1. Busy: Being busy is a main characteristic of intimacy anorexia. Anorexics are so busy that they have little time for their spouse. This leads to a lack of intimacy because they are "too busy" to have time to build or create intimacy.

2. Blame: Blaming partners and spouses is a factor of dealing with a lack of intimacy in relationships. Anorexics use this factor to blame-shift problems away from themselves and onto their partner or spouse rather than acknowledging how they contributed to the problems in the first place and solving the problems together. This blaming decreases intimacy because everything is always the other person's fault.

3. Withholding Love: Withholding love and affection significantly impedes intimacy because it is the foundation for it. Everyone needs to be loved and feel affection. Anorexics withhold love because they either don't understand this fact or do understand it and want to control it.

4. Withholding Praise: Withholding praise is a sign of intimacy anorexia because it prevents speaking positivity into the lives of partners and spouses. Without this encouragement, it is much easier to negatively impact relationships and lose intimacy in the process.

5. Withholding Sex: Withholding sex is one of the easiest intimacy anorexia characteristics to identify and impacts relationships significantly. Anorexics who engage in this behavior avoid having sex, shy away from sexually intimate situations and avoid being emotionally connected during sexual encounters.

6. Withholding Spiritually: Withholding spiritually contributes to the lack of intimacy because it ensures that you and your spouse are not spiritually connected. Without that spiritual bond, the deep relational feelings are extremely hard to create and share.

7. Feelings: Blocking feelings or not being willing to share feelings is a factor of intimacy anorexia because sharing feelings builds understanding, commonality and emotional intimacy. By not sharing feelings and blocking out partner's and spouse's feelings, anorexics shut themselves off from continued relationship development and deepening intimacy.

8. Criticism: Being constantly critical of partners and spouses kills intimacy. Intimacy is associated with the feelings of being loved, understood, cared for and known. Anorexics destroy intimacy by overly using criticism or finding faults without basis so that their partners and spouses feel distant and disconnected.

9. Anger/Silence: Using anger and silence can be a contributing factor to intimacy anorexia. Anorexics sometimes use anger and silence to maintain space between themselves and their partners or spouses and to control situations. This does not allow intimacy to grow because it closes communication channels.

10. Money: Controlling money and resources is a lesser common factor in relationships dealing with intimacy anorexia. This is a trust and control factor because anorexics do not allow partners and spouses to manage or have their own resources. The result is an environment lacking trust which breaks down intimacy and increases stress, shame and anxiety.

11. Roommate: The last roommate characteristic is where anorexics limit their relationships with their partners and spouses so much that almost every form of intimacy most couples experience is lost. The result is that partners and spouses are living with the anorexics but feel like they are hardly experiencing any intimacy past what a roommate or friend would feel.

​