Authors: Steven Carter
Tags: #Self-Help, #General
“I never get to meet any of his friends.”
“There were incredible boundaries around sex.”
“He wouldn’t go on a vacation with me—ever.”
Often boundaries such as these exist from the beginning. Other times they are introduced gradually. The same person who has dated you every weekend for two years refuses to share a vacation or a holiday weekend. The same woman who has made mad, passionate love with you for over six months refuses to let you meet her family. The same man who has brought you into the inner world of his psyche severely restricts the amount of time you can spend together.
These boundaries usually feel unnatural because they don’t accurately reflect the emotional bond that exists between the couple. In a relationship with restrictive boundaries both partners are always conscious of the sensitive areas. The problem is that boundaries are a little too effective as a means of maintaining distance. They become like little land mines that stand between both partners, and the resentment and anger that are generated frequently destroy the relationship.
SEXUAL CONTROL/SEXUAL BOUNDARIES
“The first couple of months were great, and then he started having this desire problem.”
“We have wonderful sex, and then she doesn’t want me to spend the night.”
“He has all these silly rules. We can’t have sex on two consecutive days because that’s like being married.”
* * *
Commitmentphobia isn’t about sexual conquest for the sake of putting another notch in the belt. Yet sexual seduction often plays a key role in the way active avoiders attempt to establish control of the relationship. Sex can be used to establish intimacy, and it can also be used to avoid intimacy. Sex can bring a couple closer together or push them farther apart. In short, sex is probably the most effective way of controlling both intimacy and distance within a relationship.
At the beginning of a commitmentphobic relationship men and women with active conflicts tend to be overwhelmingly seductive, typically establishing an intense and frequently obsessive sexual involvement. This is not necessarily limited to the act of making love, although men and women with active conflicts are often stellar lovers. It is a romantic, fantasy-driven sexual connection that partners typically describe as obsessive.
The level of sexual interest and involvement usually stays relatively high until the person with active conflicts begins to feel stuck or trapped. Then we are sometimes reminded that there is another way to use sex to control a relationship: withholding it. Behaving in this way can create a huge obstacle on the path to commitment. And it’s deceptive, because it rarely appears to be motivated by commitment issues.
Withholding sexually can be far more complicated than “having a headache.” For example:
He or she may be highly seductive and yet unwilling or unable to be sexually engaged.
He or she may suddenly lose interest or “desire.”
He or she may place restrictions on frequency or duration or suddenly behave in a more repressed manner.
He or she may be unfaithful as a means of distancing a partner or reducing intimacy within the primary relationship.
He or she may begin to communicate sexual dissatisfaction.
Since this behavior usually reflects a major change in attitude, it typically causes the other partner to become extraordinarily anxious and insecure about the relationship. Remember that some of
the most powerful double messages in a commitmentphobic relationship revolve around sex.
Zack, thirty-three, describes a relationship in which a changed attitude toward sex presented an insurmountable boundary. You will also note that his story contains a great many sexual mixed messages.
“When Helene and I met, sex was definitely the major component in our relationship. The first three months we were together, the sex never stopped. I was traveling a lot at the time, and whenever I’d get back from the road, we couldn’t get enough of each other. Daytime, nighttime, my car, her car, my apartment, her apartment, the Jacuzzi, the bathtub, the floor, the kitchen counter. She wanted it more than I did—though I definitely did want it. That’s what made the whole thing seem so nuts.
“There was something else about her that was weird. She had this picture of some other guy on her bedside table. She would keep telling me that I was the best lover she ever had, so I asked her once why, if that was the case, did she keep some other guy’s picture there. She said she loved me, but she wouldn’t move his picture. It was almost as if she did it on purpose, to keep me on edge. When we made love in her bed, I would make her turn it toward the wall.
“The sex between us stopped being great almost from the moment that I stopped traveling. That’s when she stopped wanting it. First she said she was depressed. Then she said that her needs had changed, that sex wasn’t as important to her anymore. We went from making love every available moment to making love once a week, twice at the most.
“First I was sympathetic, then I got crazy. It made me want her so bad, it’s embarrassing to think about it. I would scream, I would beg, I would buy her presents like it was going out of style. Nothing worked. At one point I actually had to get her to make appointments to be with me for sex. Otherwise she would avoid it completely. I felt tortured. Sex became the focus of my day. My work came to a standstill.
“The pitiful part is that I didn’t need to have sex that much. I just couldn’t handle the change in her. I didn’t understand, and it made me a basket case. The only thing that had changed was my availability. Once I stopped traveling, I was there for her. Looking
back, I realize that was what had turned her off. She liked me better from a distance.”
INFIDELITY AS THE ULTIMATE METHOD OF GETTING “DISTANCE”
“We had incredible sex every day for three years, until one day he walked through the door and said the relationship was over because he was ‘in love’ with someone else. We haven’t seen each other since that day.”
“When she told me she had started sleeping with someone else, I couldn’t believe it. The chemistry between us was so thick, you could cut it. How could she do that? I don’t understand it.”
“I always thought that when people were unfaithful, it was because they were dissatisfied. I swear my boyfriend wasn’t dissatisfied. He couldn’t stay away from me. So why did he start sleeping with someone else?”
Infidelity is a common ingredient in relationships in which a true commitment has never been made. But in commitmentphobic relationships, even though there is no commitment, there is usually a tremendous amount of passion, intensity, and bonding. These feelings can be so strong that the faithful partner is stunned when he or she discovers that there has been a sexual betrayal. It’s like being poisoned by your soul mate. When so much has been shared, how could there be this level of betrayal? What do you think? How do you recover?
It probably doesn’t help the pain to know that your partner is out of control. The intimacy that existed between the two of you generated such overwhelming fear and anxiety that your partner had to do something to create more distance.
But knowing that doesn’t change the facts. Even if the relationship gets back together, you feel as if your sense of trust has been destroyed. What happened sits between the two of you like an enormous barrier. And what if the relationship ends? Suppose your partner leaves you for this new person. What then? You feel you can’t walk down the street without running into the two of them. You feel as though you can’t even phone your ex-lover
without worrying that you might hear that new person’s voice on the phone. Suddenly you become the outsider, and your lover is sharing all those special moments with someone else. The new person in your lover’s life has become more than just another human being. This new person has become an obstacle or a roadblock between you and the one you love. And that’s the whole point. It’s the ultimate way of creating distance. The ultimate boundary.
ANGER AS A DISTANCING TECHNIQUE
“He is the one who rejected me. He is the one who is making me unhappy. He is the one with the whole new life that doesn’t include me. So why is he so angry at me?”
“I told him that it doesn’t matter that we don’t get married right away. I still love him, and that we’ll work it out. But he’s hostile all the time. He’s getting what he says he wants, why is he annoyed all the time?”
“My wife started getting angry at me within months of our marriage. She’s always mad. She says I’m crowding her. I’m not doing anything except living in the same house.”
Sam, thirty-eight, has been in the same relationship for the last three years, and he has a great many feelings for Kathy, the woman with whom he is involved. He should; his ambivalence has created a situation in which she has put up with a great deal. The relationship is very sexual, very interdependent, and very complicated. Sam loves Kathy, but he is also very, very angry. This anger takes many forms. In his head he is usually either finding fault with Kathy or arguing with Kathy. His problem: In his words he feels “boxed in” and he would like to end the relationship.
What is the obstacle stopping Sam from doing this? According to Sam it’s Kathy, and the way he feels about her. The way Sam explains it, as crazy as it may sound, is that the woman he loves is standing between him and his freedom to pursue other women.
Sam can no longer properly evaluate what is going on. If Kathy makes him dinner, he thinks she is trying to trap him. If she buys him a present, he thinks she is trying to trap him. If she is unusually
nice, he thinks she is trying to manipulate him in order to trap him. Kathy can’t win. Because of the way Sam feels, everything makes him angry.
When those with commitment conflicts reach the point where they feel an inexplicable fury at their partners, it is a reflection of a clear-cut commitmentphobic response. Active avoiders can reach an extreme where all they can think about is how to “get out.” They feel so entrapped and so totally enmeshed in the relationship that they don’t know what to do. They are searching for the exit, and in the process of scrambling to find a way out, they can be cruel; they have little sensitivity left for their partner’s feelings. They know that their attitude and behavior are unreasonable, but they feel they can’t help it. In the meantime the anger serves another purpose. It is a means of further distancing and alienating their partner.
Anger sometimes surfaces in a rather peculiar form of behavior we call gaslighting. If you saw the film
Gaslight
, you will remember that Ingrid Bergman played a wife being driven mad by her husband, who keeps telling her that she is imagining things.
Gaslighting is a hostile way of making someone else assume responsibility for your feelings and your problems. It’s making someone else feel confused in order to achieve your own ends. It’s mean and it’s destructive.
Some people with commitment conflicts gaslight their partners because they can’t bear being so full of guilt. They want to end the relationship, but they want to shift the blame. They can’t assume responsibility, and they want to believe it’s not really their fault. If they can convince you (and themselves) that you have a problem, they don’t have to feel so bad about their own cruel behavior.
The story told to us by Gloria, forty-four, provides an excellent example of commitmentphobic “gaslighting”:
“Lennie swept me off my feet. From the minute we met, he told me I was his precious love. He thought everything I did was wonderful. I realized he was unrealistic, but we were both over forty, so I thought he must have some sense of what he was feeling. We got married within six months.
“By the time we were married a month, he was a changed person. He told me that he didn’t love me the way he once did because I was such a crummy housekeeper. I tried to point out to
him that he was being overly critical. I may not be the best housekeeper in the world, but I’m far from the worst. Besides we were both working—why didn’t he clean, or we could hire somebody. He couldn’t stop talking about my sloppiness as well as a whole bunch of other stuff that he said I did wrong.
“I realized that he was out of control, and I suggested that maybe he was having a reaction to living with me that had more to do with commitment than it did with dust. He told me that I was crazy, that I was the one with the problem, and that I was trying to drive him away. I wanted to go to couple’s therapy, but he would have none of it. Not only did he refuse to consider that he might have a problem, he refused to accept any responsibility around the house. He would come home at night and start examining surfaces looking for dirt or clutter. He was so mean. One night he called me a stupid, dirty bitch. I just started crying and asked him to leave. He said it was proof that I wanted to get rid of him all along.”
Some people with commitment conflicts truly believe their excuses, distortions, and manipulations. They’ve buried their ambivalence and their guilt about it, so they are genuinely unaware of what they are feeling. They don’t feel guilt, shame, or remorse. They feel anger. People like this are in deep denial. They are so cut off from their conflict, they don’t even realize they have a conflict. This makes them so convincing that it’s hard for anyone not to believe them. And that makes them truly dangerous.
There is no winning with someone who is in this kind of denial. Relationships with these people are confusing, frustrating, and hurtful. Healing only comes through recognition of what has really taken place.
The following statements are all examples of people who have been “gaslighted” by partners with serious commitment conflicts. Note the hostile twist to each ending:
“He did everything he could to put me over the edge. Then when I snapped, he told me he couldn’t spend time with someone who couldn’t control herself.”
“She did everything she could to make me jealous. Then when I lost it, she said she couldn’t stay with me because I was too jealous.”