No Win Intimacy

Love is about moving closer, right? We have been taught that the best gauge of a deep love is inseparability and pay a high price to maintain this illusion. Traditionally it is the woman who pushes in for more closeness and the man that needs his space. The woman meets rejection, feels anger, hurt and hostility for being spurned. She tries harder, growing desperate and bitter as she seeks to prove to herself that she is more important than other things in his life. As football, his guy friends, work, cycling and other functions are chosen instead of more time with her, she feels that her gift of love is worthless. She will then begin a self destructive expression of her pain or an angry attack at him. Let’s take a closer look:

Sally has been active in her single life for years. Having recently opened to relationship, she love’s the closeness with Fred and surrendering to his will and desire. She also has a business to run, and many beautiful personas to tend that do not include Fred. She needs time and space to feel free.

She loves the sexy energy she feels when she says “yes” to one of his requests, so when he wants her to come over she says “yes.” She even offers to come earlier, suggesting she take her therapy session by cell phone from his house. But the truth is she will not feel as spacious or free to talk frankly in Fred's house as she will in hers. The resulting “closeness” will really be claustrophobia that creates distance. If she comes she will begin to associate the relationship with feeling constrained, obligated. She will come to resent it through her own inability to respect her own preferences and needs. At times the pleasure of surrender will offset this resentment. But if other parts of her life become constrained or do not receive their proper care, she will start to remember her single time with longing. The magic will fade. Not wanting to be the bad sport, she may continue to stick with it, seeking compensation for her sacrifices in covert ways. Fred knows this intuitively and so encourages her to stay home for her session and come over later. On the surface this is a message of distance. But deeper, by supporting Sally in honoring her desire for freedom, spaciousness and movement, he supports her in feeling safe to open her heart more when they are together. She comes to associate respect, freedom and being seen with love and their connection, breaking the pattern of resentment and sacrifice.

Many women have themselves and their man in a bind. Following an ineffective program to dis-respect their own needs and move in, they put the man in the role of either agreeing to cooperate with their violation of self and risk being blamed for her unhappiness, or respecting her deeper needs and rejecting her invitation, risking retaliation for her feelings of rejection.

Action: Give yourself the personal space to be all that you can and need to be. Own how much you can and cannot be with your partner in that context.

Contents

Cresting the Waves:

A guide to sailing through life on

Relation-Ships

Dane E. Rose