Walking the Tightrope of Intimacy
Judye Hess, now professor Emerita, was a core faculty member at the California Institute of Integral Studies,teaching Couples Counseling and Family Dynamics for 30+ years. She has a private practice in Berkeley,CA. where she sees couples and families, almost exclusively. Judye is the co-author of “Dual Dwelling Duos: An Alternative for Long-term Relationships” which was published in August, 2001 in The Journal of Couples Therapy and as a chapter in the book,”Couples, Intimacy Issues and Addictions” ed. By Barbara Jo Brothers, Haworth Press, 2001.
“He keeps withdrawing from me whenever I want to be close. It makes me feel so abandoned.”
“She’s in my face, wanting more than I can possibly give. I wind up feeling so smothered.”
Have you ever heard yourself or your partner making statements like this? Did it make you wonder if the two of you were in an impossible bind from which there was no escape? Did you conclude that you had better start looking elsewhere for love, but dreaded going back to the personals or signing up with match.com?
If you have answered “yes” to any of these questions, you may be interested to know that negotiations around closeness and distance are some of the most challenging aspects of ANY couple relationship. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to part company if you want to find satisfaction in your intimate relationship.
The conflict over how much separation or togetherness each of us is desiring, often leads to painful power struggles. While both members of a couple usually feel powerless in these situations, it is usually the “pursuer” who becomes labeled as the “needy” one and the”distancer” who is thought of as “withdrawn” or “withholding” by the “pursuer”.
But even in those of us who tend to be very well matched on the overall amounts of closeness or contact we desire, there will still be daily, hourly or even moment-to-moment fluctuations in desire for contact, based on any number of internally or externally generated conditions. When we experience these differences in amounts of closeness desired, we can easily feel abandoned or engulfed by our partner. which can lead to painful feelings of rejection, guilt, feeling uncared for or smothered.
When we first get together as a couple, we often find ourselves in a “honeymoon” phase and experience
feeling unconditionally loved and nourished by our partner. In this state of merger, we usually are very much aware of our similarities but less aware of our differences. Because these feelings are so positive, we may fantasize about or actually move in together to maximize the bliss or optimism we are experiencing.
In the natural course of a developing relationship, we will usually pass from the honeymoon or “symbiotic” stage into a more “differentiated” stage, where differences come to the fore. If we have already moved into a shared space, it can be very disconcerting to find that our bliss has now shifted into something much more irritating. It may seem like we can’t agree on anything from money to sex to amount of contact desired. As positive projections onto our partner are shaken up and withdrawn, we may rudely awaken to a person who seems to be the opposite of what we had hoped and longed for. However, having now set up our entire lives around living with this person we may try to suppress these feelings of disappointment and/or irritation due to feeling shame for having made a “mistake”. Or conversely, we may be in such a state of shock about the loss of “bliss” that we believe we have made a mistake about being with this person at all, and hasten to get away as quickly as we moved in. Clearly this can be a difficult and damaging time for both of us.
In this fast-paced world of the 21st century where everything moves so quickly, there is pressure on couples to move in together, get married and have a family, sooner rather than later. To not go along with this program can be eyed suspiciously as a “fear of intimacy”. I believe that “one size fits all” does not apply to all individuals or couples. While some of us may decide to co-habit very quickly and our situation could turn out favorably, others of us may rush into this and find ourselves unhappy and disillusioned. What is of greatest import here is for us to remember to tune in to our own
natural pace of couple development and not to give in to societal and familial pressures for how relationships ought to be lived; to really look inside ourselves and to discuss openly as a couple what kind of context would be most fertile for our commitment and intimacy to thrive. It may be that we could increase the probability of having our relationships work if we took these steps more slowly, waiting to really know our differences as well as our similarities before making costly decisions about our living situations. Some of us may find that we choose to maintain our own separate domiciles for the duration of our relationship, while still deepening our intimacy and shared growth in other ways.
There is no one way to have a relationship. Those of us who are “pursuers” and want to spend more time with our partner are not necessarily more or less healthy than those of us who are “distancers” and want more time and space alone. Each of our positions can be valid and need to be understood and appreciated by our partners. Living situations, whether separate or together, have pros and cons. My hope in writing this article is to increase our awareness of different ways of having relationships so that we can create a form of relationship that works best for each of us, separately and together.