t work out. But we should look at the other side of the equation – what good can come of it if it DOES work out? Nothing is as satisfying as a relationship in which we are known, welcomed, loved, and kept accountable.

Being safe for others To engender intimacy in our relationships, we need to be safe enough for people to be vulnerable with us. That means being able to keep confidences, but it also means being an effective and empathetic listener who engenders trust because people know that when you listen, you’re hearing them. It’s hard to be able to listen without judging, and to give of yourself to others so that they experience you as a trustworthy person.

Allowing others in To cultivate intimacy, we need to be both willing and able to let other people into our inner worlds. That means we should open ourselves to the questions and gentle probing of others, and be capable of describing our inner landscape to others so they know how we are feeling and what we think.

You might desire to let people in, but it’s helpful to have the tools to allow that to happen, and one key tool is being able to name your thoughts and feelings to express them clearly.

Sometimes we need to forgive to overcome issues with intimacy Anger and conflict can stand in the way of intimacy, as does unforgiveness. To overcome this obstacle, taking the radical step to forgive the person who has hurt us is a necessary step to getting things back on track.

And even if you can’t get things back on track with that person, being able to forgive them and not get trapped in resentment will help you in your other relationships. After all, resentment can fester and infect other relationships that have little to do with the initial hurt.

Seek help All the above is probably easier said than done. Being vulnerable is not an easy thing. When we’re talking about addressing deep wells of pain, frustration, and the complex issues that trauma unleashes, it is wise to seek help from a professional.

Through meetings with a Christian counselor, you can address the issues that brought about any struggles you may have with intimacy. You will have a safe space to understand yourself and develop the tools you need to cultivate appropriate emotional and physical intimacy with others.