The following is an example of how love avoidants attempt to connect to others, and the difficulty that comes from trying to gain intimacy in this manner. This comes from Jerry, a client I worked with. He kept a detailed journal while in a treatment facility for his sex addiction and love avoidance. He allowed me to take this part from his journal to help others understand love avoidance.
When I was at The Meadows, I was entranced by my therapist, Beth. I wanted her to love me and pick me above all the other members of the group. I wanted to feel special, but I never felt I could get close to her. One day I knocked on the group room door and asked if I could speak with her.
I sat down and she turned from her desk and faced me. I was suddenly nervous. What exactly was it I wanted to say? That I loved her and wanted her to love me? That sounded way off kilter. “I don’t feel close to you.” I stammered out. Only for a second did she have a look of surprise on her face.
“What do you mean?” I looked around the room, searching for the right thing to say. “It’s like …I can only get so close to you and then there’s this wall. Why can’t I get inside?” I felt beads of sweat form on my forehead and knew I was wringing my hands, but couldn’t stop it.
Beth sat back in her chair. “You want me to let down my boundaries with you?”
I nodded my head. “Ok.” She situated her chair so she was sitting directly in front of me, a few feet away. “What I want you to do Jerry is to watch my hands. As I separate them, I’ll be letting down my boundaries.” She put her hands together, like she was praying in front of me. She slowly started to open them. This was it! I was going to get inside and have a special place in her that none of the other guys had. Yet as her hands started to open up, I found myself backing up in my chair. My head started to go back and to the side…and I had a combination of feeling suffocated and nauseous.
“What’s a matter? Isn’t this what you want?” she asked.
I nodded my head and repositioned myself in my chair. “Yes.” I said defiantly. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but without getting “inside” Beth's boundaries, I didn’t think I could trust her, rely on her, or believe her when she said she cared about me. She started to open up again, letting down her boundaries. I again, instinctively, reared my head back and felt like I was covered in slime.
Beth put her hands back together and asked me what I was feeling. “I…feel icky…gross – like something bad is happening.”
And then she said the one thing has stuck with me more than anything else she ever told me. “Jerry, you believe that love means you get lost in someone, enmeshed with them. That has been your relationship with your mother and father. Yet when you are enmeshed, you feel suffocated. You are completely vulnerable – no boundaries what so ever. And neither did your mom or dad. So you feel icky or gross being that intimately connected to your parents.” She moved her chair a little closer. “It is because I DO care about you that I keep my boundaries up. By keeping my boundaries up around you, it shows I respect you. It helps to keep you safe – not engulfed by me, not lost inside of me. Now you can start to concentrate on yourself and start to discover who Jerry is.”
Suddenly, I didn’t want to be that “special someone.” I wanted her to keep on doing what she was doing. In that moment, I so appreciated all the hard work she did in her own journey of recovery. And she helped me to see, for the first time, that my definition of love was scary and twisted. No wonder once I started to get emotionally close to someone, I’d have to create some distance in the relationship. Love meant I’d have to lose myself in someone else. Love was to be engulfed, enmeshed, boundary-less around the object of my affection. And that was so terrifying, I’d run from it. I’d cheat on my lover, start fights, withdraw emotionally, or get lost in one of my addictions to keep some distance. And then with too much distance, I’d feel abandoned and lonely, so I’d try everything to get back“inside.” This was to be a cycle that would hurt me and almost everyone I had a relationship with – even my children.
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