Fear of intimacy in an adult partnership, and what a high score cannot decide

Published 2025-12-07 · 7 min read · By LovePinnacle Editorial

Carol Descutner and Mark Thelen put a questionnaire into Psychological Assessment in 1991: thirty-five items on the anxiety people feel about dating relationships that get close.

They were not writing a lab manual for its own sake, and I am not going to turn this into one. The form has a name, the Fear-of-Intimacy Scale, and the authors reported high internal consistency and solid test-retest reliability. That tells you the items hang together and that a score is not pure noise from one Tuesday to the next. It does not tell you who you are allowed to love. The partnership question is what the score sat next to when they compared it with the rest of a person's report, and with the judgment of therapists who actually saw clients.

The links that matter for an adult relationship are plain. Scores went up together with a loneliness measure. Scores moved the other way against three things: how much people told about themselves, how much social closeness they reported, and how much they seemed to answer in order to look acceptable. People who looked more afraid of closeness on the form also looked lonelier, said less of themselves, and reported less social intimacy. They also looked a bit more concerned with appearing acceptable, which is the social-desirability piece. Anyone who has filled out a personal form knows the temptation to shade an answer so you do not look needy or cold. The authors checked whether the whole pattern was only that shading.

It was not. Those relations held after they partialed out social desirability. In ordinary words, they statistically removed the "I want to look fine on paper" overlap, and the other links were still there. The loneliness link survived. The low self-disclosure link survived. The notes say the reported relations held after that control, so the negative tie to social intimacy belongs in the same sentence. This is the part to remember if you distrust questionnaires. A critic can say, "People only mark what makes them look good." Descutner and Thelen did the critic's test on this scale. The loneliness and the holding-back were not explained away by wanting to look good.

People with higher totals also described relationships that had lasted a shorter time, and clinicians rating those clients saw more fear of closeness. That second tie is easy to skip and hard to fake in the same way as a solo form. A therapist, looking at a client, rated fear of closeness, and those ratings lined up with the paper-and-pencil score. So the scale was not only a private mood. It had a counterpart in a clinician's judgment. Briefer relationships, as the respondent described them, lined up with higher scores too. None of that is a story about a single couple. It is a pattern across the validation work. It says the form is tracking something that shows up as shorter bonds in self-report and as a recognizable worry in the therapy room.

The paper also reported that subjects classed as androgynous had less fear of intimacy than subjects classed as masculine and subjects classed as undifferentiated. The finding can sit as a reported group difference. It is not a gender law, and it is not advice.

Here is an illustrative example, not a client from the 1991 paper. Idris totals the form, sees a high number, and spends the evening treating the number as a verdict: he will always pull away, his partner should leave, closeness is off the table. The total did not say that. A high score means the answers leaned toward anxiety about close dating relationships, in the sense the items were built to capture. It means, given the validation, that loneliness and thin self-disclosure are likelier company for that score, and that a therapist might rate the same worry as present. It does not mean a judge has closed the case. The abstract does not give an average score or a cutoff that sorts people into doomed and fine. If a website offers a magic range, that range is not from the abstract.

What the score can do is point at a conversation you are already in. If you go quiet when a relationship gets specific, if you want the person and also want the exit, if loneliness stays high even with someone in the room, the scale was built for that neighborhood. You can say the pattern in your own words without reading items aloud. I am not going to reproduce the questionnaire. You do not need the items to notice whether you disclose less as soon as the bond starts to matter. Your partner can tell you whether they experience that closing. Their report is not the scale. It is the life the scale was trying to point toward.

A low score is not a medal, either. Social desirability can tug answers toward looking open. The authors' control says the main links were not only that tug, and it does not say every low score is pure honesty. Treat the number as a hypothesis you can check against this month. Did you tell the truth about something that mattered. Did you let a plan depend on the other person. Did you stay for a hard talk past the first flush of wanting to leave. Those are partnership facts. The form is a pointer. The month is the test you can actually run.

If the pointer scares you, that scare is a reason to talk with a person trained for it, not a reason to decide the relationship is counterfeit. NIMH's find-help page, reviewed in April 2026, says the institute will not give you medical advice or a referral list of its own. A primary care clinician can screen and can send you on. Care is usually therapy, medication, or both. Other doors they list: SAMHSA's phone line and finder, an EAP through a job, a clinic on a campus, the directory your insurance prints, and a health department run by a state or a county. If you are already being treated, do not drop that care because an article made you uneasy. Talk with your provider before you stop.

Questions they suggest you carry into the room are practical. What experience does this person have with the problem you came in for. What is their usual approach. How long do they expect the work to last. Does your insurance apply. What will it cost. You are allowed to ask all five. A clinician who will not answer them is giving you information too.

If a life is in danger, phone emergency services or get to the closest ER. If you are in suicidal pain, or in another kind of emotional crisis, you can phone or text 988, or open the chat for the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. It runs day and night, and the talk is confidential. For veterans, the route is 988 followed by option 1, or a text sent to 838255. If the distress is tied to a disaster, call or text 1-800-985-5990. None of those numbers is a score interpretation. They are doors, and they stay open whether your form was high or low.

Bring a partner into this carefully. A score is not a weapon to hand someone over dinner, and it is not a shield that ends their hurt. You can say, "I get afraid when we get close, and I am getting help with that," without reading a total like a diagnosis. You can also hear a partner's fear without grading them. Descutner and Thelen tied the form to therapists' ratings, which means a trained person looking at a real client saw something that matched. It does not mean you are that trained person for the person you love. Offer company. Leave the rating to someone whose job it is.

The adult-partnership reading, then, is modest. Anxiety about close dating relationships, measured this way, traveled with loneliness and with saying less, even after a control for wanting to look good. It traveled with shorter relationships in self-report. It traveled with clinicians' ratings. Androgynous respondents, as the paper classed them, scored lower than two other classes. None of those sentences is a verdict with your name on it. If you want a next page that asks when a couple looks for outside help, when couples look for therapy is that page, and it is not a scoring key.

If a score scared you, use it as a reason to book a conversation with someone who can ask about your actual week, and leave the number in the waiting room.

The scale paper and the help page

• Descutner and Thelen, 1991, Psychological Assessment, volume 3, issue 2, pages 218–225, the paper that built a fear-of-intimacy questionnaire.
• NIMH page on finding help for mental illness, reviewed in April 2026. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/find-help

intimacy · fear

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