Masturbation Monday: 10 Signs You (or someone you are dating) Fear Intimacy

Do you think your fear of intimacy might be ruining your dating life? Do you keep finding yourself in relationships with people who are afraid of intimacy and commitment? If either of these applies to you, then you are going to want to listen in for the top 10 signs that you are someone you are dating is afraid of intimacy.
Stop ruining your chances at finding love or falling for the wrong person. These signs will help you navigate your next date!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:25

Do the sex. Welcome to Masturbation Monday with me, annette Benedetti, your host for Locker Room Talk and Chats. This is your invitation to join me for coffee in bed and a candid conversation about the masturbation practice I'm developing to support my mental, physical and emotional health and help manifest my dreams. Masturbation Monday is a guide to self-pleasure, better sex and using the power of the pussy to open new doors to a better life. Today's Masturbation Monday topic is 10 signs you are afraid of intimacy or dating someone who is. I often ask myself how did I get here? I'm in another healing era and still trying to figure out how to move forward in my dating and love life without repeating the mistakes of the past. I mean, what's the point of dating someone new if I haven't fixed past patterns right? Well, one thing I've discovered is that I, like so many other women, date people who are afraid of intimacy, and I crave deep intimacy when I'm in a partnership. Look, I love sex and orgasms and casual sex or friends with benefit. Sex can be fun, but it doesn't even come close to comparing to the type of sex you have when you are deeply connected with someone, and my masturbation practice has been a game changer for me these past couple of months, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit I'm starting to feel this deep yearning for a truly intimate connection with someone, but frankly, I don't even know if I'm capable of having one anymore, because I've recently started worrying that I've developed my own fear of intimacy after all of my experiences. Now this concern had me turning to the dating experts and research in an effort to figure out, first, if I'm truly developing a fear of intimacy so I can deal with it, and second, in the future I want to be able to identify if someone I'm considering dating has a fear of intimacy before I let myself deeply invest in them. So if you think you might have a fear of intimacy that's holding you back from having the type of relationship or sex you want, grab your coffee and get ready for the top 10 expert-backed signs that you're afraid of intimacy. I'm not going to lie. Some of them surprised me, so let's get ready to talk about intimacy. I'm not going to lie. Some of them surprised me, so let's get ready to talk about intimacy Cheers. Okay, let's just dive right into what the sex and relationship therapists are saying are the top 10 signs you have a fear of intimacy that is holding you back from having good relationships and great sex.

Speaker 1: 3:08

Number one you prioritize everything except for your relationship. You are a hard worker, you work all of the time. You are the best employee because you've got to bring home the money. You are the best mom or dad, and your kids always come first, no matter what, and you are committed to all of these extracurricular activities. You volunteer, you are a part of a sports league and your partner needs to understand that, that all of those things come first, that those things take priority, and that in their free time from all of those other things, then they have space for a relationship. And if you ask for more, then you are asking for them to stop being a good dad or mom, for them to stop being a good employee, for them to ditch out on their prior commitments. You see where I'm going with this. Does this sound familiar to you? Do you do this? Have you been with someone who does this? Now, if you're in relationship with this person, you're like well, I'd be an asshole if I asked them to take time away from their kids or time away from work or from you know, working in the soup kitchen, just because I need more connection just because I need more intimacy. It's such an effective strategy to hold love at bay.

Speaker 1: 4:36

Number two you are a perfectionist. You do everything perfectly and you want everything done just so. Your life is regimented, you are disciplined and you need a partner who can live up to that. Your constant need for everything to be flawless spills over into your relationship, and so that person that you found to be perfect when you started dating them very quickly becomes imperfect and you start nitpicking them, you start seeing flaw in their actions and it creates dissatisfaction in a relationship. Because who can open up to someone who's picking them apart and telling them how they should be doing things better or how they're not doing things well enough? Number three you sabotage relationships. This one, I felt, was just obvious, but then I thought to myself well, how would somebody even know if they're sabotaging a relationship? Because I think most people don't know when they are sabotaging a relationship. So here are some things people do to sabotage relationships Emotional withdrawal from the relationship so a person who becomes distant, aloof and creates sort of this feeling of disconnection and leaves their partner feeling isolated and dissatisfied.

Speaker 1: 5:58

Manipulation tactics, guilt, tripping, gaslighting or playing mind games to control and undermine their partner's feelings and emotions. Infidelity Now this one is interesting because well, yes, it could be cheating. Emotional infidelity really ranks high on sabotaging behaviors. Meaning you are talking to someone else about your relationship in sort of unkind ways, telling them things that your partner wouldn't be comfortable with, creating this emotional bond with someone else in place of creating that bond with your partner, constantly criticizing your partner or belittling their actions or their self-esteem or things they're excited about. I think we call that negging in the dating world. Lack of communication. They want to communicate. No, you're not going to do it. So self-sabotaging, intentionally undermining the relationship or sabotaging opportunities for growth and happiness due to your own fears. Refusal to compromise no compromise. So either the person has to agree with you or that's it. No, go on the relationship. And stonewalling, completely shutting down, refusing to fix the problem, refusing to reach out and actually initiate fixing problems. So those are ways that people sabotage their relationship because they are afraid of intimacy.

Speaker 1: 7:31

Number three you have a history of short relationships and I will say this is a red flag for me right off the bat. If I'm going to be dating someone at my age and they have never had a long-term relationship. It's a red flag. But if you are over the age of 35 and dating over the age of 40 and dating, you're likely dating someone who's come out of a divorce. So how does this apply in those situations? Well, you look at their dating history since their divorce and you can even ask them about their dating behavior prior to whatever their marriage was. But even more helpful, according to the experts, you can look at their friendships. So even in their friendships, they don't tend to have really deep friendships. They have acquaintances, but not like really deep bonds with other people. And so there's another way to kind of look at like their ability to connect or your own ability to connect, because this is something that you do. Look at your friendship group around you, look at your dating patterns. If you are out of a marriage, start looking at what happened before and now.

Speaker 1: 8:44

How are you treating dating? Number five is you have a difficulty expressing feelings, and it's not just expressing feelings. You have a hard time accessing your feelings and then articulating them to someone else, which hinders your ability to communicate with your partner and connect with your partner. Now, this can stem sometimes just simply from lack of self-awareness, which is frustrating as hell, because we should all be working on being more self-aware, and it also can result from childhood trauma. So how does this manifest? How can you tell if you're doing it or your partner is doing it? First of all, you will feel uncomfortable when they're asking you about your feelings, and instead of telling them about your feelings, you will either resort to silence or really vague responses you keep them in the gray. So, likewise, you will either resort to silence or really vague responses you keep them in the gray. So, likewise, if you are trying to talk to someone about their feelings and they're being silent or vague, or skirting the conversation or trying to withdraw from it, it's a good sign that they have a fear of intimacy.

Speaker 1: 9:55

Number six you prefer rejection or loss to vulnerability. Now, you may not know that this is what you're doing, but you have basically decided from the beginning that it's not going to work out. On some level, you're like something's going to go wrong with this, something is wrong with this, and so, instead of allowing yourself to be vulnerable, allowing yourself to love and let go and be present and really go all in on the relationship, you start using it as a defense mechanism to protect yourself and the pain of losing a partner that you love. So this is where you start doing the sabotaging behaviors. This is where you start pulling away. This is where you start doing things to destroy the relationship from the inside out.

Speaker 1: 10:42

Number seven you nitpick and fault find in your partners. So you actively seek out issues with your partner and often resort to nitpicking over trivial matters as a way to create distance. This tendency intensifies as the relationship deepens, serving as a defense mechanism against vulnerability. Consequently, you convince yourself that you are discontent with the minor aspects of your partner, attributing blame to insignificant details like their hairstyle or eating habits, or how they clean or what kind of TV shows they like to watch stuff like that and you use those little flaws as a reason to be reluctant to engage emotionally with them and to put time and effort into the relationship.

Speaker 1: 11:34

Sign number eight you avoid commitment. You constantly are expressing your hesitation or reluctance when it comes to making future plans or commitments. You avoid discussions about exclusivity or long-term goals, and this can happen at any point in a relationship where there would be movement and growth. Basically, when it comes to one of those growth moments, you avoid having the conversation, you pull back or you abandon. Number nine you overemphasize and hyper-focus on physical intimacy. This one kind of got me. I take this one a little bit personally. Basically, people who are afraid of emotional intimacy rely heavily on physical closeness as a means of connection. While you might demonstrate comfort and enthusiasm for sex and cuddling and kissing, you struggle to maintain emotional intimacy in a relationship. In fact, if you are fixated on physical intimacy and sex, you may be using it as a substitute for emotional connection. It's a way to distract from deeper emotional issues and to distract from deeper emotional issues and being truly vulnerable with somebody.

Speaker 1: 12:47

Number 10, our final one you are secretive about your true feelings. Now, this could be that you are secretive about having big feelings, feelings of love, where you downplay them and hide them. Or it could be that you're upset about something or you want something different in order for your needs to get met. But instead of verbalizing them and being clear about them, you are quiet and engage in passive, aggressive behavior. So passive, aggressive behavior, and basically some of the reasons why people are secretive about things, who are afraid of intimacy, is they are afraid that if they verbalize them, they won't be able to manage expectations. Someone will want more from them and they're ready to give. They want expectations to stay low and manageable, and the result of this, when this happens in a relationship that is allowed to go on and on, is that you can end up being with someone for a very long time and still feel like you are strangers, at least in some capacity, because your intimacy is basically superficial. How sad. Well, guys, that's it. Those are the 10 top signs that you, or someone you are dating, is afraid of intimacy.

Speaker 1: 14:13

I'm curious to hear what you think about these 10 signs. Do they resonate with you? Do you disagree with them? Are you clearly described by one of them? But insist that you are emotionally available? Because I'll tell you what. Right now, you are emotionally available because I'll tell you what. Right now, women, especially, are not dating men because men aren't doing the work they need to do to be able to emotionally connect with women and be deeply connected, have and forge truly intimate relationships. Obviously, the next step to this is discovering what to do now that you know that you're afraid of intimacy, how to heal that so that you can have the kind of relationship and sex that you want and deserve. I will be getting an expert in to have that conversation. So send me your questions, your comments and your thoughts to Annette A-N-N-E-T-T-E at sheexploreslifecom. So until next time, guys. Cheers, I'll see you in the locker room. Ring loop.