Intimate Relationships 

Over the next few months I really would like to focus on intimate relationships in the gloriously human condition. So just a word of clarity before we begin. I believe that every relationship we have in life needs to have a degree of intimacy. I don’t believe there is a border wall between those that are intimate with and those that are not. It is however important to know what degree of intimacy is appropriate and necessary for that specific relationship.

But for our uses in this conversation and others to follow, I want to focus on those relationships that are closest and mean the most to us. I’m talking about family, marriage, close friends, those we deeply count on in our life. 

These relationships are the relationships that I refer to as high risk/high reward. Other relationships are low risk/low reward. And I would really like to focus your attention on the high risk part of the equation.

It’s very important to realize that we as humans are wired for connection. Bad connection goes beyond  just saying a brisk  “Morning” to our spouse when we roll over to shut off the alarm clock in the morning.  It is that deep sense of being “gotten” – not only feeling understood but feeling that the other is in it with you, committed to work through even the darkest aspects of your personality and your journey. We don’t need this from a crowd of people, we do need it from a few. And if we don’t have it we will go into distress of some kind.

The paradox of attachment

There is a huge paradox in play in this very basic need of ours, the need for deep and committed attachment. The paradox is that while we can’t thrive without attachment, we also can be deeply afraid of it. We pursue attachment energetically, but also push it away unconsciously. The reason that we do this is because we all have experienced the pain of broken attachment on some level. Every human I have spoken with, either in a counseling relationship or a 10 minute or less conversation, I can see that person’s self protective mechanisms in play. I don’t believe we are born with them but we acquire them from our interesting and either slightly or extremely dysfunctional families of origin. They are caught, not taught. Everyone has attachment wounds that must be carefully monitored, and also ultimately healed.

Self protective behaviors

Because of our attachment morons we unconsciously employ the self protective behaviors.

I will list them below, and would love for you to scan the list and identify your favorites… Those you employ the most often. Be rigorously honest with yourself, you have a wonderful opportunity here do you understand more effectively how you seek to protect. 

Defensiveness

Denial

Avoidance

Withholding 

Anger

Resentment 

Passive aggressiveness 

Control

Numbing

Addiction

The irony here is the point of intimate relationships is to enjoy connection. But often our attachment distress and anxiety causes us to use these behaviors reflexively to push that same person away. One important truth of intimate relationships is that we can’t get close and self protect at the same time. 

Many people find that their relational “smoke alarm” goes off when there is no fire. Then we find ourselves pushing the other away when our stated relational goal is to get close and stay close.

Give this some thought today. Study yourself over the next week or so. And I encourage you to read some of my previous posts on re-story. Very often we tell ourselves stories about our lives that justify the self protective behaviors we employ. Stories like, “she always tries to control me”, or “he never listens to me.” We have an opportunity to change our dance step in the relationship. That forces the other to either responsively  change their dance step… or fall over.

Jon