0012-Fear of Intimacy - I had no idea it was impacting me

In my head, I always thought "fear of intimacy" meant "fear of love." It's SOOOO much more than that…This episode isn't an exhaustive look at the topic, but there may be a few nuggets that you can relate to.

Transcript from the show:

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I think it was just before my first EMDR session that I discovered "fear of intimacy" was affecting me.

I'd heard of it before, but in my head, I thought it was something else.

"Shit, I'm not afraid of love! I can be loving and be loved! I can give affection and lean into it, no problem!"

Oh, on the contrary smart lady! Yes, you are. And with as "sneaky" as the fear was in my life, I can almost wager bets that it's trying to sneak in on your life and relationships as well.

Do you guys remember episode 10, where I talked about "The Lies I Tell Myself"? For those that missed it, it's basically a snapshot of some of the negative shit my mind comes up with and tells me about myself. That negative persona has also been feeding me lies about my relationship, fueling the fear.

Here, have an example.

You're asleep with your partner, and say you wake up from dream or some other thing. You reach over to touch your partner and - they move away from your touch.

Now, instead of fully acknowledging that it's the middle of the night and your partner is sleeping and probably has NO idea that you were reaching out for affection, you head to another thought - "oh god what if them pulling away subconsciously is how they really feel about me? Do they actually love me or are they lying about it? They don't want me to touch them!"

And then you decide that you just aren't going to reach out and touch them like that again because you don't want to be rejected again.

Except, maybe it carries over into your waking hours.

And now you're withholding attention from your partner. Because subconsciously, you're scared that they don't really love you. You're scared that they don't really want your attention. You're scared of rejection because what if you reach out for attention when you're BOTH awake and fully aware and they pull away again?? What would that mean??

You may not even recognize that you're thinking all these things!

And all this because of something they may have done while they were sleeping?

Not a good enough or relevant enough example? Here, let's try another.

Sayyyyyyyyy...You're getting ready to go out somewhere with your partner and you're making a little more effort to look presentable. Your partner sees you and compliments you, telling you that you look nice or is otherwise showing approval. But hey, you've got a different internal belief about yourself. You may think that you're ugly, or not enough, or not worthy or insert some other personal belief about yourself here. So you brush off the compliment! You "put it down" instead of accepting it, because there's no way your partner actually *sees* you. You REJECT their love because you don't believe it. You don't believe them. 

You could almost say that you're "afraid" of their opinion "challenging" your identity. Like, you see yourself as unworthy but their words suggest otherwise and it's just a scary idea to believe them because that's not who you know yourself to be! It's a challenge to your inner dialogue! Basically, your partner is challenging your opinion of yourself – challenging how you view yourself – challenging "how you've always been." We're clutching tightly to the need to maintain our self as we have always known it.

Intimacy is scary because it requires you to be vulnerable. And by being vulnerable, you are, of course, at risk of being hurt. We do all this rejection bullshit because we're afraid of getting hurt. In the meantime, we're also shooting ourselves in the foot by clutching on to old broken mechanisms to try to keep us safe.

How about another example?

Communicating your thoughts and dreams with another person is a form of intimacy. You're being vulnerable enough, in that moment, to seek a deeper connection with another person by moving away from the scripts of society to have a different sort of conversation.

What might happen if your partner brings up an idea such as..."Hey, I was thinking...I kinda wanna start a business doing (insert whatever interests them here)" and instead of asking more questions, you poop on their idea instead?

"Why would you want to do that? You have a good enough job now. No need to mess things up by doing something else that might fail!"

Ouch.

So, now your partner reached out to you and tried to share a dream with you. And instead of asking more questions or showing a smidge of encouragement – you shut them down. Maybe you crave stability and the thought of them starting a business scares you because it threatens that stability. The unknown nature of it threatens your security, and instead of leaning into the possibilities and seeing what's there, you shut it down! You shut down their bid for intimacy with you out of fear.

We could also flip the tables around on this one where you are the person making a bid for an intimate conversation with your partner and they are the ones that shut you down. Is it possible they have fears as well? Likely the case, in my opinion. It doesn't make the response "better" but I think it makes it ever so slightly more palatable.

Going through that just ONCE is enough to make a person step on the brakes and withdraw from sharing in the future. And I think for those folks with a fear of intimacy, the sheer fear of that being a possibility makes them clam up before they've uttered the first word.

So then, you've got this person that's afraid of intimacy – afraid of being vulnerable – who's now got these dreams in their head and because they don't feel they can safely share those dreams – they start withdrawing.

The fear of sharing – of being vulnerable – is going to drag the entire relationship down.

One more, final example, I promise.

Your partner does something nice for you, but it's not necessarily something you wanted or needed. Instead of acknowledging their effort, you begin to wonder "if they even know you." You start questioning things, looking at the negatives, searching for signs that maybe this isn't the right thing. If they don't know you, how can you continue to be vulnerable with them? And instead of thanking them and making a gentle suggestion to lead them in the right direction going forward, you start withdrawing. Maybe you become not so gentle in your distaste in their efforts. And then, in response, they stop trying because now nothing they do can make you happy.

The inner voice is an insidious thing sometimes.

See, what's hard for people, like myself, who have a fear of intimacy, is that instead of leaning into whatever love and affection our partner may be trying to show us, we've conditioned ourselves to not see these things as acts of love. Instead, they're threats to our sense of self. All these interactions that should be encouraging connection with another person, we're side-eyeing them, looking for some ulterior meaning that may not actually BE there.

Let them fucking love you! And hell, LOVE. THEM. BACK.

I need to chew on these words daily. I need to sit with them and let them consume me. No, it's not an invitation to let everyone in, but, it needs to be front and center when it comes to the people who I've chosen to spend my life with, friendships included.

What good are we doing when we try to "fight" with our significant others on how they see us or how we make them feel? Why do we hear someone say something nice to or about us and immediately feel the need to shit on it? Assuming their words are coming from a genuine place, why the struggle to accept their words or actions?

Trust me, I understand full well the "need" to keep the armor up - to be skeptical of people and their intentions. My whole life has replayed that scenario of keeping people at a distance, even well after I decided that they were good enough to have in my life; to be part of it.

What are we afraid of when someone tells us something nice? What are we afraid of when someone does something nice for us? Are we waiting for the anvil to drop? Like we're some unsuspecting cartoon character ready to be the butt of jokes for ages to come?

Who planted these thorny plants to "protect" us? Did they plant them in the right spot? Do they need to be uprooted and replanted? (Ouch!) I mean, if it's a holly bush planted in front of the beautiful and fragrant gardenia, are we really seeing the gardenia in all its glory?

I dunno what it is, but it's something to consider when we're looking at what's in the garden. Let's not leave things in the way of enjoying the truly beautiful things in our lives.

Anyway, thanks for listening guys! If you don't already know, I have a simple Facebook page set up called (surprise!) "Question Your Garden." I'm also working out details on getting a website set up to be a one-stop-shop to make it easier to find the show notes, previous episodes, and whatever other blog posts may come about in the future. I'll be sure to update when that's done. Now, I can't forget to give a shout out to both Kevin MacLeod at Incompetech.com and Scott Buckley at scottbuckley.com.au for the music transitions they  provided for use in the show. If you want to shoot me an email, it's questionyourgarden@gmail.com Be sure to check out the show notes for any links or additional information from the episode.

Until next time, keep weeding!

Intro Audio:
"Cold Sober"Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Transition Audio:

"Wonderful"Scott Buckley (scottbuckley.com.au)