Love, Intimacy and Relationship cont...

Vasu: My personal relationship journey has been one of having to look many times at the abandonment theme. The smallest instance where I do not loved, seen, contacted or responded to, can trigger very old and hurt feelings that are far in excess of the situation that is provoking them. It has taken a long time to be able to just ‘be’ with those feelings, comfort myself and not act out towards the other. In one of my relationships, my partner was always busy working and engaged with other things, so he was not really available emotionally.  I felt that I was not a priority.

For a while I handled it, telling myself that it would change, but when it did not, I found myself feeling deprived, not valued and agitated. Being unable to contain my feelings and be self sufficient, I would find myself becoming demanding and reactive. And internally I felt very dependant, a place of at times of desperate wanting and needing that is very painful and somewhat shameful even. I could actually remember feeling that way around my father
 
Craig: My personal relationship journey has been much more about dealing with the opposite fear, which is the feeling of engulfment or invasion. While I had needs for love and intimacy like anybody else, I would find that once I had drawn my partner close to me things began to turn. When I sensed she had needs and expectations of me, or was getting too emotionally close, then a deep sense of overwhelm and  suffocation would arise within me. I felt trapped, but felt ‘obliged‘ to be there for her, unable to say a clear “no” or express my needs. In fact, in the face of my partner’s needs, I often couldn’t feel my own needs at all. At times it even felt physically as though there was not enough air to breathe when close to her. I began idealising ‘freedom’, either creating activities outside the relationship to which I could escape or walling myself off from my partner when close with her. I felt overly reactive to my partner, cut off from myself and closed to the love and intimacy I deeply yearned for.

We call the person with the abandonment wound the dependent and the person with the engulfment fear the anti dependent and although we have both within us, there tends to be in our significant relationships, a predominance for one style over the other. But whichever style we use, both parties are trying to make themselves more secure. The dependent feels safe if they can trust that they wont be left and the anti dependent feels safe if they know they wont lose their freedom or autonomy. We all need to feel safe because when we open our hearts to another we allow ourselves to be very vulnerable. The pain of abandonment or sense of disrespect that comes when we feel our boundaries have been violated can be devastating.

There is unfortunately a current trend in our culture now that  says by now we should be done with dealing with our childhood wounds, that it is all so passé.
From what we have observed in ourselves and in our clients, it is  without a doubt that relationships (especially when they are not going well) have the power to vibrate our deep childhood wounds, needs and reactive behaviours.
 
If we know that, we have a head start, but usually this goes on within us in some unconscious way and what we feel is either depressed, irritated or anxious. We often do not quite know how to decode these messages and to get to sense our underlying reality.  To make things worse we often try to deal with this by addictively turning to some kind of substance or behaviour to handle this emotional numbness or discomfort.