The Flight From Intimacy

Last year more than 40 million Americans used online dating services in search of “perfect match” partners. The explosion of Internet match services and social network sites such as myface.com and facebook.com indicates that people yearn for intimacy and connection. In spite of an increase in population, however, marriage rates are down. While people say they want intimacy, they also seem to fear and flee from it—people like John, Eric and Lindsey.

John is a hard worker who works seventy hours a week and has frequent rage attacks when little things go wrong. Despite his high job performance, he has been passed over for promotion because of his poor relationship skills.

Eric is bright and seems to handle life easily. He is a sharp dresser and has a likeable personality. Inside he feels insecure and has low self-esteem. Divorced at the age of twenty-three, he is still looking for the perfect woman.

Lindsey always looks as if she stepped off the pages of a fashion magazine. She is witty and fun-loving but is careful about letting people get too close because of her struggle with sexual intimacy.

The flight from intimacy is often caused by counter-dependency—the flip side of co-dependency. While people with co-dependent behaviors cling and act weak, insecure and helpless, people struggling with counter-dependency appear strong, secure, confident and successful on the outside. On the inside, however, they feel weak, insecure, fearful, and needy. They may function well in the world of business, but are often failures in the world of relationships. Frequently they have poor relationship skills, are afraid to get close to others, and avoid intimate situations as much as possible.

So, what causes counter-dependent behaviors? A failure to fully complete the two most important developmental processes of early childhood: secure bonding and emotional separation. When not completed at the appropriate age they drive adults to addictions, recurring conflicts, problems with closeness and intimacy, victimization by others, and unfulfilling and unsuccessful relationships. From birth to about three years of age, all children need help in completing the processes of bonding and separation.

Secure bonding with parents and others, which usually starts at birth, allows children to develop a sense of basic trust and safety. It involves a deep attunement between parents and children that includes lots of physical contact, holding and nurturing touch, and giving the child pleasant reassuring messages. The more secure the parent-child bond, the easier it is for children to become emotionally separate. Ideally, children should be emotionally separated from their parents by about age three.

What happens during early childhood that interferes with emotional separation? Our clinical research indicates that the most common cause of co-dependent and counter-dependent behaviors is developmental trauma caused by subtle disconnects between parent and child that prevent or disrupt emotional attunement during the three years of life. If these early disconnects are not recognized and addressed, they eventually create patterns of isolation and disengagement that cause people to flee intimacy in their adult relationships.

Although people often don’t remember many of these early traumas, they are visible in their relationship histories. Adults who were physically or sexually abused as children, for example, have difficulty being close to others. With physical abandonment, something tangible happened. Emotional and spiritual abandonment or neglect is more difficult to recognize because the parent was physically present but emotionally absent. They neglected to support the child’s emotional needs for touch, holding, and comfort. While subtle forms of abandonment or neglect are more difficult to identify, they leave deep scars just the same.

People with co-dependent and counter-dependent issues are often attracted to each other, which creates predictable conflicts over intimacy. Those with co-dependent behaviors want more touch and physical closeness. In contrast, those with counter-dependent behaviors want intimacy but fear being suffocated or dominated by their partner and are alert to quickly erect protective boundaries.

Either way, couple relationships often contain intense competition and conflict and little authentic intimacy. People with co-dependent behaviors will create conflict when the relationship is not intimate enough. Those with counter-dependent behaviors create conflict when the relationship is too intimate. Much of couple conflict involves a struggle to determine how much closeness and how much separation partners can tolerate in their relationship.

The bad news is that the closer your adult relationships become the more they will activate memories of old traumas of being dominated, invaded, betrayed, abused and manipulated. The good news is that these relationships are the best place to heal the trauma that causes co-dependent and counter-dependent behaviors. Unhealed trauma always surfaces in your closest relationships—it first occurred with your parents, then with other caretaking adults and eventually with adult partners and with your own children. So healing the trauma in the place where it happened makes sense!

We found that healing trauma in relationships requires redefining intimacy to include the conflicts and struggles that are a part of the healing process. This means telling the truth about who you really are, what your needs are, sharing power, finding soul-evolving solutions to all conflicts and being willing to openly share your life with your partner on many levels: mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical.

Once you expand your definition of intimacy to include healing each other, your relationships will shift dramatically. You’ll find more opportunities for intimacy that help you create an intimate partnership relationship.

Drs. Barry and Janae Weinhold are the authors of Breaking Free of the Co-Dependency Trap and Flight from Intimacy (New World Library). They have served for over five decades as licensed mental health professionals and have almost sixty years combined teaching experience. Cofounders of the Carolina Institute for Conflict Resolution & Creative Leadership (CICRCL), they specialize in the areas of developmental psychology, trauma, violence prevention, conflict resolution, cosmologies, and consciousness studies. Barry is professor emeritus and former chair of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs Counseling and Human Services Program. Janae is former adjunct professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. They live in North Carolina. To learn more about their work, visit www.weinholds.org.

Based on the book Flight from Intimacy. Copyright © 2008 by Drs. Janae and Barry Weinhold. Reprinted with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. www.newworldlibrary.com or 800/972-6657 ext. 52.