Authors: Dusty Miller
He looked back at me in astonishment. “How could she leave?” he asked. “My mother was a good Catholic woman. Nobody in my family ever got divorced. It just wasn’t an option.”
It became clearer and clearer that at the very core of Andrew’s being, there was still a frightened child afraid to be trapped as his mother and his father had been. On an unconscious level, he believed that if he just kept moving fast enough he would not end up in a loveless prison.
Chris’s Story
Chris, on the other hand,was very conscious of how negative her parents’ marriage had beenand how their conflicts had led to their inevitable divorce.She thought she had found an escape hatch by partnering with a gentle, nurturing woman, but, in fact, Chris had entered the same unhappy prison of a conflicted relationship. Her refusals to communicate her feelings directly was just another route to an unhappy relationship. She and Beth were almost as miserable as her parents had been, even if she couldn’t see that at first.
In couples therapy, Chris resisted comparing her ten-year relationship with Beth to her parents’ marriage, which had finally culminated in a bitter divorce. “I’m not getting where you’re going with this,” she said to me indignantly. “My parents were so unhappy, they got a divorce. Beth and I have made our relationship work for ten years. There’s not really anything that wrong with us. We don’t even fight! My parents were always yelling at each other. You just don’t get it!”
After a few more frustrating couples therapy sessions, Beth began to fear that she and Chris were headed down the same road that Chris’s parents had taken. Beth said, “If Chris doesn’t learn how to open up with me, I don’t know if I can stick around much longer. It might be better if we did a little yelling ourselves—at least there would be some emotions in the room. Now, it’s like we’re living in an isolation tank or something with no color and no sound.”
Chris would remain stuck in an emotional twilight zone until she became able to see where her fear of conflict had begun.
Inadequate Parents and Caregivers
Many distancers grew up with parents or other caregivers who were impaired by substance abuse, mental disorders, physical illnesses, or personality problems that caused them to be very self-centered, needy, or wildly unpredictable. The impact of such impairment on children can appear to be quite diverse, but most children raised by inadequate parents become adults with deeply entrenched fears of becoming stuck in a permanent caretaker role. Or they engage in excessive caretaking to the detriment of all other aspects of their adult relationships.
Ben’s Story
Ben couldn’t get really close to a partner without quickly becoming overwhelmed by his ambivalence and his need to flee. He was the older son of an unhappy, needy mother, and an absent, workaholic father. His younger brother had struggled with serious mental illness throughout hislife, and avoided most opportunities for intimacy. Ben had been deeply affected by the emptiness of his parents’ marriage.
Ben’s mother had lived vicariously through Ben for as long as he could remember. She suffered from chronic disappointment and dissatisfaction in her marriage, as well as most aspects of her life. Because Ben’s father was unavailable due to his workaholism, Ben’s mother sought to meet her emotional needs through her bond with Ben and his younger brother.
“I never felt that I had a life of my own,” Ben says, describing his mother’s hunger to be included in all aspects of her older son’s existence. “She needed me to experience everything that she couldn’t have for herself, so I always felt the pressure to be out there in the world living life for her. But at the same time, I was always getting the message to never leave her.”
Needless to say, Ben lacked any opportunity to observe a close loving relationship between two adults. He described feeling suffocated at times by his mother’s emotional needs. His response, over time, had been to pull back each time he started to get close to a potential partner. In this way, he avoided the possibility of anyone needing him, threatening to suffocate him, or trying to take over his life. His ambivalence for each new partner, enacted by always finding flaws that allowed him to escape, was a continuing act of loyalty and submission to his mother. By never really committing to a relationship, Ben never left his mother for another woman.
Julie’s Story
Julie, the young woman who avoids relationships entirely, traces the roots of her distancing back to the shame she felt because her mother was severely depressed when she was a child. Julie had learned to stay distant from others because she was working overtime to conceal her mother’s emotional disorder. Living in a childhood emotional fortress constructed by shame, she didn’t have the opportunity to practice normal boundary-setting around the issues of closeness and distance. Her adult choice to continue walling herself off from close relationships is rooted both in shame and fear.
Colin’s Story
Colin, the alcoholic lawyer who drives women away, can’t stop sabotaging his intimate relationships. His alcoholism is certainly a precipitating factor in his failed romances, but it is a symptom rather than the root of the problem. Colin’s childhood helps to explain why he is so dramatically split between the kindness and generosity his colleagues and clients see and the harsh, raging behavior he exhibits in intimate relationships.
Colin was the casualty of a rejecting mother and a passive, helpless father. He may have been an only child, but Colin was not the stereotypical little prince cherished by adoring parents. He was an unwanted and unloved child whose mother let him know that he was the cause of her ruined life. She had been in her first year of nursing school when she accidentally conceived Colin in a one-night fling with his father, a retail store manager she’d met at a bar. She never allowed Colin or his father to forget how her life had been derailed by Colin’s arrival.
His mother’s self-centered lack of affection for Colin was to some extent mediated by his father who was genuinely fond of his son. Unfortunately, his father was thoroughly intimidated by his wife’s angry, contemptuous attitude toward him and his son. Colin grew up to be as harsh and contemptuous toward the women in his life as his mother had been toward him and his father.
Although Colin admits he can see the connection between his sarcasm and hostility and the way he was treated as a child, he has not yet been able to end his cycle of relational misery. It is interesting that his best characteristics come into play at his job. As a successful attorney, he has made something of himself through his work, accomplishing more than either his father or mother could.
Childhood Losses
Loss can have as much of an impact on children as abuse or neglect. Traumatic losses can include the death or disappearance of a parent (or primary caregiver); the loss of home or community, which occurs when children are removed from their parents; or losses caused by economic circumstances, natural disasters, political upheavals, or war. Less dramatic, but nonetheless significant, losses can have a lifetime impact on the child who loses a special role in the family when a younger sibling comes along, or when stepchildren join the family. Childhood losses can easily go underground, yet they can become major causes of troubled relationships in adult life.
Diego and Luisa
Even though Diego and Luisa may seem to be very different in their distancing patterns, they shared the experience of having gone through major childhood losses.
Luisa’s losses were much more visible than Diego’s. She had grown up in Cuba, but when her parents emigrated to the United States, she lost her country, her language, her community, her childhood home, and her culture. Unlike many other Cuban exiles, Luisa’s family did not relocate to a community of other Cuban exiles. Instead, they moved to Massachusettswhere they experienced profound cultural alienation.
Luisa’s parents taught her to look down on everyone in their predominantly Puerto Rican community, and she experienced rejection by the Anglo children who dominated the private Catholic school she attended. Luisa became very cautious and controlled in everything she did, trying to hold on to whatever she could, to give herself a marginal sense of security.
Diego was more fortunate in his community surroundings. Although his young, single mother was very poor, Diego felt at home in his neighborhood and extended family. His loss occurred suddenly, as the result of what would seem to be a nontraumatic natural event. When he was six, his mother gave birth to his younger sister, Lourdes, and Diego’s life turned upside down. He had been the center of his mother’s attention for every minute he could remember of his first six years; he had felt completely loved and adored. When he was suddenly displaced by his sister, the intruder, he was devastated.
Due to the overwhelming stresses of poverty, Diego’s mother had been unable to make the transition from adored only child to mere older brother less traumatic for her six-year-old son. Baby Lourdes had required extra care because she was a poor eater, poor sleeper, and, generally, just a very sensitive infant. Diego had experienced a sense of crushing abandonment and emptiness where there had always been boundless maternal attention and affection.
He became convinced that he was defective in some profound way. His childhood loss became the wound that fueled his adult need for emotional reassurance and sexual healing. Once the honeymoon phase with Luisa ended, he felt abandoned and rejected once again, without really understanding where these feelings had originated.
Luisa’s distancing, through her need to keep emotions tightly wrapped, led her to require her marriage to remain very tightly controlled and orderly. Diego’s emotional volatility disturbed her and seemed unmanly. They became as estranged as if they were from two different planets.
Danny’s Story
Danny, the talented science-fiction writer, suffered a traumatic loss when his mother died while he was only twelve. He was a lost adolescent with no one available to take the place of his warm, loving mother. His older brother and his father were too wounded by their own loss to be able to help him. He retreated from close relationships, and found comfort in the science-fiction world he created. On the surface he seemed surprisingly resilient, enjoying precocious success at fifteen when he published his first sci-fi story. He published his first science-fiction novel when he was twenty-five and the second one a few years later.
Danny was not only a successful writer, he was also handsome, charming, and happy in the company of his friends, his father, and his brother. His loneliness was hidden at a deep level where he longed for a fulfilling, passionate relationship. He had dated the same woman for several years, but never quite managed to spend enough time with her to deepen their connection. Sex was fun, but infrequent. They’d never discussed living together, and often went weeks at a time without seeing each other. As gifted as he was, Danny was clueless about how to change his life and equally clueless about the roots of his distancing.
Neglect, the Hidden Culprit
Neglect is manifested by the absence of parental love, attention, or caretaking. There are many forms of childhood neglect. The failure to attend to a child’s emotional life is a form of neglect that is far too common. Neglect can and does occur in very rich families, as well as in families that are overwhelmed by poverty.
Too often, childhood neglect is overlooked as a very important contributor to chronic problems in adult life. Whether it’s discussed on a talk show or in a psychotherapy office, childhood abuse tends to get everyone’s attention. However, there are many people who were as deeply wounded by various forms of childhood neglect as the survivors of childhood abuse were, but this kind of childhood pain is generally not perceived as traumatic. In my work with people who struggle with addictions, compulsions, and self-sabotaging relationships, I’ve seen that the neglect factor can play a major role in their current challenges.
Janine’s Story
Janine’s childhood was one, long continuous experience of never being supported or viewed as a valuable, lovable person. She grew up with her mother and her mother’s series of boyfriends as the fifth of six siblings. She was close to her younger sister, but her older siblings had survived their childhoods by being out of the home as much as possible. Janine had suffered the neglect of not being given the attention a child needs to develop self-esteem and the sense of being loved. She also received very little support in learning how to care for her body, or help with developing the skills necessary for self-protection.
Janine’s experience of pervasive neglect was clearly amplified by the trauma of being raped. Her way of internalizing the neglect was to become very isolated and to try to soothe and comfort herself through overeating. Both her isolation and her food addiction kept her in a distancing pattern until she began to share some of herself in the women’s group.
Sally’s Story
Sally was astonished when I suggested to her in our therapy sessions that she had been traumatized by childhood neglect. I explained to her that I thought she had been emotionally neglected. She shook her head and looked at me warily. “I think you must be thinking of another client,” she said.
I assured Sally that I was remembering her descriptions of childhood. “I think you were neglected, Sally,” I continued gently. “The neglect took place during the years when your parents were always moving your family; when sometimes your father suddenly made a lot of money, and then the next month he had to sell all the furniture in the house to make ends meet. Also, I think you were neglected when your mother was physically ill so often, and when your younger sister’s emotional problems became your problem. I don’t think there was much time or space for you to get the adult love and attention every child needs.”
“But I always knew my parents loved me,” Sally countered. “It was chaotic and unpredictable, but I had enough to eat, I had nice clothes, I had a home. I was part of a close, loving family. How could I have been neglected?”