The intimacy is high but the disclosure is low

This is the tricky one, the one that makes situationships genuinely difficult to see clearly from inside them. You can have significant physical closeness with someone — regular contact, warmth, genuine comfort in each other's presence — without ever really knowing what's happening in their interior life. Their fears. Their real family situation. The boring or difficult parts of their week. What they're worried about at work. What they're proud of that they haven't mentioned. Real intimacy requires both physical and emotional proximity. Without disclosure — without the gradual, trusting sharing of the inner life — closeness is decorative rather than structural. It can feel warm and real in the moment while having no actual load-bearing capacity. Intimacy that never deepens past a certain comfortable level is a sign that one or both people have unconsciously limited how much they're willing to invest. That limit is information.