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Of American-English origin, the phrase too close for comfort means: dangerously or uncomfortably close or near; so close as to make a person feel uneasy, upset or afraid.

This phrase occurs, for example, in the following from the column Comment, published in the Express & Star (Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England) of Wednesday 27^th April 1977 [page 6, column 1]:

Too close for comfort

Consulting a probation officer about marital problems could suggest a marriage being put on probation.
This might explain the failure of a well-intended service begun six months ago at Burntwood, now facing closure because only a few couples have attended.
It would be comforting to assume that there are no shaky marriages in the district, but that would be wishful thinking.
If couples are too worried to attend, as a Lichfield probabion [sic] officer believes, it is probably because the service is too closely associated with juvenile crime and law courts.

These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the phrase too close for comfort that I have found:

1-: From the Carolina Observer (Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA) of Thursday 27^th December 1827 [page 3, column 2]:

A thorough-going Jackson man.—A hero of the West being lately in Raleigh, astonished the North Carolinians not a little by proclaiming his unheard of composition and powers. “I am” said he, “half horse, half alligator, with a small touch of the snapping turtle; but that’s quite common where I come from. I can ride upon a streak of lightning, whip my weight in wildcats, and if any gentleman chooses for a twenty dollar bill he may throw in a panther; hug a bear too close for comfort, leap the Ohio, wade the Mississippi, and flog any man opposed to Jackson *.
Norfolk Herald.

* The reference is to Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), President of the United States from 1829 to 1837, who had been defeated in the 1824 presidential election.

2-: From the Rutland Herald (Rutland, Vermont, USA) of Tuesday 11^th August 1829 [page 4, column 3]—in the original text, bear in “bear-faced” and oak in “the first oak” are in italics:

In Stamford, Vt. a bear was recently killed by Mr. Daniel Oaks and his son. The son shot and partially wounded the animal, and he fell; but on the approach of the father with a club to finish the work of death, Bruin, in the most bear-faced manner, seized the old man, and gave him a hug far too close for comfort. This was not the first oak probably that he had embraced.—The son reloaded, ran to the father’s assistance, and sent a ball through the bear’s head.—Trumpet.

3-: From The Life and Adventures of Colonel David Crockett, of West Tennessee (Cincinnati: Published for the Proprietor, 1833), by the U.S. frontiersman and politician David ‘Davy’ Crockett (1786-1836) [chapter 13, page 153]:

“I’m that same David Crockett, fresh from the backwoods, half horse, half alligator, little touched with the snapping turtle—can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride upon a streak of lightning, and slip without a scratch down a honey locust—can whip my weight in wild cats, and if any gentleman pleases, for a ten dollar bill, he may throw in a panther,—hug a bear too close for comfort—and whip any man opposed to Jackson.”

4-: From a letter to the Editor, by ‘Auld Lang Syne’, dated Alexandria, D.C., Sunday 27^th January 1833, published in the American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine (Baltimore, Maryland, USA) of March 1833 [page 345]:

Both nags came up, fresh and in fine spirits, and at the signal dashed off—the whips were fairly drawn. […] ’Twas now boot-top and boot-top; and in this manner they ran the whole heat, which was won by Johnny by nine inches! after as hard a struggle as was ever seen, and both horses most severely punished […].
Opinion now took a turn in favor of Johnny; and, although his friends were willing to back him, there was little done in that way. The heat had been too close for comfort, and the gelding was known to be good for tough and in fine fix.

5-: From The Partisan: A Tale of the Revolution (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1835), by the U.S. author William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870) [volume 1, chapter 16, page 200]:

“It’s well you have me at all, for I’ve had a narrow chance of it. Swow! but the bullets rung over my ears too close for comfort.”

6-: From a letter to the Editor, by ‘Civis’, published in the Richmond Enquirer (Richmond, Virginia, USA) of Friday 27^th May 1836 [page 3, column 6]:

Dr. Campbell, our Senator, had just taken his stand before the people, in order to give them an account of his stewardship during the last session of the Legislature, and had proceeded but a little way, before he began to be interrupted by questions proposed to him, at brief intervals, by the Whigs. […]
[…]
The fact is, the Doctor was shaving them rather too close for comfort; he was telling them rather more truth than they wished to hear; so, in order to avoid the drubbing, to which they but too plainly saw that this was only a prelude, they determined to prevent his speaking altogether.