>> Well, you know, fear is very easily triggered
when you get close to someone.
The reason is actually pretty simple because when you get intimate, or
when you get close to someone, you're more exposed.
You're showing more of yourself, and to be very honest, most people,
majority of people, are not 100% wholly comfortable with who they are.
We all have, like you know, unpleasant history, we all have our sort of like dark side,
things that we ourselves do not even accept.
That can be like trauma, or
they are like things that we have done before that we are not proud of.
So, when we are getting close, and these are going to be disclosed.
Some people will feel very anxious.
Like would this person accept this part of me?
So, you can see that even couples who have been together for
a long time, they're still keeping certain things secret.
They're not telling each other.
It can be like something that is really silly like, you know,
some insensitive thing that you did as a child, as a teenager that you just
did not feel proud of, but you do not want your partner to know, right?
But then, when you get closer and closer.
It becomes increasing difficult for you to sort of like not share that,
because you also want to be understood and taken as who you really are.
So I think as people get closer, right, this fear can
be triggered because of these like sense of being exposed, and feeling vulnerable.
This is what psychologists have been talking about, like I don't know, for almost like 70 or
80 years now, about this Approach-Avoidance Conflict.
On the one hand, we want to get close while we are approaching, but
as we get up to a certain point, the discomfort increases and
we want to avoid, so there is tendency to either stop or withdraw.
Fortunately some people would be able to get at the balance point, where it's just
comfortable, but some people can actually be experiencing this tension all the time, you know,
like wanting to get closer, but also wanting to protect oneself and stay away.
It can be pretty tormenting for people to be caught in a situation like this.
And it is also not uncommon for people to feel such discomfort
that you just quit and say okay, like, I'm out of here, it's too much.
So this fear of intimacy, I think it's pretty easily
understandable and well, I just want to say
that if you're afraid of getting closer, it doesn't mean that you're sick.
It doesn't mean that you have a huge problem.
I just want to say that.
And maybe it's just the human thing, like many people actually have that.