Fear of Intimacy Test | Identify what is quietly pushing your admirers away

1. What is fear of intimacy?

Fear of intimacy is not simply being afraid of love but a psychological pattern that, at the subconscious level, blocks a person from forming deep emotional bonds. It may show up as resistance to dependence, anxiety about losing control, or an instinct to pull away just as a relationship is about to heat up. Many people do not lack the desire for love; rather, they developed protective emotional defenses through their upbringing or past trauma.

This fear usually has three core expressions:

• Avoidant pattern: Overemphasizing independence, fearing being tied down, and finding intimacy suffocating.
• Anxious pattern: Craving close connection but always fearing abandonment, easily falling into a cycle of excessive demands.
• Fearful pattern: Both craving and fearing, wavering back and forth in the contradiction of approach and push away.

2. Core theoretical basis: adult attachment theory

This test is based on Bartholomew and Horowitz's (1991) four-category model of adult attachment, as well as Mikulincer & Shaver (2007) research on the activation of the attachment system. The theory holds that a person's behavior patterns in intimate relationships are mainly determined by two dimensions:

• Avoidance of intimacy: The degree to which a person distrusts a partner's goodwill and is unwilling to depend on them.
• Anxiety about abandonment: How afraid a person is of being rejected or abandoned by a partner.

When these two dimensions are at different levels, different patterns of fear of intimacy emerge. This test does not directly apply a scale; instead, following this theoretical framework, it designs scenario-based questions close to contemporary life to help you identify your core fears in relationships.

3. The four dimensions of this test

This test has 18 questions in total and assesses your intimacy pattern across the following four dimensions:

• Fear of emotional dependence: Assesses whether you are afraid of depending on others emotionally and worry that dependence will cost you your sense of self.
• Loss of control and boundary anxiety: Assesses how sensitive you are to uncertainty in a relationship and to intrusions on your personal boundaries.
• Rejection sensitivity: Assesses how alert you are to potential signs of rejection and how strongly you react emotionally to being rejected.
• Rigidity of relationship beliefs: Assesses whether you hold black-and-white beliefs such as 'all or nothing' or 'once hurt, it can never be repaired.'

4. Test purpose and who it is for

This test is suited to:

• People who always feel uneasy and want to run when a relationship is about to become official
• People who deeply crave intimacy but dare not fully open their hearts
• People who repeatedly fall into a chase-and-retreat pattern in past relationships
• People who want to understand why they never attract the right person or keep scaring off potential partners
• People interested in attachment psychology and growing in intimate relationships

Through the test, you will receive a main pattern type and a detailed analysis of the four dimensions, helping you see the real reason you unconsciously press pause in relationships.

5. Scoring and result explanation

Each question uses a 1-5 Likert scale, from 'Completely disagree' to 'Completely agree.' Based on the distribution of your scores across the four dimensions, the system will determine your main fear pattern and offer targeted directions for awareness and action.