A Moment Of Intimacy

Lately I am fascinated by the concept of intimacy. Ok, who am I kidding? It’s not just lately, I have been fascinated by this subject for as long as I have struggled with it. Which is basically my entire life.

I’ve always wondered, what is a healthy dose of intimacy? How close is too close? How far is too far? What is the ultimate purpose of connecting? And what is real connection? And perhaps the most important question, where do I, as a person, begin? and where do I end?

I don’t know the exact answer to any of these questions, but I’m constantly riddled by them as I study myself and others in our daily interactions. Though I’ve been very fortunate in many many ways, and certainly got “enough” love, as psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott would approve of, I still don’t feel that I had the best example of what healthy intimacy means. Not with myself, with others, or with life.

I am particularly interested, at this point in time, by how and why we find ways to avoid intimacy and connection. A couple of years ago, I read this book called “Facing Love Addiction”, by Pia Melody. You’ve heard it before through the lips of Robert Palmer… “Might as well face that you’re addicted to love”. Well yes, believe it or not, love can be an addiction. Or perhaps better said, the feeling of “falling in love” can be addicting. There are people that get a high out of “falling in love” and compulsively seek this feeling over and over again. Ahem… I, of course, wouldn’t know what this is like. But, as a highly empathetic person, I can certainly understand the feeling. And honestly, how can you blame these people? I mean, what’s better than falling in love?!

What’s fascinating about this particular group of people Pia calls Love Addicts, is that in actuality, they fear intimacy. They like the high of “not knowing” someone because when you don’t know someone you can just pretend that they’re exactly who you want them to be, and in a sense, live in a fantasy world. You never have to face not only who they are, but who you are.

Love Addicts, are usually drawn to what Pia calls Love Avoidants. Now, a Love Avoidant is also an addict, but usually he/she is addicted to something outside the relationship (Work, drugs, sex, gambling, food, etc) and he/she uses this external addiction to, you guessed it, AVOID intimacy.

What’s really incredible is why and how the addiction is created. It’s usually due to a dysfunctional relationship in your childhood, usually with one or both of your parents. It’s simple, Love Addicts were generally abandoned, emotionally or physically, to different degrees. Whether a parent gave and then withdrew affection or emotional support, the Love Addict becomes “needy” of closeness, or at least the “feeling” of closeness. Meanwhile the Love Avoidant usually had a parent who enmeshed them, which basically means they leaned on them emotionally or relied on them too much at too young an age. Having been “invaded”, so to speak, they tend to crave space and distance in order to feel ok. So, in the case of the Love Addict, their sense of self was threatened by the abandonment of the parent, and in the case of the Love Avoidant, their sense of self was threatened by the over-closeness of the parent. So while in a relationship with each other, both the Addict and Avoidant tend to expect their partner to meet their unfilled needs of childhood (closeness or distance). Instead, due to their contradicting addictions, they often get trapped in a vicious and frustrating cycle of attraction and rejection, in which neither gets their unrealistic needs met. Yes, go ahead, read this paragraph again.

Then, bear with me here, there are also people who have had one of each of these parents. One who abandoned them, and one who enmeshed them. These people are both Addicts and Avoidants, which means their sense of self is threatened both when someone gets too close AND when someone gets too far away, making most facets of a relationship relatively unbearable. Believe me, this explained a lot (Read my other blogs).

As I think of how and why intimacy can be an uncomfortable experience, I am reminded of that wonderful movie called “Lars And The Real Girl”. A man who struggles to connect with people orders a life size doll and proceeds to have the delusion that she is his real life girlfriend. His brother and sister in law decide to pretend that the “girl” is sick in order to get him to visit the town Doctor who is also a psychologist secretly treating him. During one of his weekly meetings with this Doctor, she gently strokes his arm and discovers that the act of touch is actually painful to him. It turns out, he hardly received any affection as a child, and so it literally hurts him to be touched. This really blew my mind. I didn’t know it was possible for a caress to be painful. It made me wonder… Is this why we fear intimacy? Is it ultimately a fear of pain? A fear of being crushed and destroyed? And/or a fear of being abandoned?

It seems each of our personal cability for closeness and connection has been passed down through nature, and then developed through nurture very early on. These different degrees of “intimacy tolerance” we learned, drive our ability and desire for closeness, and soon we find ourselves maneuvering around our own “intimacy comfort zone”.  For me, as an actor and writer, I feel most comfortable connecting and relating when I am acting and writing. For a Taxi driver, it may be while he is driving you to your destination. For an athletic person, it may be when doing something physical. At the same time, as an actor and writer, I may also hide behind a character or my writing to avoid actually being real with someone in person. That same taxi driver may be more open with the strangers in his back seat than with his own family. That athlete may feel really anxious if expected to just sit still and talk to someone.

Just as we can learn very healthy ways of connecting, we can also learn destructive, passive and toxic ways to connect. And though many of these learned patterns were originally adopted to protect us, what happened when we were 4, is not necessarily happening anymore, and yet, for many of us, our relationships are still defined by that original programming. Most of us are driven to protect the wounds we suffered in childhood and we unconsciously fight to “avoid” feeling that same pain in the future. Unfortunately, this method always backfires. The pain has already happened, it’s already coloring the lens through which we see, and we are allowing this vision to control our future. And we wonder why we keep re-living the same patterns in life, and why we keep running into the same issues with people, when brick by brick, we are reconstructing the very past we want so desperately to runaway from.

Recognizing when our patterns are no longer serving us and digging deep to understand where they came from, is not an easy feat I’ll tell you. But it isn’t until we face the past and become conscious of the reasons behind our patterns, that we can begin to have more genuine, honest and fulfilling connections. Do I set healthy boundaries, or do I build separating walls? Do I stay within my “intimacy comfort zone” because I’m afraid of loving someone “too much”? Or because I’m afraid of loss? Or because I’m afraid to make somebody equally as important as myself? These are questions we can begin to ask ourselves to uncover the truth behind our motivations.

So, in today’s world, how do we get close to people? Texting, Facebook and email, are the quick, easy and modern ways to connect. We don’t touch each other as much as we touch our phones. We can use these devices with the press of a button to ignore a call, or put off answering a text. People and their communications become impersonal; bubbles, chimes and moving ellipses. We can respond when or if we “feel like it”.  We can easily create the persona we want to be, and hide those parts of ourselves we would rather not show. But is that true intimacy? Doesn’t intimacy require sharing your whole self? Not just the pretty part?

It’s no wonder we, as a modern world, struggle so deeply with depression, anxiety and self-worth. It’s no wonder there is mental instability, violence and drug abuse. We as human beings who are social and built to connect, find ourselves feeling disconnected and isolated.  Most of us are never intentionally taught to work on our ability to connect, and so we find ourselves going through life ignorant to our unconscious patters and ultimately AVOIDING the very thing we so DEEPLY LONG FOR.

We think we’re close to our parents, our best friends, our lovers. We can rattle off their birthdays and favorite movies, colors and food items. We allow our brains to categorize them based on what they like and dislike, where they have been and haven’t been. We think this means we “know” them, right? Yet, I find, that in truth, people are un-categorizable. People are immense in their being. They grow, and move and change, and there are always a thousand things you don’t know even about the closest person in your life. And yet, we box them up and package them and assume this means we know them. We develop pre-conceptions about who they are, and even who we are, and inevitably find ourselves limited by these. We learn who we can be around one friend vs. the other. What we can show and what we should hide. Intimacy doesn’t become so much about discovery, and growth, but more about safety and “knowing”, even controlling. So could it be, that ultimately, the fear of intimacy with ourselves and others, is quite simply, a fear of the “unknown”? 

I mean think about it. Really start to notice how much you even look at people’s faces and how long you hold eye contact. You might be surprised to find that when you pay for your groceries, even though you might openly chat with the cashier, you hardly look into their eyes. There is an intensity about looking into somebody’s eyes. At that point you cannot deny, “I am real, and you are real, and we are both alive”. And, this is both exciting and terrifying but mostly, mysterious and incomprehensible.

What would happen if you share yourself as you really are with whoever you are with and say how you really feel? If you look into your lover’s eyes when you’re making love and acknowledge not only the pleasure, but the person? If you linger just a little bit longer in a hug than may be comfortable? I’ll tell you what will happen, you’ll have to face the fact that life is freakin’ weird and nobody really has any answers!! And that it is both ok and not ok AT THE SAME TIME!!!

Freaky. I know.

My life has been colored by a desire to have healthier connections.  Believe me when I say, I still have A LOT to learn, and it’s likely to be a lifelong practice. But like Eric Fromm says in The Art Of Loving (my favorite book of all time), love is an art, and like any art, it needs to be studied and practiced daily to be mastered. It is not just “easy” or “natural”, as we would like to believe. We may all have the talent for it, but talent without hard work and development, is like the frame of a car without an engine, it ain’t gonna take you too far.

At the end of the day, we are all the same. Not one of us is spared suffering, we are all afraid and we all need and want love. Connection is basic to both our survival and our sanity. When we avoid intimacy, we avoid ourselves. To learn to give love to ourselves and others, should, in my opinion, be the most important thing in life. An absolute priority. One that in today’s fast paced, results oriented, money making world, we need a constant reminder of. Let’s remind each other through touch, eye contact, genuine interest, that we are here together.

Whether it’s a brief 5 minute exchange with a stranger you will never see again, or a 50 year marriage with the love of your life, every connection is meaningful. Even the simple act of a sincere smile can be more intimate than 1000 words spoken. When you have the chance, put aside your work, the dirty dishes, the to-do list, and spend time with yourself, with your kid, your pet and/or your partner. Every moment that you can take down the mask, and relate, and discover, and see yourself in another person, is a moment of healing, love and bonding. A moment, of intimacy.

by Ellie Araiza