Stop Running from Love: Three Steps to Overcoming Emotional Distancing and Fear of Intimacy (21 page)

For most fearful and shy distancers, things may not go quite as smoothly as they did for Janine. Here are a few tips to help you keep going:

• Give yourself permission to go as slowly as you want. You can think for weeks about who you want to approach before you act on your idea. And once you start initiating contact with other single people, don’t feel that you have to turn it into a full-time activity. Pace yourself. Take the time to enjoy the small successes when they happen and to heal from the disappointments that may also occur.
  
• Try to line up a “coach” from among your support people, someone who can persuade you to keep going when you want to give up. Make sure you call your coach when you’re going to initiate contact with someone special. Also make a plan to talk to your coach as soon as possible after you’ve met this person, e-mailed, gone out with him or her, or whatever. Your coach doesn’t really have to tell you what to do. What you need is someone to remind you that you’re doing great and to just keep going and trust yourself.
  
• Don’t put all your eggs into one basket. You will very likely have to try making connections with a number of people before you find someone you really like, that special person with whom you share compatibility and a mutual attraction. This is when it will be helpful to remember that you’re engaging in an experiment. First-time success is not that likely, but everything you try out to practice your new skills will provide you with useful information.
  
• Don’t evaluate the new relationship or the person too quickly. Remember that you are probably also looking for any excuse to go back to the safety of your single safe life. Give yourself enough time and information about any new people to be absolutely sure before you cross them off your list of possibilities.
  
• Don’t settle for someone you don’t feel really comfortable with just to have a relationship. You’ve waited quite a while to approach this world of intimacy, so take your time. Trust yourself to know when a relationship feels really good to you. And keep using your support people to help you with this. They can help you determine what’s working in your new relationship and what’s not.
  
• Listen to the other person’s fears, doubts, and hesitations. This is an important part of beginning a new relationship. You may not be the only distancer in this couple. Don’t get defensive and give up if the other person doesn’t jump into a relationship with you immediately. But don’t run away either.
  

The Defended Distancer Opens the Door

If you are currently single, and you identify yourself as a defended distancer, let’s first take a look at what you might want to consider doing. This time around you have a much better chance of starting a relationship that just might work out for you. You can begin by doing the following exercise. It will help you move mindfully toward the person who would be right for you. When you can hold a picture in your mind of who you want to be and what kind of person would make you feel most fully present and healthy, this exercise will help you connect with that person.

Exercise

Visualizing Your Ideal Relationship

Give yourself enough time and space to do this exercise. Make sure you won’t be distracted or interrupted for at least thirty minutes. Choose a comfortable place to sit, and if it helps you to stay relaxed and to focus, use some background music or sounds from nature, such as ocean waves or birdsongs.

Now give yourself the instruction to visualize yourself with someone who could be that special person you’ve been hoping for. Picture the two of you doing a routine, simple task together. It could be any kind of activity a couple who’ve been together for a while might do, like shopping for groceries, having dinner, watching a video, or taking a walk. Try not to become preoccupied with what this person looks like; instead, concentrate on how the two of you interact with each other.

Your answers to the following questions will help you fill in some important details of the picture you are creating in your mind of yourself and this other person:

• How does this person make you feel?
  
• Can you imagine yourself and this person hanging out with some of the important people in your life? Do they like him/her?
  
• What would it be like to just relax with this person? Do you feel safe, comfortable? Is either one of you trying to make the other happy? Can you picture yourself telling him/her some of your most cherished dreams/memories? Can you see yourselves laughing together?
  
• Can you imagine telling this person that you need some “alone” time for yourself and having that need be okay for each of you?
  
• Can you picture the two of you together when you’re older? Can you imagine being there for this person when he/she is sick in bed with a bad cold and in a foul mood?
  
• Can you imagine listening to the details of this person’s daily life? Do you think he/she would be interested in hearing about your daily life?
  

Spend at least thirty minutes exploring this fantasy and take as much additional time as you might want to do it. Then, in your journal, write a few notes about your visualization. Make time to share your fantasy with someone in your support circle, and be honest about what you learned from doing this exercise.

Making Your Game Plan

Now it’s time to make a plan that will help you find the kind of person you’ve been picturing. Consider your usual pattern of getting into a relationship for a while. Try to avoid your old pitfalls, like seeking out partners based on their glamour or success or dazzle power. Where could you find someone who would be most likely to have the personality and the kind of interests you visualized in the “ideal couple” exercise above? What kinds of shared interests might bring you together?

After you finish all this work, relax. Sometimes you just can’t know for sure what will turn out to be the right door for you to open. Jack’s story illustrates how a twist of fate can lead to a welcome surprise.

Jack and Celia’s Story

Jack was all too aware of his tendency to pursue unavailable women. So he decided to take it easy and wait for someone just to happen across his path in the new life he had chosen to live after he quit his job at the university. He fantasized the woman he hoped to meet might be another artist, someone he might even meet in the building where he was renting studio space.

He was taking care of a friend’s dog for a week and enjoying the walks they took together beside the river near his condo. One day, from out of nowhere, a large rambunctious puppy appeared on the path and began trying to play with Jack’s dog. His dog growled menacingly, but the puppy continued to bounce joyfully around the older dog. Jack became annoyed. Where was this puppy’s owner?

A woman came trotting along the path, breathlessly calling out to the puppy. “Wally!” she shouted, “come here!” She apologized to Jack as she rescued his dog from her puppy’s rapturous overtures. “I’m so sorry,” she said, “he’s still a puppy and he got away from me just now. I hope you and your dog are okay.”

Jack reassured her that his canine companion was an old codger who no longer enjoyed the attentions of young dogs. He thought no more about the woman and her dog, but the following day they met again on the river path, this time without their dogs. They walked along together a little way until they came to the spot where they both had parked their cars. To Jack’s consternation, he discovered he must have dropped his car keys somewhere along the path. He was going to be late for a meeting with a gallery owner, a woman he knew to be difficult. Jack’s new walking companion offered to give him a lift to his appointment. She insisted on waiting for him while he met with “She-who-must-be-obeyed” (as Jack called the gallery owner), and then drove him back to the path where they soon found his lost keys.

Jack didn’t know that he was at the beginning of a new friendship with Celia, another distancer, whom you met in chapter 1. (Remember? Celia had been so busy with her real estate business that she never had time for a relationship.) When they met, Celia was trying to change her life to make room for relationships, so it was a lucky coincidence that she met Jack when she did. Ordinarily, the last thing she would’ve done was to make time to help someone in the middle of her busy workday. But the new Celia was en route to leaving loneliness behind, so she took the time to help Jack.

Jack was intrigued by Celia. She seemed to him to have an openness that was unusual in his experience of women. They ended up talking for a long time, comparing notes on self-employment and the creative life.

One thing led to another. Jack and Celia eventually became lovers, each finding new ways to be present in the relationship. They agreed they were content to continue living apart, and to honor the time each needed separate from their couple relationship. Celia was able to continue spending the time needed to keep her business going, but she and Jack talked on the phone and e-mailed each other between their times together. Jack discovered that he was no longer compelled to be the pursuer, but neither was he being rejected. Celia was very warm and loving, and the time she wanted to spend with him was always freely given. What was especially notable was that, as Celia remained available and loving, Jack didn’t pull away, as he would have done previously.

Monitoring Relational Problem Areas

Whether you are currently single, or trying to change your patterns of defended distancing in a current relationship, there are several important areas to monitor if you want to walk into the sunset with a loved one this time around.

Send the Right Signals

It’s critically important for you to notice what kind of signals or messages you’re sending the person you’re just inching toward or getting involved with. Are you promising more availability than you actually will be able to deliver? Do you appear to be confident and relationally relaxed when in fact you’re struggling with your fear of intimacy? It’s important to be as open with your partner as is possible this time.

Ben’s Story

When Ben was ready to approach a new relationship with the still-deepening understanding of himself as a defended distancer, he began to be more honest with the women he was seeing.

At first, he was overwhelming in his determination to show all his relational cards. He spent one entire evening telling someone he had just met about his efforts to stop promising what he had trouble delivering. He went into painful detail about the women he had previously harmed through his lack of honesty about his ambivalence and fear of commitment. The woman never went out with him again, and she refused to answer his phone calls. He learned from a mutual acquaintance that she had referred to him as “that nutball.” After that painful experience, Ben began to be more careful about his degree of self-disclosure.

Ben was learning to pay attention to what he heard himself promising. Whenever he had doubts about the likelihood of his following through on plans, commitments, or emotional sharing, he would stop himself and take some time to rethink what he was communicating. If he had blundered and promised more than was comfortable for him, he learned to apologize but to also clarify what was realistic for him.

Guidelines for Self-Awareness

Ben gave himself three guidelines to follow. They also may be helpful for you. When in doubt, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Am I communicating what I really want to offer, or am I promising something I think the other person wants from me?
   
2. Am I being honest in general about the person I “advertise” myself as being?
   
3. Am I being honest with myself?
   

Slowing Down Your Inner Judge

Keep your tendency to look for imperfection in check by monitoring your critical, evaluative voice. That is, don’t jump too quickly to evaluate the other person or the relationship. Remind yourself that you may not be evaluating correctly because of your fear of being hurt, suffocated, or disappointed. Work on staying as open as you can for as long as you can.

People rarely give you an accurate sense of who they truly are at first. Most people either overplay certain characteristics or disguise themselves in the nervous start-up of a new relationship. Almost all people turn out to be more complicated than their initial presentation of themselves once you get to know them better.

Holding Your Ground

You know that part of your pattern as a defended distancer is to have one foot out the door when you’re getting close to someone. You are poised for flight. You zoom in and out of an intimate relationship like a wild creature snatching morsels of food before fleeing to safety. This time around, though, you are going to practice keeping your seat. This will work best if you target small situations or interactions where you will stay with what’s happening longer than you would have in the past.

Gradually, you’ll become able to increase your steadiness for longer amounts of time, and to extend your steady presence, even in the face of more intense relational demands. Just keep telling yourself that you can get through your panic and desire to flee. You may need to reassure yourself that if the situation were to become truly threatening to your mental health and emotional safety, you would know enough to get out.

Danny’s Story

Danny, the young science-fiction writer, was relatively oblivious to the fear and anxiety that permeated his relationship with his girlfriend Roxy. He kept a chasm of emotional distance between the two of them without recognizing how careful he was to keep himself safe from loss. Anytime things began to get a bit more serious between them, Danny used a plausible excuse to leave for a while. Roxy was too afraid of losing him or scaring him off to call him on his flight pattern.

It was Danny’s older brother who finally got through to him. Nick waited for Danny to finish explaining why he and Roxy weren’t going away for the weekend as they’d planned to do. Nick shook his head at his brother, while telling him, “Danny, you’re full of it! You do this every time you and Roxy start to get closer. You’ve cancelled so many trips with her I don’t know why she keeps on seeing you. What’s up with you?”