Intimacy ( How it really affects a Relationship)

Intimacy has been defined as a close, familiar and usually affectionate or loving personal relationship with another person or group ( Dictionary.com). This is the bond or closeness of people to each other. Often than not, intimacy can increase or decrease over time. Emotional intimacy is a double edged sword which brings you joy but it also makes you clingy.

Being intimate or a cold fish has its roots from our childhood. It rooted on how we are brought up by our parents or the environment and society that we grew up in. Let’s look at two different scenarios of a couple named Mathew and Jenny. Jenny is the clingy one in this relationship; she is warm and talkative while Mathew is cold and distant. They often go into stupid fights verbally or through texts. It is easy for us to judge the situation where in we point fingers on Jenny that she has to be blamed.

But many of us weren’t so lucky in childhood, and the models of attachment we’ve been given end up dominant towards our romantic roosts, often despite our conscious desires, unless we work actively to understand them. The mental images of relationships we acquire in childhood inform our unconscious patterns of behavior, getting in the way of satisfying connections unless we do the work of understanding and disarming them:

Depending on the circumstances of the individual household, insecurely attached children adapt in different ways. Absent a reliable and stable source of caring and attunement, some people will become anxiously attached—worrying and clinging by turns, plagued by feelings of not being good enough, on the lookout for signals that things are about to go south so that they can protect themselves. Others distance themselves from the uncaring caretaker in an effort to minimize the hurt; these are the “avoidantly attached.” They can be in relationships but stay walled-off or separate in important ways; their behaviors are often confusing to their partners because even though they look as if they’re “in” the relationship, in a real sense they’re not. Large parts of them are disengaged and off-limits. They prize their independence and self-sufficiency.

Keep in mind that these categories—anxious and avoidant—are broadly drawn and that humans are more nuanced and complicated than the labels might suggest. It’s entirely possible for someone to be clingy and needy in close relationships and relatively self-sufficient and successful in career endeavors. Similarly, an avoidant in intimate settings may do well in others that don’t make the same demands on him or her, or wake the sleeping dogs of childhood, such as work environments.

Needless to say, should these two types pair up—one intent on obliterating all boundaries and the other committed to putting them in place—a classic but toxic pattern of confrontation often emerges: demand/withdraw. In this scenario, the partner making the demand evokes a response of withdrawal or stonewalling from the other, putting the couple on an ever-turning carousel. Of course, if an anxious or avoidant is paired with a securely-based individual, the same pattern can also emerge.

If your partner has complained that you’re too clingy or distant, or it’s an observation you’ve heard from others, it’s important for you to consider whether the appraisal is correct. Confronting your own patterns of behavior isn’t always easy, but it will help you achieve what you want—a relationship with the right balance of interdependence and autonomy. The key is to disarm the automatic nature of your responses.