Afraid to Love
By June Brereton
Many people are afraid of intimacy and love, afraid to love, frightened of close relationships, because they afraid of being dependant. Not merely with other humans but also with pets, some may talk about not wanting to get close to a dog or a cat because of the short life span. When a pet dies they may decide or have already decided at some time in their life, that it is too painful to get another and are able to rationalise with reasonable justification.
I don’t want to be tied or I don’t want the responsibility of another living creature, Perhaps unconsciously fearing the inevitable loss of something they might grow to love.
As a therapist I hear of how people hide their feelings about another person, experiencing scare if they reveal what they really think. Withholding compliments, care and loving contact because there is the risk of ridicule or rejection. I generally relate this to fear the attachment, the love and the intimacy of closeness and fear of rejection.
This is often about fear of showing yourself to the other in case they do not acknowledge your presence so it is better not to do anything at all and live on crumbs of contact that just happen to fall your way.
For some reason some of us are unable to see the advantages of the contact with this other living creature, but we are clear about the disadvantages. The same with close relationships, the fantasy being that they might be tied or it might not last. There is generally a sense of panic in those words. The reason for being afraid to love or share oneself with another living creature will, in my view also is about the fear of loss or expectation of demand and dependency.
• Think about how you withhold from others whom you could be close to.
• How do you prevent yourself from being close?
• Do you resist relationship with friends, people, places, pets’ etc?
• How might you fear closeness with another what is your fear about?
• Do you fear being engulfed or swamped by others?
• Are you afraid that you might lose yourself in relationships with others not only sexual relationships but friendships and close intimate relationships?
• Are you afraid of being close because you are afraid of the loss?
Instead of unifying with others the individual becomes afraid that they will be overcome, lose them-selves get lost in the other’s needs and wants and lose sight of their own. These are all ways of avoiding being close, defences against fully entering into an intimate relationship.
• Does this apply in anyway to you?
Somehow the individual may be so caught up in not making attachments or being close; their energy will be focused upon the disadvantages. Failing to recognise some of the advantages. Again this is all about fearing intimacy and the loss of that intimacy.
When we allow others in to our world we exchange loving energy, it gives us a new lease of life, even short term love and minimal contact, moment to moment intimate interactions with others brings a new sense of pleasure and sense of recognition. In staying with the disadvantages of close contact we stay locked in a secret world where we are alone. It is a decision, which states I won’t have any love at all; I won’t give anything of myself. It is better to have none that feel the pain of the loss when it’s gone; therefore I will not allow myself even the tiniest bit.
In this state the individual is locked in a constant state of self-denial.
Perhaps in your life you have felt love for something or someone and had it snatched away from you in some way?
Perhaps as a child the pain of the loss was so great you decided that you would never get that close again.
You have built defences to protect you from the fear of the loss of that love.
For some being engulfed, swamped or overwhelmed by another person is a myth you are defending against intimacy in relationships in order to save yourself from the loss of it.
If I allow you into my world I will lose sight of myself, I won’t be able to sustain who I am or what I think and feel.
If I get too close to the other person they may take me over and try to control me, suffocate me and so on.
All of these are ways of avoiding the pain of loss.
What happened in childhood for someone to be afraid to love or get close?
It may be because as a child they didn’t get the recognition they needed unless they were a '‘good girl or a nice little boy’. Perhaps they didn’t get the love they deserved unless they worked hard at school or at home looking after their brothers and sisters or maybe parents or grandparents. Perhaps recognition came from outside the family for example a teacher in school.
I remember a teacher praising me for my ‘nice writing’ and experience a wonderful sense of pleasure because I had never received any recognition for anything I did in my family. I can remember deciding that it was such a wonderful feeling that I would work hard for this teacher in future in order to continue to feel that again. Although that teacher spurred me on to work hard most of what I did for recognition throughout my life became conditional. Internally from then on I would search for recognition in what I did and invariably I wouldn’t get it because those I worked hard for did not have insight into my unmet need from the past. Even if and when anyone showed appreciation I would more than likely have missed it because it didn’t quite hit the spot where the early neglect was still raw.
Example: George recognised that as a child, he had feared for his mother’s safety His father was repeatedly violent to her and all of this hindered his concentration in school where he did badly in school work. However he did get lots of love and affection from his mother who called him “her little man”.
He told me that he had felt so close and protective of her that he didn’t want to leave her side and often stayed away from school and his friends; she would write sick notes and lie to the teachers by saying that he was a sickly child.
This of course had devastating consequences in his life because he wanted to take care of others to such an extent that he would lose sight of his own needs. He took up a career that took him into the caring professions where he eventually ‘burnt out’. He did far too much for the people he worked with, took on too much in his job as a social worker, and would work regular overtime for no extra pay and so on. His own personal relationships however suffered because his partner also made demands upon him, although she did not have the same level of ‘need’ as his clients he didn’t know how to ‘be’ in healthy relationship. He became torn between wanting to, be with his own wife and children and not recognising that he was important to them. He began to see through the therapy that to be with his family felt like a selfish act; to be doing something he wanted would have given him something for himself. George had had never learned to do that. His compulsion was always to be there for someone else, which had become a part of his identity. His mother’s engulfing and needy behaviour had taught him that he was there for her needs discounting his.
Of course it is important to be loving and caring of others but not at cost to yourself and your personal life and not in a way that leaves you feeling resentful after the event or having an expectation of a payback in some way. The type of overly care I am emphasising is for example the individual who will listen for hours on the telephone to a friend who is having problems, who will suppress their own internal agitation or need for a break or even a cup of tea. Discounting their own needs ignoring the physical and emotional messages. The person who spends hours listening to a friend's problems when they are tired or have a headache. In other words being a victim to the other person and laying aside something that is important to you from a position of helplessness or lack of choice.
If you don’t let other people know what is going on for you and you become martyred in the contact, then you are being dishonest both to yourself and to your friend.
Sometimes when we over-care or rescue someone in order to become a victim there may be some sense of satisfaction of having the internalised recognition of being a ‘good friend’ or ‘a good son/daughter’. Again I must emphasise here that it is OK to put energy into being good at what you do. It is also very important to be recognised and appreciated by others. Being a caring friend and a loving family member is important and it is more important to do loving things from the heart not for some unconscious or secret need to be seen or recognised. The inner child is the child inside that was not given the care they deserved, that was discounted or had to be the ‘good little girl or boy’. Giving to others at a great cost to yourself will often leave you resentful and in a position as persecutor, the person who persecutes has often been overly giving and will talk about the person they gave to or they may withdraw from the friendship without saying why. It is important to give the child inside, that baby or two year, three or four year old and so on that was treated badly, some of your time and recognition.
You do not have to forfeit yourself in order to be in relation to another.
You do not have to abandon yourself in order to be close to someone else.
If you ignore your own needs you are merely doing what your original carers did.
You will treat yourself badly, ignore your feelings, lead yourself into a difficult situation and continue to hurt shame and devalue yourself the way you were hurt, devalued and shamed as a child.
Being overly caring is about looking for conditional recognition and you will do so at a great cost to your self. Rescuing others in order to feel some sense of satisfaction internally or taking care of others so as not to have to feel your own feelings.
Another example, Petra was always the one in the family to rush to make everything right for sisters, mother and younger siblings. She recognised that by doing that she did not have to feel her own sense of loss at there never really being anyone there for her as a child. When her father died she supported her devastated mother and made arrangements for her younger sisters to be taken care of and so on. It was only in therapy that she recognised that she had never had time to grieve for the loss of her father. By taking care of others she had avoided feeling her own loss.
Think about how you might forfeit your own sense of self and your own needs in order to maintain relationships.
How do you behave with others so that they will find you interesting, caring, supportive and so on?
What is it you hide from those you are closest to?
Do you believe that if those you care about really knew you they wouldn’t like, love or want to be with you?
We do all kinds of things to control the relationship, to avoid getting too close and to steer clear of being hurt; the process can be very subtle or very obvious.
If this applies to you how do you do it?
© June Brereton
June Brereton is a semi retired psychotherapist and writer who spends a lot of her time managing her supportive website dyingtodiet.co.uk
This article was posted by June Brereton married name Heathcote
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