He's Scared, She's Scared: Understanding the Hidden Fears That Sabotage Your Relationships (24 page)

Some people create distance by hiding in their offices and “getting lost in their work” or by seeking out relationships with other workaholics. Others hide out at the gym or on the golf course or in the basement with their stamp collection. Some people create obstacles that limit relationships: They may have schedules that limit their availability or seek people who do the same; they may have needs that limit their availability—sleep requirements, dietary requirements, and so on; they may always have more than one romantic interest or find partners with other romantic entanglements; they may exclude their partners from certain key areas in their lives. Whatever the choice, it accomplishes the same thing: distance.

Psychological boundaries can also give commitmentphobes the distance they need. Perhaps they erect emotional walls or seek
partners with emotional walls; they may use language that is intentionally distancing; they may withhold sexually; they may find fault with their partners, creating distance in their minds and in the minds of their partners; they may flirt or fantasize about having other partners; they may find partners they can never completely trust to be faithful.

LOOKING FOR SPACE

Here are two examples of people who are struggling with the need to distance their partners:

“I love my husband. Honest. But I can’t stand having him in my kitchen. It makes me want to kill. The kitchen is my space.”

—JANE, thirty-seven

“My wife has the damnedest habit. Whenever I’m watching the news on television, she comes and sits next to me. I don’t like it. I don’t know why, but when I’m watching television, I want her to stay away, at least twelve feet or so. Otherwise I’m uncomfortable.”

—ALAN, thirty-nine

Everyone has physical and psychological boundaries that they prefer not to have crossed. To make things even more complicated, these boundaries fluctuate. The same person who craves closeness one moment is nowhere to be found the next. The man or woman who spends an ardent weekend in bed with a lover may feel an overwhelming need to spend the next two weeks alone. All of us are constantly regulating our space, both physical and psychological. It is part and parcel of being a territorial animal. Some, however, take this to extremes.

Men and women with commitment conflicts can be unusually sensitive to their own needs for space and have far greater requirements than your average Joe or Joan. Ongoing physical closeness makes them uncomfortable, nonstop emotional closeness makes them feel put upon. Hence they are often “space talking”: “I need my space,” “I need
more
space (room, time),” “You don’t give me any space (room, time) for myself,” “Don’t crowd
me.” These phrases may sound like tired clichés, but the feelings expressed are usually genuine and heartfelt.

Some people can’t handle
any
intrusion into their physical or emotional territory; everything feels like a violation of their boundaries. Many of these people manage to make their feelings known. Others feel almost as uncomfortable, but they don’t articulate it. Still others are highly sensitive to having their space “invaded,” but they aren’t really aware of what’s happening. They experience their discomfort as some kind of low-level anxiety or mild annoyance for which they can’t find a cause. All of these people may put up with their discomfort for the sake of having a relationship, although their feelings may resurface as anger or resentment.

Vicki, a self-employed public relations consultant, exhibits just about every symptom associated with commitment anxiety, but she is most sensitive to her need for space. At thirty-eight Vicki has been married twice. She says that she finds men in the nineties too “needy” and that this makes it difficult for her to sustain a relationship.

We interviewed Vicki in the large two-family house she shares with her sister in northern California. She occupies one five-room apartment, her sister the other. Because of the proximity, and because it’s her sister, she considers this a roommate situation. She says:

“I know I can’t handle too much intimacy. With my sister in the upstairs apartment, we never get in each other’s way, and we each have our own place. But it’s nice knowing she’s there if I really want someone to talk to.

“I don’t ever again want to have a man living in a place that I consider my house. Let him live in his own. Maybe he’ll have a boat—let him live in his boat. When somebody’s around, I start to get crazy. That’s just the way I am.”

Years of trying to relate in a more traditional fashion have convinced Vicki that she needs to have her own place in order to have a relationship.

“Unless I stay centered, I can’t give anything to a relationship, and I can’t stay centered unless I’m alone a great deal of the time. The man I’m seeing now wants to be with me all the time, and I keep telling him that doing that makes me crazy. I need to read
my
books, listen to
my
music, have
my own
peace. I have to do that. Maybe some people can be with someone else all the time and stay centered. Some people can be tied down. I can’t.”

In terms of her work Vicki also resents feeling tied down. She feels she is a workaholic, but she can’t work on any set schedule.

“That’s one of the reasons why I prefer being in business for myself. In fact that’s how I got successful. When I worked for somebody else, I felt like a caged animal, like a lion in a cage. I can’t bear being confined in an office or to a routine. That’s why I went out on my own.”

Despite her problems in relationships Vicki has never really been without one. Her first marriage took place when she was twenty-two. She says:

“The day after the wedding I panicked. I woke up and I simply panicked. I said I have to go home to my parents, and that’s what I did—drove to the airport and got on a plane to my parents’ house, twenty-five hundred miles away. I stayed with my parents about a month before they talked me into going back to my husband.

“Don’t get me wrong. I really liked my husband; we were great friends. I just discovered I was unhappy sharing space.” At first Vicki was able to handle her feelings because she and her husband were fortunate enough to find an unusually large house.

“It had about twenty rooms, and we used every bit of it. My husband also needed a lot of space because he had different interests. We each had lots of little rooms. I had a room to read in; he had a room to read in. I had a room to watch television in; he had a room to watch television in. We never had to be together. But separation of course makes you grow apart, and that’s what we did. Anyway we lost the lease on the house, and eventually we got divorced.”

Within a few years Vicki married again.

“Both times I got married, I knew it wasn’t going to be forever. With my second husband I said, ‘Let’s get married so we can end this relationship.’ Some relationships you have to take full cycle, and this was definitely one of them. We were very much in love, but I knew it wasn’t going to last. We were married for two years.”

Vicki says that before marriage the relationship wasn’t confining because they kept breaking up with each other. For example,
he would start seeing someone else, or she would. Or she would stop paying attention to him, or he would do something to “push her buttons.” She found the “on and off” quality very “comfortable.”

When Vicki and her second husband moved into an apartment together, that made the marriage all the more difficult. To compensate for the lack of space, she started devising little gimmicks that would make her feel more as though she were alone.

“I felt smothered; I couldn’t breathe. I told my husband how much I hated it and how much I hated coming home. In fact I tried to stay away as much as possible. When I did come home, I would make him sit around the house, poor guy, with headphones on while he was watching television so I could feel like he wasn’t there. The only way I could stay calm is if I could forget that he was there. People thought I was crazy because I made my husband sit around with headphones on. But after a while he stopped minding it. The really bad thing is that my husband started liking the feeling of being alone. He stopped wanting to talk to me or spend time with me.” Even when we went out to dinner, he started taking his headphones with him—so he could listen to the radio. It turned very crazy.”

After the marriage ended, Vicki found herself remembering how it was with her second husband when they were just going together and breaking up at regular intervals.

“I liked that—so I began looking for the same kind of relationship with a different man. I decided the answer was distance. I found a man who lived in Denver. That way I wouldn’t get into the emotional traumas that come with closeness. For a while it was great. We would meet in New Mexico or Europe or Canada. All romance. But it didn’t last.”

Recently Vicki’s current love interest insisted that she take a vacation with him. After much resistance she agreed to a short trip, even though she feared that she would start feeling smothered. When they got to the chosen spot, she discovered that he had rented a country property with two houses:

“I was thrilled. We used both houses. One I used as my very own. I would go there to be alone and relax in. I thought that maybe this could be a solution to my problems. Maybe this is the way I could live with a man. In two houses on the same property.
If they were both big and beautiful, it might work. It’s an idea, no?”

If you are thoroughly sensitized to your need for space, life is not easy. If someone uses your towel, it makes you uncomfortable. If anyone borrows something without telling you, it makes you nuts. If they rearrange the refrigerator, it’s grounds for murder. Of course you may have control issues as well as commitment conflicts. When that is the case, the combination produces such feelings of rage and resentment that it’s often impossible to stay with any one partner for very long.

Close, but not too close. Far, but not too far. People like this want to be near the ones they love, but they also want to be alone. They want a relationship, they just don’t want to have to relate. Not all the time anyway. And certainly not in shared space.

NEEDING DISTANCE/NEEDING INTIMACY/NEEDING CONTROL

It’s also important to look at the need to maintain distance from a slightly different perspective: gaining control and losing control. Men and women with commitment conflicts are often control freaks. In order to regulate distance and intimacy, they need to control much of what goes on in a relationship, including their feelings and the feelings of their partners. There is too much at stake if they can’t. The need to control distance, and consequently the amount of intimacy in a relationship, is very much part of the push-pull dynamic of a commitmentphobic relationship.

In the beginning of a relationship both partners are strangers, and the bond is fragile. Without control, lovers can feel that they are on pins and needles the entire time. They’re lost and unsure of where they stand. This may sometimes be fun and exciting, but it’s also frightening. Typically this is the point at which someone with active conflicts begins to do everything possible to get some sense of control. Intimate letters, gifts, phone calls, sex, words of love—whatever it takes to know that this other person could be yours, should you want it that way.

Being in control affords the active partner the luxury of scrutinizing the relationship. He or she can think,
I don’t like this, I’m not attracted to that, I’m not sure about this, I’m not wild about that. What will
this be like in a year … five years … ten years … fifty years?
Assured of control, it is easy to find three thousand reasons that the relationship ultimately won’t work.

What happens when the relationship feels too close and one partner needs to create distance? That depends on how much distance is needed. But it can be extremely destructive when one partner wants to build a relationship and all the other wants to build is a wall.

For the active partner there is of course always the risk of creating too much distance because if your partner responds by pulling away, you may discover that distance makes your heart grow fonder. Without the ax poised right above your head, the relationship looks a lot more appealing. You start seeing your partner in a very different light, appreciating everything about him or her instead of obsessing about everything that is missing. You realize how much you care. You realize how special your partner is and how comforting the relationship is. Naturally these feelings draw you closer.

If only it stopped here. But it almost never does. Instead this is usually just the first of an endless series of backing-and-forthing. It’s always too close or too far, and you’re always trying to make adjustments in one direction or the other, always trying to balance fear and longing. Controlling the relationship becomes a full-time job, with no rest for the weary. It’s more stressful than controlling air traffic at JFK. Very few people do a good job. Most swing from one extreme to another. They get close until they can’t stand it anymore, then they run away or force their partners to run away till the distance is unbearable. By the time they’ve finished, the relationship is a shambles, and no one has escaped tremendous pain. Maybe they don’t lose their freedom, but they definitely lose.

BOUNDARIES FROM DAY ONE

Setting up and maintaining boundaries are the primary ways in which people with commitment conflicts keep their distance. For example:

“He never let me meet his mother.”

“She wouldn’t go to parties with me. At first I thought it was because she was shy, but soon I realized that she didn’t want to go public with me.”

“She wouldn’t spend the night in my apartment.”

“He took me out every other Saturday night, and every Wednesday—never any other time.”

“He wouldn’t spend holidays with me.”

“A year into the relationship she still wouldn’t let me buy her dinner because she said it might obligate her into a commitment.”