When holidays bring intimacy anxiety for couples

The holiday season can be a difficult time for couples. There’s the excitement of time away from work and responsibilities, of being in a new setting, and of better weather. However, alongside this, we often find anxieties about having more time together with fewer distractions. 

For some couples, holidays can bring concerns about sex and intimacy to the surface. Alone and face to face with each other, there’s no hiding place from both the intimacy itself and the fear of it.

Using a fictionalised couple, I will highlight how this issue can be understood by a couple's therapist and addressed in therapy.

Fear of intimacy in couples: a case study

Harry and Kelly have been looking forward to their holiday in Greece, but Kelly is anxious about Harry’s expectations. He’s been making a lot of comments about sex and looking forward to being alone together, and Kelly is worried that she won’t be able to live up to his expectations.

She has a history of difficult relationships and struggles to trust Harry. This sometimes means that she closes off to him emotionally and physically, leaving him feeling unwanted and resentful. Kelly is worried that Harry might run off with someone else because she’s been cheated on before, but her withdrawal behaviour may unwittingly create further distance between them and reinforce her fears.

It can be the case that people bring about the very thing they fear will happen by allowing that fear to direct their behaviour. This, in turn, leads to a repetition of their personal history and confirms that people will always do the very thing they imagine will be done to them. Kelly’s dad had a string of affairs when she was young, and like many people, she carries these childhood experiences into her adult relationships.

Harry had a mother who he describes as withdrawn and emotionally unavailable, and so unconsciously, he may have been drawn to someone who reflects aspects of his own difficult past, craving love and intimacy from an unavailable woman.

Harry often expresses frustration about Kelly’s lack of affection and sexual desire, but on some level, it may also feel familiar to him because, as much as he craves intimacy, he might not know what to do in a relationship with someone who’s not withholding. Kelly is familiar to him in this way, and if she were to change towards him, he might have to face some difficult feelings about his past.

In this scenario, the summer holiday is forcing them both into a situation where they’ll be face-to-face with each other and their anxieties about intimacy. Helping them face up to these and talk to each other about them is the first step toward changing recurring patterns and opening up to new experiences.

This means that, for Kelly, learning to trust and address the feelings associated with her past is necessary, while Harry, instead of blaming Kelly for being unavailable, must accept that he is also anxious about intimacy.

How couples therapy can help

In couples therapy, it is important to see the presenting issue, in this case, fear of intimacy, alongside the underlying history of each person in the couple. It’s rarely the case that one person is the problem, although this is often how things are presented in early sessions; in this case, Kelly.

Sometimes, couples unconsciously pick each other because they might be looking to replay experiences from their early lives. These relationship blueprints can be hard to break because they often become deeply ingrained, and we will do anything to prove that our view of the world is the right one, particularly in our relationships with our partners.

In therapy, couples become aware of their patterns and how they show up in their relationship, and find ways to change the story and the outcome each expects. It can be helpful to talk openly about hopes and fears, to let each other know how previous experiences have hurt them and to share feelings together in the safety of the therapy room, with an experienced practitioner. This can build trust and intimacy, laying the foundation for greater honesty and openness in the relationship.

Other exercises used to establish a connection between a couple can be helpful, without necessarily leading to sex, creating more safety and security in a gradual way. These might involve simply looking at each other without speaking and noticing the feelings that come up in each person. Alternatively, they might just hold hands and take turns speaking without replying, really listening and taking their partner in as fully as possible. Opening the heart generally leads to opening the body.

The summer holidays can be a pressurised time for some couples for the reasons described, and can be an entry point into therapy for couples like Harry and Kelly. While couples therapy means risking being vulnerable together, working through past hurts can lead to better connections in the present.