Men and women are wired for intimacy at birth, but some are conditioned to reject it. If you are insecurely attached, you probably didn’t experience a lot of true intimacy as a child so you learned to see the world as an emotionally unsafe place. You may have learned that love is not easily shown or given; that it’s conditional upon behavior; that it’s inconsistent. As a result, intimacy as an adult has the same limitations—regardless of gender. Fear of engulfment or abandonment wreak havoc on intimacy to create distance, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Intimacy is built by stepping toward those fears, not away from them.

Some people believe being emotionally distant is just how they are. False. We are ALL wired for connection, and distancing yourself from another person is a choice. Until you open yourself up to intimacy, you’ll never fully align or bond with your partner. And no, intimacy does not just happen in the bedroom. It doesn’t appear in certain moments and then vanishes. It comes and stays. If you currently lack intimacy in your relationships and believe it’s the other person who can’t get close… look at what YOU are doing to block it. Again, intimacy isn’t a gender issue or the responsibility of one person. It’s a choice you get to make, and the act of doing it is what actually creates it.