He's Scared, She's Scared: Understanding the Hidden Fears That Sabotage Your Relationships (36 page)

Often your responses in relationships aren’t based on what’s really happening. For example: In your dreams you have a very clear sense of what you should feel and how you should behave. You try to behave accordingly—
even when the relationship is giving you no reason to do so
. A belief in your dreams, even when reality is screaming otherwise, makes it very difficult for you to recover from relationships once they are over. If this sounds like you, it’s important to learn to keep your dreams in check so that you won’t use your fantasies to leap forward in relationships before it’s appropriate—or use them to hang on to feelings about relationships that have ended.

I WANT A COMMITMENT, BUT I DON’T WANT THAT TO MEAN THAT I’M GOING TO HAVE TO GIVE UP MY YOUTHFUL WAYS
.

If a part of you still wants to be a kid, it’s going to influence whom you choose as a partner and how you treat this person. This conflict is not always as obvious as it appears, because there are so many different ways in which one can try to stay firmly entrenched in adolescence. Here is a list of the kinds of partners who might make you feel that you are warding off adulthood. You might be attracted to:

• Someone who is chronologically younger
  

• Someone with a childlike personality
  

• Someone with fewer career responsibilities
  

• Someone who is less realized as a person, but whom you perceive as having great potential
  

• Someone who isn’t settled and doesn’t present an established or stable persona
  

• Someone who is still struggling with issues that are associated with growing up—what to do, where to live, what to feel
  

• Someone with adolescent attitudes
  

• Someone who fulfills the role of parent
  

• Someone who makes you feel as though you are a charming child
  

• Someone who tolerates an adolescent attitude
  

• Someone who assumes all the responsibilities of the relationship
  

The fear of stepping forward and becoming part of the adult world is directly connected to accepting one’s mortality. That in turn is tied to the next universal conflict.

I WANT A COMMITMENT, BUT I DON’T WANT TO FEEL THAT MY LIFE IS OVER IN ANY WAY BECAUSE OF IT
.

Do you believe that making a commitment means that you will experience less of life? Are you putting off getting married because you feel that you have too much “left to do” before you settle down? If you have even the slightest sense that marriage represents a closing of doors rather than an opening up of new options, you’re going to be affected by this conflict.

Men and women with both active and passive commitment conflicts feel these anxieties equally. The difference: Actives typically feel it before making a commitment; passives may not feel it until after the commitment has been made.

How might you respond if you sense that doors are closing around you? “Anxious and angry,” “confined and cramped,” “frightened and furious,” “stifled and stuck” are some of the reactions we’ve heard. How might you behave? Usually by trying to kick down the doors of the commitment that is closing in on you. Sometimes this is done very directly in one bold act—this level of anxiety and fear can lead directly to the divorce courts or to infidelity. Other times it leads to subtle relationship sabotage—picking quarrels and faultfinding. Here are some common reactions that indicate that this conflict is at work:

• You still love your partner, but you wish that you could put this person “on hold” for a period of time until you get to live more and do what you have to do.
  

• For reasons you can’t explain, ever since the possibility of commitment became real, you are fighting off an anxiety attack that seems directly connected to a fear that life is over or that death is around the corner.
  

• You are suddenly struck by an inability to fantasize or dream about the future because you no longer feel as though you have a future.
  

• You’ve spent so much time dreaming about marriage and commitment that now that it is actually happening, you feel strangely sad, as though you have no dreams left to dream.
  

• Your partner makes you so anxious that you want to dis tance yourself, and yet you know that this person is not directly responsible for what you are feeling.
  

Often when men and women have this conflict, they want the best of both worlds: They wish that their partners would function as undemanding security centers, giving love and support, while allowing them to continue to wander off, fulfilling adventures.

This conflict, which is as old as time, is probably best represented by the story of Ulysses. Everyone remembers Ulysses. After the Trojan War, he put off returning home to his wife and family. Instead he continued to sail around the Aegean seeking adventure, some romance, and a fair amount of danger. When Ulysses finally returned to his wife, the patient Penelope, it symbolized his willingness to stop running and come to terms with who he was and where he belonged. At that point the story of Ulysses ends, but the life of Ulysses begins. We have no idea what happens in the marriage when Penelope gets fed up with hearing his tales and watching his travel slides. What we can assume is that they raised their family, bought another dog, and took their place in the human continuum.

What Ulysses the hero learned is that life does not happen on a sailing ship, nor on a jetliner. In short, life doesn’t happen when you are in motion; it happens when you stop and dig in. You can fill your life with the most extraordinary adventures and moments, but you run the risk of looking up and discovering that you have many souvenirs but you don’t have a life. So long as he was chasing fantasies around the Aegean, Ulysses wasn’t truly connecting to his world. He returned home because he discovered that the only way to have a life is to show up for it.

Commitment begins the day the fantasy ends and we accept another real, live human being as our real-life mate. This means accepting our place in the cosmos, accepting our humanity, and thus acknowledging our own mortality. Of course this is frightening, but it’s a fundamental part of being human.

And a special note for all those women with passive commitment conflicts who believe that if they are patient enough, their personal Ulysses archetypes will also return. Remember, Ulysses didn’t show up until Penelope had announced her engagement to mother man. She wasn’t kidding this time, and she was planning
to go through with it. Ulysses came home on the eve of the wedding.

I WANT A COMMITMENT, BUT I DON’T WANT TO LOVE ANYBODY SO MUCH THAT I LOSE A PIECE OF MYSELF
.

Look at the great love stories and you can’t help but notice that many of the lovers end up dead by the end of the story. It’s as if the feelings generated are so powerful that the lovers can’t survive. It’s very scary to think that a merger with another human being can be intense enough to threaten one’s very sense of self. We want to feel the passion, yet we don’t want to be overcome and engulfed by the emotions. Yet, to many people, to be fully committed means being fully vulnerable in this way.

Those with active conflicts are most likely to compensate for the fears this generates by establishing walls to keep others out. Those with passive conflicts recognize that they have problems maintaining boundaries when they love.

Finding ways to feel and accept appropriate levels of intimacy is often the motivating reason for going into therapy or seeking some form of counseling. We all need to learn to love and be loved without losing ourselves, and dealing with the deep struggles that this conflict can present should be a priority for all of us.

I WANT A COMMITMENT, BUT I’M AFRAID THAT ONCE ALL THE THINGS ABOUT ME THAT I’M ASHAMED OF ARE REVEALED, I’LL BE REJECTED
.

Everyone has some feelings of inadequacy. Most of us have areas in our lives about which we feel some degree of shame; we worry about exposing this to someone else. In a committed relationship we are exposed to the intimate stares of our mates. Soon enough they will discover all our secrets. They’ll find out about Uncle Fred, and black-sheep Cousin Beauford. They’ll get to meet “eccentric” Aunt Dot, and they’ll hear about the foolish and embarrassing things we did as children. They can’t help but learn about the unwanted hairs that grow in various secret places on
our bodies and the dimples of fat that form on our hips. All of our unvarnished truths will be there, hanging out, for our mates to see. Does this scare you just a little?

How do you handle wanting a committed relationship when there are things about you—your past and/or your present—that make you feel inadequate, things you believe are so shameful that you worry about exposing them to your mate?

If you have active conflicts, you tend to choose partners who you
know
will put up with what you perceive as your shortcomings. If you have passive conflicts, you tend to get involved with partners who you
hope
will help you overcome your feelings of inadequacy. Here’s how this works:

If you have active conflicts:
You are very conscious of what you perceive as your inadequacies. In fact you often bring them up within the first date or two, sometimes using them almost as a lure to draw someone into your sphere. If you drink, for example, you may quickly involve new partners in your struggle. If you have a difficult childhood or a dysfunctional family, you may talk about it on your first date. That’s how you screen new partners to make
absolutely certain
that they know and accept the “ghosts” in your life. It sometimes may appear as though you use the problems in your life as a way of increasing your partner’s sensitivity and commitment to you.

Typically you take this one step farther. Instead of allowing anyone to reject you because of your perceived shortcomings, you yourself use them as part of your excuse for rejecting others: For example:

When John met Mary, he told her just about everything about his lonely childhood, his hurtful mother, and his feelings of pain. For two years the relationship revolved around John’s sensitivity and his moods and his needs. Finally John rejected Mary saying that she should have understood that he had “demons” from his past that kept him from making a commitment.

When Jane met Dick, she told him about her problems with food and how bad she feels about herself whenever she gains weight. As the relationship progressed and they got closer, Jane started eating more and gaining more weight. Dick feels that the better the relationship becomes, the more weight Jane puts on.
He feels it is her way of avoiding intimacy. However, he also feels that he can’t say anything because to do so makes Jane feel bad.

John and Jane have very intricate defense systems and are engaged in a very subtle way of keeping their partners at a distance. This includes encouraging partners to become involved with their problems and then using these problems as built-in ways out of relationships.

If you have passive conflicts:
For some of us the struggle with “less than perfect” takes on a new dimension when we start looking for romantic relationships. Instead of seeking someone appropriate—someone who has what we want and deserve in a partner—we gravitate toward people who we think are less likely to judge us critically and reject us. Typically this means people who have bigger problems than we have. Initially these people feel “safe,” but that can be
extremely
deceptive.

It is our experience, and the experience of our interviewees, that any attempt to compensate for what you perceive as your own shortcomings can lead to making disastrous relationship choices. If you fear situations where your imperfections might be revealed, you are likely to find partners who are so dysfunctional that the relationships are bound to maim you. Sandi, thirty-three, is one individual who has subjected herself to a never-ending pummeling by poisonous relationships. Her story is classic:

Sandi has one child, a ten-year-old boy, who has presented her with a series of parenting challenges. Todd, who is very bright, is a hyperactive child with a learning disability. Todd has been very hostile and angry at every man that Sandy has tried to get involved with. To compound Sandi’s problems, she has a difficult ex-husband who has a way of appearing on her doorstep.

Sandi is an extremely devoted mother and has a very traditional idea of how relationships should develop. If you question her carefully, you discover that she doesn’t really believe that any reasonable man would be willing to cope with the day-to-day demands that are placed on her by her child and her ex-husband. In fact when she meets a nice, attractive, appropriate man, she often has an internal dialogue in which she says something like this:
He would never understand the kind of stress you are under…. He would never understand the kind of life you live…. He would never understand you
.

On the other hand when Sandi meets someone with a thousand and one problems, she thinks,
There’s somebody who could understand me and the difficulties I face. I don’t have to worry about having too many problems—he has even more
. The result has been one nightmare after the next.

I WANT A COMMITMENT, BUT I DON’T WANT TO BE DEPENDENT ON ANYBODY
.

I WANT A COMMITMENT, BUT I’M NOT READY TO HAVE ANYBODY BE DEPENDENT ON ME
.

Both of these conflicts—associated with a fear of stereotypical gender roles—can be directly connected to how your parents were with each other or how they were with you when you were growing up.

Unfortunately when we have these fears, we may be equally stereotypical when we choose partners. Men, for example, may jump to conclusions about how dependent or independent a woman is by what she wears or what she does for a living. Women may be so terrified of being dependent on another person that, without realizing what they are doing, they choose men who can’t make a living or who are completely inept. They may seek out men who are dependent financially or emotionally. Sometimes they later feel resentful about this.