If your spouse is showing you this video, they want to talk to you about intimacy anorexia. Intimacy Anorexia is “the active withholding of emotional, spiritual and sexual intimacy from the spouse or partner”.

For more information on Intimacy Anorexia, visit https://intimacyanorexia.com/

Intimacy Anorexia has 11 characteristics:

1) Busy: The first characteristic of intimacy anorexia is being so busy that the anorexic has little time for their spouse. This is a very common characteristic of most intimacy anorexics.

2) Blame: Blame is an extremely prevalent intimacy anorexia characteristic. Blame comes to life when an issue comes up in the marriage and the anorexic blames or puts responsibility on the spouse for the issue, instead of acknowledging their contribution to the problem or issue.

3) Withholding love: The anorexic often has a difficult time perceiving the intangible nature of withholding love. To withhold love is to not give love to their spouse the way the anorexic knows how to, or how they have asked to be loved.

4) Withholding praise: The withholding of praise is also a significantly recurring behavior for intimacy anorexics. To withhold praise is to not share their positive qualities with the spouse as a person and their positive impact on the anorexic's life.

5) Withholding sex: By far, of all the behaviors that are characteristics of intimacy anorexia, withholding of sex is probably the easiest to measure. Withholding sex from their spouse is avoiding having sex, sabotaging sexual encounters, or not connecting emotionally during sex.

6) Withholding spiritually: The characteristic of withholding spiritually is also only noticed by the spouse. Spiritual leaders, pastors, rabbis, and medicine men are all capable of disconnecting spiritually with their spouse. Withholding spiritually is withholding spiritual connectedness from the spouse.

7) Feelings: This characteristic can be described as being unwilling or unable to share feelings with their spouse. Having difficulty sharing feelings is a universal characteristic of intimacy anorexics.

8) Criticism: Having ongoing or ungrounded criticism which leads to distance in the marriage is also a characteristic of intimacy anorexia. This can be the derogatory put-downs toward the spouse, noticing what they do wrong, or just regularly pointing out their bad ideas.

9) Anger/silence: Not all intimacy anorexics use silence or anger as a characteristic of their intimacy anorexia. However, those who use anger or silence as a characteristic use it with vengeance. This intimacy anorexia characteristic can be described as any use of anger or silence to push away, punish, or control the spouse.

10) Money: The characteristic of controlling or shaming the spouse about financial issues is probably the least common among intimacy anorexics. Most of the anorexics who control or shame with money do so by keeping the spouse ignorant of their finances, giving their spouse an allowance, making the spouse ask for money, and not allowing the spouse to have a credit card or checkbook.

11) Roommate: A vast majority of those living in marriage to an intimacy anorexic also relate to the "roommate" characteristic, which is where the spouse of the anorexic feels like, or has stated feeling like a "roommate".

If you would like to evaluate if you are in fact an intimacy anorexic, you can take the test here: https://intimacyanorexia.com/ia-test/

Learn more about Intimacy Anorexia Treatment options here: https://intimacyanorexia.com/treatment-options/

Doug Weiss, Ph.D., is a nationally known author, speaker and licensed psychologist. He is the executive director of Heart to Heart Counseling Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and the author of several books including, Intimacy Anorexia ™.

You may contact Dr. Weiss via his website, https://www.drdougweiss.com/ or on his Facebook https://www.facebook.com/drdougweiss/
by phone at 719-278-3708 or through email at heart2heart@xc.org