The Importance of Addressing Women’s Intimacy Issues
While rom-coms and Hallmark movies are welcome slices of rosy escapism from time to time, it doesn’t take long to realize how the storylines conveniently gloss over the complexities and potential intimacy issues involved with being in a healthy relationship.
When the couple we’re rooting for is playfully heaving snowballs at each other while planning the local fundraiser to ensure a historic building doesn’t become a Starbucks, there’s never any doubt the two attractive leads will live happily ever after, right?
If anything, it’s considered a given, even if they’ve never bothered to discuss past hurts, painful breakups, intimacy issues, or what makes for a true, lasting emotional connection.
Of course, real, messy, warts-and-all life outside the protected confines of meet-cutes, first kisses, and Instagram-friendly dates, is another story. What happens if you and your partner experience a nasty breakup? What if unaddressed intimacy issues cause you to become clingy, even when your partner has demonstrated red-flag behavior? What is it about romantic relationships that compel so many women to let down their guard?
Understanding Women’s Intimacy Issues
If you struggle to maintain healthy intimacy in relationships, you aren’t alone. Romantic relationships are hard, and in the end, many of them don’t work out. But there is a difference between everyday relationship challenges and true intimacy disorders. It’s important to be able to distinguish the two and know when you need to address a deeper problem. Intimacy issues are commonly rooted in emotional trauma and childhood relational trauma, and they are often connected to disorders like depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. Therefore, you shouldn’t expect them to resolve on their own.
Common intimacy disorders include:
- Love addiction
- Love avoidance
- Sex addiction
- Internet sex addiction
- Pornography addiction
- Sexual trauma
- Sexual compulsion
- Sexual anorexia
Intimacy issues are commonly rooted in emotional trauma and childhood relational trauma, and they are often connected to disorders like depression, anxiety, and substance abuse.
Whether you suffer from a disorder that causes you to seek out sexual connection or avoid it, each can hinder your ability to maintain healthy romantic relationships. Other challenges women face in relationships include fear of abandonment, fear of intimacy, low self-esteem, and insecure attachment.
Unfortunately, communicating about intimacy is difficult even in the healthiest of relationships, so expressing intimacy concerns to your partner or your doctor may be easier said than done. Hopefully, gaining a better personal understanding of your intimacy issues will empower you to discuss them openly and get the help you need to address them.
How Emotional Connection Is Wired
To properly address women’s intimacy issues, it’s important to first understand the psychological aspects of women’s intimacy. Research shared by LiveScience.com suggests brain circuitry plays a larger role than we may have considered in emotional connection. There’s biological evidence that helps explain why it’s difficult to move on from your lost love. For example, when men and women were shown pictures of their exes, the region of the brain responsible for feelings of attachment, control of emotions, physical pain and distress, and addiction cravings was activated.
This discovery may explain why, in some cases, people will resort to more extreme behaviors, including stalking, self-harm, and even homicide after a relationship ends. Some experts even liken romantic love to an addiction. When things are going well, it’s wonderful and consuming in the best way. But when they’re not, it can be as difficult to kick as any other addiction. This is a situation where a support group can be an integral part of the healing process.
It’s been shown that talking about the grief associated with a failed relationship and working toward peace and closure — rather than sinking into despair — can be healthier for the brain and its self-wiring.
Relationships That Are Set Up to Fail
Losing the one we love is, hands down, one of the most emotionally taxing and difficult parts of the human experience. And for some, it causes a very specific anxiety that makes the idea of a lost or ended relationship particularly harrowing.
Whether wittingly or unwittingly, those who struggle with abandonment issues can live in such fear of losing someone that they behave in a way that actually pushes people to leave. According to Healthline.com, this phenomenon is a self-protective mechanism that provides an element of control. They aren’t surprised by the loss when it happens because they helped to orchestrate it.
While guarding your heart can be a good thing, as you don’t want to give it too freely or quickly to someone undeserving, not having a clear understanding of abandonment issues can hinder healthy relationships for women in many ways. Some examples include:
- Inhibiting the development of healthy bonds
- Sabotaging promising connections before they can grow by behaving irrationally
- Leapfrogging from person to person, making shallow connections the norm
- Becoming needy and requiring constant reassurance from your partner
- Staying in a bad relationship to avoid being alone or having to start over
- Codependency
Fear and Self-Perception’s Impact on Intimacy
A fear of intimacy — and the negative attitudes that often result — can be real relationship killers long before two people meet, according to findings from PsychAlive.org.
A fear of intimacy — and the negative attitudes that often result — can be real relationship killers long before two people meet.
This subconscious fear of closeness can be attributed to a number of causes. Maybe it’s not trusting the entire institution because of something that happened to you, a friend, or a close family member. Or maybe you find the dream of a relationship sufficient because the pain of rejection never factors into the equation. For many, it cycles back to how we feel about ourselves. If you lack worth in your own eyes, how can your partner possibly feel differently?
Whatever is perceived as unworthy, unlovable, or unacceptable about someone as far back as childhood plays a big role in female sexual health and relationship intimacy for women. To compensate for these negative feelings, many will find ways to not fully invest, including:
- Pushing aside compliments or affection that contrasts with personal beliefs
- Withholding affection and/or losing sexual interest
- Feeling guarded in what you share with your partner
- Accusing your partner of being interested in someone else with no proof
- Becoming overly critical of your partner
Experts in the field suggest that learning skills related to emotional intimacy in women is needed at a young age. While men are often encouraged to “find themselves” early in life, women tend to have to wait until later to do this. Which is exactly why addressing women’s intimacy issues and the impact of intimacy issues on relationships has never been more important or timely.
Coping with Intimacy Issues
Intimacy challenges for women shouldn’t be brushed aside or normalized — female sexual dysfunction and emotional trauma, whatever it looks like, should be taken seriously and addressed properly.
The first step in addressing these issues is empowering women to take their relational and sexual needs into their own hands. Sexual empowerment for women is multifaceted; it should include greater focus on women’s sexual well-being, open communication about the importance of women’s sexual satisfaction, and a better understanding of the connection between women’s reproductive health and intimacy.
If you care about your reproductive health, you should care about your sexual well-being and the health of your intimate relationships. Reproductive health is not just physical; it includes feeling safe and empowered in the relationships where you will produce and raise children. The more you enjoy healthy sexual and intimate relationships, the more likely you are to enjoy overall reproductive health.
If you are facing intimacy challenges of any kind, you don’t have to overcome them on your own. A therapist who is trained to address issues related to intimacy and sexuality can help you get to the underlying causes of your problems and begin the healing process.
In addition to addressing the root of your intimacy issues, therapy can equip you with the tools you need to set healthy boundaries in relationships and communicate openly with your partner about your sexual and emotional needs. Armed with self-knowledge and relational tools, you’ll be empowered to work toward healthier, more fulfilling, life-giving romantic relationships.
Begin Healing Today
Are you struggling to maintain healthy relationships and strong emotional connection because of past trauma, fear of abandonment, or fear of intimacy? Help is available for overcoming intimacy issues at The Meadows Outpatient Center. Guided by our team of licensed relationship experts, we can help with convenient, specialized treatment with our women’s intimacy groups in locations across the country. Reach out to learn more and begin your journey to healing today.
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