Stop Running from Love: Three Steps to Overcoming Emotional Distancing and Fear of Intimacy (6 page)

“I don’t see what the point is,” Chris responds irritably. “Talking about everything usually just makes things worse. I don’t want to end up fighting all the time the way my parents did. I’m perfectly content with our relationship just the way it is.”

So, Beth gives up, immediately backing off. “I really do understand,” she said. “Chris grew up in a violent home and it makes sense to me that she doesn’t want to fight. Maybe we shouldn’t be talking everything to death and making ourselves unhappy. What I really want to talk about in our session today,” she continued, deftly changing the subject, “is how soon we can both agree to retire so we can do all the things we want to do.”

Chris and Beth are both participating in the slow death of the intimacy they share. Chris distances through verbal and nonverbal maneuvering. She is direct only about her commitment to their communication strategy of avoidance. She clearly states her fear: open, direct communication leads to fighting, and fighting is to be avoided at all costs. Beth colludes in the distancing dance by backing off and not asserting her own need to know and be known at a deeper level.

Exercise

Self-Assessment of Avoidance Patterns

Complete the following sentences to assess your tendency to choose avoidance rather than direct communication. You can use your answers to see how you are most likely to use avoidance as a distancing tactic.

1. When I know that someone doesn’t agree with me, I usually ___________
   
2. If people close to me start to argue, I usually ___________
   
3. Getting along easily with others is important to me because ___________
   
4. I often keep my opinions to myself rather than ___________
   
5. I often apologize for upsetting someone I care about because ___________
   
6. My parents argued ___________ compared to other adults I grew up observing.
   
7. In my family, fighting was ___________
   
8. I generally don’t get into conflict with others because I ___________ ___________ anger.
   
9. I avoid conflict because it ___________ me.
   
10. 10. In my ideal couple relationship, conflict is ___________
    

Distancers can easily slip under the radar when the focus of the couple’s unhappiness is on parenting issues. Here are a few examples of how couples can be so caught up in parenting issues that they may completely miss seeing the underlying distancing threats to their relationship as intimate partners.

Steven and Ruth, Superparents

Steven and Ruth are twenty-first-century parents who both play very active roles in their children’s lives. They are a perfectly matched work team, showing up for every aspect of their children’s lives. When they married and talked about raising children, they agreed that they would selflessly devote themselves to their children. Neither wanted to follow in the footsteps of their own parents who had been neglectful and abusive toward their children.

Although Ruth and Steven’s dedication to their children is admirable, their life as a couple is barely alive. They are too tired to have time to have fun with each other and too vigilant about the children to relax and just enjoy making love. They collude in their distancing, and although neither one sees a problem in how they’re living, the couple’s intimacy is dying a slow death because they’ve been distancing for years.

This couple is very well-defended against any awareness that their life as a couple is dying on the vine. They are not experiencing the obvious erosion that occurs when one person wants intimacy while the other is totally absorbed in parenting. This is, unfortunately, both the good news and the bad news. Steven and Ruth may be lucky enough to get through the years of intense involvement with their children without losing their intimate connection with each other, but the danger is there. It would not be surprising if either person woke up one day and realized their marriage was over emotionally. Should this happen, either of these two could easily fall in love with someone new.

Sally and Howard

Sally and Howard are a good example of the couple that’s in trouble even though Supermom is at the helm and they don’t fight about parenting issues. As Sally’s second husband, Howard was content to play whatever role Sally and the children wanted him to play: he would be the supportive stepdad or the more distant, hands-off husband with little involvement in the family’s parent-child dynamics. He thought that the way Sally managed her job as mother was just fine, but he often felt that her preoccupation with the kids kept the two of them from having enough time with each other.

Sally used the kids to keep her distance from Howard. She was afraid to allow herself to depend on Howard and afraid to become more open in their couple intimacy. Her many hours at work were equaled by her hours as Supermom, and too often Howard was the last item on her list.

Ignoring the underlying distancing patterns that are at the heart of the couple’s unhappiness is easy when the distancer is unaware that there’s a problem. Simply urging Howard to become more involved in parenting would have been a mistake, one that is very commonly made by therapists, friends, and family. Sally needs help to see that (1) she is an active distancer, and (2) that Howard is capable of being much more involved in many parts of her life, including parenting.

If changes take place only in the domain of giving Howard more parenting opportunities, the underlying distancing will continue to undermine the couple’s relationship.

It is useful to distinguish among the basic categories and styles of distancing, but it is equally important to notice that there are many positive things that distancers have in common.

Distancers are motivated by an inherently logical quest for balance and self-protection. Their vacillations and avoidance patterns are often the best survival strategies he or she has been able to establish. Leaving the scene or using an approach/avoidance method has provided an escape route from feeling trapped by commitments, obligations, structures, or activities that may feel dangerous.

In some ways, distancers are ideally adapted to survive real danger because they are so quick to see the warning signs. The distancer has some very important survival skills, like always remaining alert, paying close attention to what’s going on, being ready to move backwards or flee when danger may appear. Unfortunately, such accentuated vigilance can lead someone to mistake the smoke for the fire. Distancers may be unable to differentiate between real threats and benign people, places, and activities.

Respecting the Logic of Distancing

Within the distancer’s cautious and vigilant pattern of holding back, there are seeds of reflection, discernment, and vision. These strengths may engender a deep spiritual practice nourished by the natural attraction to a peaceful, reflective life.

There is no doubt that distancers certainly can push their partners to the edge of screaming exasperation. Yet these people can also be valued friends, teachers, or advocates. Distancers can use their deep and thoughtful processes of discernment to become successful problem solvers because they avoid commitment to one idea or choice, and therefore can deliberate carefully and thoughtfully. Then, too, this style of response often provides the distancer with the ability to listen carefully to others. The distancer may be a treasured friend to a number of men and women who know they can count on her for carefully considered advice when they ask for it.

Finding Satisfaction in Time Alone

As we analyze the strengths inherent in these distancing patterns, it is notable that distancers have the capacity to assert limits and know the limits of their availability. Because of their potential for self-awareness, distancers are often able to find deep sources of self-generated solace.

Often, the capacity to spend time alone is an area of strength for distancers. Some people go to great lengths to avoid being alone. They may even believe there’s something wrong with them if they are alone for any significant amount of time. In contrast, the distancer who deeply appreciates time alone can be very resilient in adapting to a variety of situations. There are times when one has to be alone. Being comfortable with being alone means the person is able to work alone for long periods of time, or to accomplish basic life tasks alone, or to engage in recreational activities alone. The distancer is often well-suited for bigger challenges, too, like living alone, being alone when ill or injured, traveling alone, and surviving the loneliness of grief.

Although someone may be self-sabotaging by disappearing or distancing behaviors, the powerful forces that drive that person to seek solitude can also be beneficial to creativity. The creative person, that is, the artist, musician, writer, woodworker, photographer, decorator, researcher, inventor, landscaper, gardener, builder—any creative person—thrives when able to spend enough time alone to engage in uninterrupted creative pursuits.

Creating distance can also be useful and necessary. Someone like Sally might need time alone because she has spent too many years being deluged with other people’s needs, activities, conversations, noise, and demands. Sally grew up in a big family and had little time for herself and her own needs. Some of her need for time alone is a healthy choice to make up for her years of meeting others’ needs, giving herself the gift of solitude. There are work situations that may require someone to spend the majority of her time alone. If you spend hours underneath the hood of a car, on a tractor, writing poems, fixing computers, or making jewelry, you undoubtedly need a lot of solitary time.

Choosing Other Priorities

Note that relational distancing may be a conscious choice to prioritize something else. It is possible when all is said and done, that at this time in your life you may not want to be in an intimate relationship. Both men and women may choose very demanding career paths that don’t allow them the necessary time to develop and nurture an intimate relationship. When there are children, because women are still most commonly the primary caregivers, women, especially, may feel they must choose between committed motherhood or a deeply engaging relationship. Giving up the time it takes to engage in intimate relationships may also feel necessary to someone with an all-consuming creative or spiritual calling.

You’re on Your Way

You’re now fully engaged in the process of challenging your inner distancer simply by allowing yourself to think about the stories and new ideas you’ve just read. Learning which style of distancing best describes your distancing behavior will help you to begin the work of leaving loneliness behind. All it takes is a little curiosity and willingness to be open to a new way of understanding yourself.

In the following chapters, we will follow the journeys of the people you have just been introduced to, showing how they have been able to find greater happiness in their close relationships. Learning what they had in common with many others and analyzing their individual patterns of distancing was the beginning for each of them. They also jump-started their recovery by learning to identify and embrace both the strengths and the logic contained within their styles of distancing.

By getting to know other distancers, you have begun your work in identifying and accepting yourself. As you think about the hallmark characteristics of distancing, and as you discover that your story matches one or more of the people in this chapter, you are becoming more informed about the specific ways you engage in distancing. You have begun to identify with the potential strengths as well as the self-harming patterns of the distancer. As you try on each of these styles for “fit,” you may decide that one of these descriptions is your dominant style overall. Or you may recognize that it describes you in some aspects of your life, but does not apply in other areas.

Once you begin to identify your patterns of distancing, you can take the necessary steps to analyze why you have been regulating emotional distance in the ways that you do. Then you can begin the work of trying something new.

It is important to honor the strengths contained within each of these styles. Whatever your methods of distancing may be, until now this has been the best way you’ve found to survive. You are fully capable of change, but you can also hang onto your old survival skills as long as you need to. This isn’t a race and there are no deadlines.

2

Before you start working on Step One, which is expanding your awareness, let’s take a look at the ways you may have approached intimacy challenges in the past.

There are a myriad of reasons why each of us takes the time we do to finally change our unhappiness in our relationships. It doesn’t matter if you’re sixteen or sixty—you can change your patterns if you want to. But to help you find a more self-compassionate way to examine your past patterns, let’s first take a look at some of the reasons why it’s taken this long. Some of your past obstacles to change may lie within your own personality, while others may have come from bad advice and incomplete solutions to solving the dilemma of intimacy.

Floating Down the River of Denial

It is quite common for the distancer to lack self-awareness when it comes to assessing what’s going wrong in the relationship domain. Many people go through life without consciously understanding what makes their relationship patterns troubling or simply dull and lackluster. Few men and even fewer women would describe themselves as distancers. Yet even though we may not have the words to name ourselves, every distancer knows the experience of chronic loneliness. Distancers share the general feeling of being incomplete, of not feeling fully connected to others.

Isolation or loneliness, especially within a couple relationship, often goes unspoken and unnamed, flying below the radar of self-awareness for both men and women. Distancers can find this kind of denial very comforting. It’s easy to think, “Oh, it’s not so bad. I can go on like this. It’s not going to kill me.” Denial is a very effective tool of self-protection for people who were violated, shamed, and threatened when they were children. Distancers are scared of being vulnerable in relationships, so denial becomes a very attractive option.

Learned Helplessness

Even when distancers reach the point of being seriously miserable, we often believe there’s nothing that we can do about it. I used to believe that I was doing the best I could. I thought that my failure to find the “walking into the sunset” ideal relationship was caused by circumstances beyond my control. Sometimes I blamed my partners. Other times, I thought that my traumatic childhood experiences had doomed me to failure, even though I continued jumping into relationships with a kind of mindless optimism. Quite often, the people I chose were distancers themselves.

I have since learned both in my personal experiences and my work as a therapist that many distancers attribute their relationship dissatisfaction to external events: losing a job; moving to a new city; raising teenagers; dealing with chronic pain; or lacking access to desirable partners. You may have thought it’s your partner’s fault (past or present), or it’s because you just haven’t met the right person, or it’s the fault of your in-laws or the family you grew up in. Even those of us who view love as a “no-fault” venture, i.e., no one is to blame when a relationship fails, may doubt there’s anything we haven’t already tried that would make our relationships more satisfying.

The Fear Factor

Distancers may resist change by convincing themselves they are simply doomed never to experience the fairy-tale rapture of “true love,” or even if they should experience it, they fear that love might vanish instantly like a dream. In addition to not having enough information about the dynamics of distancing, many people resist change because they are afraid of getting hurt or even of being permanently wounded. We grow up expecting to be blinded by “true love,” even when it turns out to be all smoke and mirrors. From fairy tales, popular songs, movies, and advertisements we learn that although love is exciting and glamorous, it often ends up breaking your heart.

If love hurts so much, many distancers ask themselves why risk exposing their deep relational vulnerability underneath the mask?

Glimmering pictures of blissful love are too often followed by bitter disillusionment and heartache. Couples expert Terrence Real, in his book How Can I Get Through to You? (2002, p. 33), reminds us that “one of the few stable statistics in our fast-changing world is our rate of divorce, which has hovered between 40 and 50 percent for the last thirty years.” Why would you believe that you could make a lifelong relationship work, knowing that 40 to 50 percent of all couples are as likely to break apart as to stay together? Why not go with the flow and settle for whatever you’ve got right now?

Missing the Boat: Myths and Mistakes

Oversimplifying love’s complexity accounts for many failed attempts to find and keep true intimacy. Many of the obstacles to happiness in love relationships arise from distracting or incomplete solutions. Of course, there is no one solution to the complex dilemmas of failed love, but narrow, oversimplified views of the problem are routinely proposed by professionals, talk-show hosts, and well-meaning friends and family members. Nonetheless, understanding some of the common pitfalls that have tripped up many who sought help with their problems about love may help you to stop blaming yourself.

Since people first began pursuing and rejecting their mates, other people have probably been giving them advice about love. In our time, the love experts have generated a steady stream of books, articles, and talk shows about improving the experience of love. Movies, TV shows, songs, poems, and novels provide us with an ever-changing menu of love’s joys and heartbreaks. Yet with all this attention that we humans give to love, penguins, whales, and numerous other life-forms seem to be much more successful at it than we are. Why do we have such a hard time making love work for us?

One answer to that question is there are a cluster of myths and a number of incomplete solutions that may be involved in continuing to keep us from getting the love we want and deserve.

Open Communication: The Magic Bullet

Undoubtedly, the most common advice about creating good relationships is to improve communication. There are countless variations on this theme. You, too, have probably been told that better communication will magically create the walk into the sunset where you will live happily ever after with your beloved.

The unhappy husband grumbles, “Why can’t she just tell me what she wants from me? Am I supposed to read her mind? She says we don’t communicate. What’s that supposed to mean?”

His wife sighs. She wants him to want to talk to her about the things that upset him. She also wants him to understand her, to know what’s going on with her emotionally, without her having to explain. It seems so simple to her and so baffling to him.

The couples therapist tells them to choose fifteen minutes from each day when they won’t be interrupted by children or work. They are supposed to talk to each other about their feelings, to lovingly listen to each other, and to find ways to communicate their support for each other. When they come back to the next session, it’s no surprise they are more upset than ever about their relationship because they couldn’t do the assignment.

Opening up communication is rarely as easy to do as it sounds, especially for the distancer. Unguarded, direct communication is a complicated challenge for men and women who are classic distancers. Although the couple you just met represent gender stereotypes, for the emotionally guarded man and the woman who yearns to be better emotionally “read” by her husband, direct communication can be a challenge for both of them. This impasse in communication can’t be “fixed” just by a simple directive to let down their guard and be more open with each other.

My experience as a therapist and as a recovering distancer has taught me that it’s easier said than done for distancers to open up communication with their partners. Distancers have deep-seated reasons for avoiding the vulnerability of open direct communication. If they could simply switch to a more open communication style, they would.

Strategic Communication: The Retro Solution

Sometimes, couples are advised to try indirect, strategic communication. Strategic communication allows the couple to avoid being direct and honest about anything that potentially could open up uncomfortable feelings or conflict. Couples who try to protect their intimacy engage in a sort of chess game that maneuvers the conversations around important issues and feelings rather than discussing those issues. However, believing that the relationship will survive by using indirect, manipulative communication or by avoiding problematic issues can be as unhealthy and shortsighted as the “open honest communication” method.

One familiar example of strategic communication is the age-old advice given to women about how to land and keep their man. “Let him think he’s smarter than you, stroke his ego, don’t let him know that you can beat him in tennis…” The parallel version of strategic communication takes place when men pretend to agree with their female partners to “humor” them. “I’m sure you’re right, dear,” says the husband vacantly as he ignores his wife’s impassioned distress about her brother’s iron-fisted control of the upcoming family holiday.

Gender Myths: Me Tarzan, You Jane

Another cause for couple trouble is the assumption that men are distancing when they express their emotions through action rather than by talking. Another aspect of this oversimplified view is the assumption that because women are more likely to talk about their feelings, they are never the distancers in relationships.

As you begin to learn more about the ways that women do, in fact, distance, you may be surprised. The stereotypical man might be able to hide his emotions under the brim of his John Deere cap, but his wife may be distancing by using sex as a bargaining tool, or being disconnected from her body while making love. Women can also distance by giving their quality time and attention only to their kids, friends, and family; in short, by focusing on everyone but their partner.

Experts often unwittingly collude in maintaining the loneliness of the couple by attributing all major relationship problems to gender differences. Couples become convinced they are doomed to loneliness in their intimate relationships, constricted by the narrow definitions of traditional gender stereotypes. From Tarzan and Jane to King Kong grasping the tiny female in his great fist, we continue to be sold the stereotypes of males and females as radically different species. This relegates the one-dimensional man to be the John Wayne strong silent type, and the woman to be his fragile, emotionally volatile “better half.” How could two such constricted human beings connect deeply either emotionally or sexually?

Men were still viewed as the distancers in intimate relationships by the women’s liberation generation in the 1970s and ’80s. They were often portrayed as hopelessly defective in the relationship department. Although the ’70s produced a counterbalancing image of more competent women, the male stereotype merely shifted slightly, morphing into Robert Bly’s Iron John (1990). This version of maleness promoted an image of macho virility that perpetuated the myth of male incapacity for deep emotional intimacy with women and children.

Then, we read that men and women evolved on different planets (Gray 1992). Yet again, gender differences were accentuated. The people from Venus (women) are assumed to be love addicts while the other species from Mars (men) continue to live in their caves and avoid intimate communication.

Overstating gender differences lets women off the hook when it comes to owning their identity as distancers. The assumption that men and women are so totally different from each other also underestimates men. Many men long for love and intimacy in couple relationships. If all those men from Mars just wanted to get laid, there would be easier ways to go about it than committing to a long-term, live-in relationship that usually requires monogamy, child-rearing, and a promise to remain loving through sickness and health.

Men should not be shamed into believing that they are less fluent in the language of emotions and desires than women. Men may demonstrate their love by actions rather than through verbal expression, but they are also too easily discouraged from talking about matters of the heart. And women are too often led to believe that because they are more accustomed to talking about their feelings, they are off the hook in the distancing department.

The Problem Is Sex

Focusing too narrowly on sexual satisfaction is another mistake that can interfere with genuine intimacy. Both men and women can experience satisfying sex but still be lonely distancers. Conversely, some people can achieve deep levels of intimacy even when the relationship is no longer sexual.

It’s easy to become confused about the difference between sex and intimacy because the word “intimacy” is frequently used as a euphemism for sex. Many layers of distancing behavior can be buried under the belief that the problem with intimacy is all about sex. “She won’t open up with me” is the frequent complaint of the male partner who feels shut out sexually but doesn’t fully comprehend the underlying complexity of the problem.

Through the gradual process of breaking down old taboos, beginning with the sexual liberation movement of the ’60s, there has been increasing cultural permission for both men and women to be open about what they want sexually. In contrast with the sexual repression of previous decades, this is a good thing. But even sexual freedom can end up being a problem if it is the sole focus of change.

Attributing all relational problems to past traumatic experience also can be just as problematic as thinking that relationships will be automatically transformed by simply learning better sexual skills. Whether or not an individual has experienced sexual distress in the past, it is a mistake to believe that getting good sex therapy will be the panacea. This can be particularly disastrous if sex therapy becomes a series of anatomy lessons for the purpose of reaching an advanced level of sexual gymnastic ability.

Good chemistry and good sexual skills may help a relationship to work, but focusing all the solutions in the sexual arena can leave the heart of the relationship to somehow fix itself. This is similar to other oversimplified solutions to love’s challenges, like believing that better communication will be the magic bullet, or that you have to live with loneliness because you’ve fallen for the modern myth that you and your partner are from different planets.