He's Scared, She's Scared: Understanding the Hidden Fears That Sabotage Your Relationships (44 page)

Don’t Try to Prove Your Worthiness

When the one you love is ambivalent, it may seem perfectly normal to do everything you can to prove that you are the right choice, the perfect choice. Don’t. Don’t try to show that you are more sexual, smarter, wiser, kinder, more generous, more giving or more worthy than any other potential partner. Your partner’s conflict has nothing to do with your value as a human being or a mate.

Maintain Your Own Boundaries and Work on Building Your Own Life

If your partner starts withholding by erecting boundaries to closeness, there is a tremendous temptation to try to break these barriers down with arguments, tears, logic, or love. This response
typically creates more anxiety. Instead of thinking about what your partner is withholding, concentrate on finding other interests and other ways of enjoying life.

You have to construct a full life that provides an emotional safety net for you if this relationship doesn’t work out. Maintain your own boundaries and work at building a life without this person. For some people this means starting to date. Many women, however, say they’re not ready or they don’t have the opportunity to meet potential new partners immediately and that this is not an option for them. We recognize the difficulties involved, particularly when you’re in love with someone. Nonetheless you can start doing what is necessary to get yourself into a different frame of mind and different social arena. You have to start somewhere, so start.

Don’t Let Your Self-esteem Suffer from Your Partner’s Ambivalence

Your partner may be finding fault with you. Your partner may be less attentive, phoning less often, seeing you less often. You may get the sense that your partner is thinking about someone else. This kind of behavior can have a serious effect on your self-esteem.

Recognize that your partner’s behavior is typical of someone with commitment conflicts and don’t allow yourself to be brought down by it. Surround yourself with supportive friends and situations and think about why you want to be with someone who isn’t placing the value on you that you deserve. Start getting away and getting ready to find someone who will give you more.

Do Work on Your Own Life, Not on Your Partner’s

You think that you are strong enough to deal with your partner’s conflicts and that you can work it out together. You encourage your partner to talk to you, to share feelings. You spend much of your time focusing on your partner’s problems. It would be nice to be rewarded for this effort by getting what you need. But we doubt it will work out that way. In fact your partner may feel smothered from all your good efforts.

A much better way of handling this is to focus on your own life. You have to back away and let go. Yes, this is frightening: you may lose the relationship. But if that’s the case, the ending would have come about sooner or later. For your sake, even if you don’t believe this, it might be better if it happens sooner. It has been our experience that backing away at times like this is far more likely to strengthen your position than to jeopardize it.

Here are some dos and don’ts:

• Don’t become your partner’s therapist.
  

• Don’t make your partner your first priority.
  

• Don’t focus all your energy and thoughts on your partner’s conflicts.
  

• Do think about seeing a professional therapist or counselor to help you cope during this period.
  

• Do focus all your energy and thoughts on ways to get strong and independent without your partner.
  

THE END

Your biggest task at this time is to come to terms with the end of a relationship. Your partner, who is still ambivalent, is not making this any easier for you. No matter how much active partners may want to get away, they may be unable to disconnect emotionally unless they are absolutely convinced that you will always “be there” should they ever have a change of heart. So while they are backing off, they are also trying to confirm your dedication and love. You have to be resolute about not going along with these mood shifts and determined to take care of yourself.

Some hints on how to do this:

• Don’t be understanding like a parent.
  

• Don’t be loving like a spouse.
  

• Don’t be accepting like a best friend.
  

• Don’t wait by the phone.
  

• Don’t use the phone to check up on your partner.
  

• Don’t make your relationship the topic of all your conversations.
  

• Do get involved in as many activities as possible.
  

• Do keep your calendar full.
  

• Don’t rearrange your life to fit into your partner’s erratic scheduling.
  

• Do find support.
  

• Don’t excuse your partner’s behavior.
  

• Don’t get hooked on fantasies about what the relationship was.
  

• Don’t cooperate with your partner’s commitmentphobic agenda.
  

• Do resist the incredible pull to try to move closer.
  

• Do make every effort to start building a life that is separate.
  

• Do take a vacation if you can.
  

• Don’t be accountable to your partner if your partner is not accountable to you.
  

• Do maintain some reserve and distance when you get together.
  

• Do back away as far as you can comfortably go
  .
  

Don’t Get Stuck in the Jealousy Trap

Jealousy is a powerful emotion that activates all of your insecurities and doubts about yourself. If your partner is pulling back, your mind almost automatically jumps to the possibility that there is somebody else. Why else would something that seemed so good suddenly be turning so bad? Why else would your partner start behaving differently?

Yes, it’s possible that there is somebody else. But it’s also possible that there isn’t. The truth is, that as far as you are concerned—although we realize that this is almost impossible to accept—it doesn’t matter.

Your partner is behaving this way because of commitment conflicts. This behavior has nothing to do with your desirability, your value, how good the relationship is, or how you stack up against any competition.

Under these conditions many men and women with active conflicts are always unfaithful. This is a time-honored method of creating trouble and distance within a relationship.

There is another surrealistic element to the jealousy problem in
commitmentphobic relationships. Often the sex, passion, and emotional connection are so intense that to the passive partner it seems inconceivable that a “rival” could enter the picture. These feelings create even more confusion because the passive partner ends up feeling as though he/she is dealing with two separate sets of information that don’t go together. The passive partner doesn’t know what to believe, what to think, what to feel, or how to act. Is this simply some last-ditch case of premarital jitters? Does a partner’s infidelity deny the truth of the passion that existed? Instinctively you may feel as though you should “fight” for your partner and fend off this new rival, who can’t possibly be as much in love as you are. What to do?

Well, here are a few things not to do. Remember that when your jealousy gets activated, you may act in hundreds of ways that even you have trouble believing. Not only do you want to try twice as hard to prove that you are better than the competition, you may find yourself acting out your jealousy. You need to be very careful now. So don’t start going through your partner’s pockets, checking telephone bills, sitting outside doorsteps waiting for your partner to come home, or making thousands of “check-up” phone calls.

What you need to be more worried about than your partner’s fidelity, or lack of it, is whether you are falling into an obsessive, jealous trap. Jealousy heightens your emotions and draws out your competitive spirit. It brings up all unresolved childhood rivalries, and it fans any feelings you may have about abandonment and unworthiness.

You have to start controlling your jealous knee-jerk responses. You need to know how to manage these feelings. You need to take care of yourself. And most important you need to be thinking about how emotionally to turn your partner into your ex-partner.

Don’t Do Anything That Borders on Obsessive Behavior

Don’t call your partner’s parents, friends, or fellow workers. Don’t spend all your waking time talking with friends about what’s going on. Don’t start visiting psychics, astrologers, or trance mediums, insisting on hearing good news. All of this can keep you stuck.

• Do get counseling if your feelings are getting out of control.
  

• Do keep yourself as busy as possible and surrounded by as many supportive people as possible.
  

• Do recognize that if your jealousy is warranted, your partner is probably incapable of the relationship you want—with anyone!
  

Do Move Back and Maintain Your Own Boundaries

We know that your instincts are telling you to move forward and to try harder. In these circumstances, following these instincts will probably make matters worse. Your partner doesn’t need to be assured that you are there. Your partner knows you are there. That is a major part of the problem.

Moving closer may be much more threatening to the relationship than moving away. We understand that you want to move closer because you are frightened, and we know how difficult it is to keep away when you’re worried about losing someone you love.

Be clear that we’re not suggesting that you start playing games. All we’re saying is that you should make a point of taking better care of yourself and maintaining your own boundaries and distance.

Understanding the Ending of Your Relationship

Let’s now talk about the three major ways in which active commitmentphobics orchestrate the endings of their relationships, and the major ways in which those with passive conflicts respond:

1. Your partner’s behavior provoked you into ending it
   . Don’t think that if you had just tried a little longer, worked a little harder, this relationship would have had a different ending. Not true. We are willing to give one-hundred-to-one odds that if you had hung on longer, your partner would have become even more provocative. So know that you did absolutely the right thing. Don’t feel guilty. And get on with the healing process.
   

2. Your relationship is going through a slow erosion, and your part
   ner is taking things away one at a time
   . You are being conditioned to expect less and less. In the process don’t make the mistake of believing that if you gave more and more, things would eventually get back on an even keel. Backing off in stages is your partner’s way of being self-protective. You have to go about protecting yourself. Stop going along with your partner’s agenda. Don’t be available on your partner’s schedule. Set up a schedule of your own, and keep to it. Get busy with your own life, vow never to let this kind of relationship occur again, and get on with the healing process.
   

3. Your partner ends the relationship by disappearing, either physically or emotionally
   . This is the nightmare that we call the classic Houdini syndrome. Suddenly your partner, the one who you thought loved you and cared about you, is not available to you. Perhaps he/she has literally gone away. Perhaps he/she is simply refusing to speak to you ever again. And you’re not even sure why. You don’t know what happened. Is it someone else? Was it something you did? Was it something you didn’t do?
   

When things have progressed to this kind of ending, you are in the worst-case commitmentphobic scenario. You have to accept that and behave accordingly. Your partner may well be back for another round, but even so you have to move on and heal.

Finding Support

Since so many people at this point make the sensible decision to get professional support to see them through the trauma of a sudden breakup, we’d like to offer a few suggestions, based upon the many interviews we’ve conducted.

Right now you are tremendously vulnerable and emotionally needy. You need to find somebody who understands your position and has helped others in similar situations to get on with their lives. Your best bet in finding such a person is to get recommendations. You want someone who has a track record in working people through recovery and getting them back into life. We have spoken to many women who went to a therapist for help,
wound up transferring all their need onto the therapist, and then got stuck in the process. It’s essential that you find a therapist who has strong, clear boundaries and who establishes clear goals that help you move forward. We think it’s important to be wary of establishing therapeutic situations with someone to whom you are blatantly attracted or who seems attracted to you.

We believe very strongly in the value of good therapy, but we know that not all therapists are appropriate for this kind of help. Don’t be afraid to interview potential therapists and ask them about the work they do. Ask them if they’ve worked with people like you before. Ask them what kind of time frame has existed for other people like you.

Curtain Calls

In our fairy tales and romantic stories lovers are often separated and then brought back together. There is pain and longing, but eventually the lovers are reunited. Perhaps there was a terrible misunderstanding. Perhaps it was all a mistake. Perhaps it was timing, and distance made hearts grow fonder. Both members of the couple matured, and finally they walk off into the sunset together. The end.