Intimate Connection: Why We Long For It Yet Push People Away
Written by Suzanne Mason
“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
― Arthur C. Clarke
On the hit TV series Killing Eve, the hitwoman Villanelle and Eve, the MI6 agent hunting her down develop an obsession with each other when they realise they have an affinity for each other. They feel alike in nature and understood by the other. There is love but also hate and anger all wrapped up together. It is a tumultuous obsession with each bringing out the worst traits in the other.
Both women are simply looking for an intimate connection. They wanted to be understood by others, to be accepted and seen for who they are. According to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, one of the fundamental needs we have is the need to connect with another human being. We need to belong somewhere, with someone. The esteemed German psychiatrist Frieda Fromm-Reichmann wrote, “The longing for interpersonal intimacy stays with every human being from infancy through life, and there is no human being who is not threatened by its loss.”
Our Fear of Loneliness is Not a Modern Issue
The outcome of such a loss of intimacy or the non-existence of one is the familiar feeling we know as loneliness. It is a common narrative to hear these days that loneliness is on the rise. The Economist wrote that loneliness is a dangerous modern illness of the mind and body. However, studies do not seem to back up the suggestion that loneliness is modern at all.
If anything, research shows that loneliness has always been part of the human condition which fluctuates over the course of our lifetime. The current and younger generations are not any lonelier than the generations before. Essentially, we are just as miserable from loneliness as our grandparents were.
Yet, as tortured by the lack of connection with another living soul as we are, we very often sabotage our quest to fulfill this need by pushing others away. We do not always verbally tell people to stay away but we drive people away by making it emotionally difficult for anyone to stick around long enough.
Why do we push people away?
What We Want and Expect Are Two Different Things
Naturally, it should not come as a surprise that fear holds a major factor in us pulling away. But fear of what exactly?
We fear disappointment, not just our own but the other party as well. According to Jennice Vilhauer, fear of disappointment is an expectation that you will not get what you want. Based on this expectation, you will then act according to how you will behave in order to not get what you want.
Sounds counterintuitive doesn’t it? After all, why would we act in ways to not get what we want?
Take relationships for example, when we develop a relationship with another, of course, we want connection and intimacy. Sometimes however, we get into a relationship with that desire but expect something else.
We expect that the other party will cheat on us or disappoint us in other ways. Sometimes, we expect that we will do something to screw things up. This expectation thus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when we behave in ways to sabotage our relationships such as constantly picking fights based on insecurity and paranoia, or cheat on our partners so they would end the relationship.
When the other party disappoints us or leaves us, we can sit back and say “See, I was right. People always disappoint or abandon me.” This meets our expectations, but it is not what we want.
The Strange Situation: Our Childhood Attachment Styles
Our expectations do not just appear out of thin air. The expectations we have of how relationships in our lives ought to be comes from experiences we have had in our lives. Notably, it often comes from our attachments to our caregivers early in our lives.
In an experiment called the Strange Situation, children’s attachment behaviours were observed after being separated from and then reunited with their parents. The psychologist Mary Ainsworth observed that the children typically fell under these categories of attachment styles: Secure, anxious-resistant and avoidant.
The secure children were initially upset when separated from their parents but were quickly comforted upon their return. The anxious-resistant children were extremely distressed when separated from their parents and were not as easily comforted by their parents upon their return. At the same time, they seem to push away their parents when they return, and resisted attempts to comfort them.
The avoidant children on the other hand appeared like they could not care less about whether the parents were there. When the parents returned, they avoided them and continued with whatever it is they were doing.
Adult Attachment Styles in Relationships
Whilst the original attachment theory were developed to categorise the attachment styles between a child and his or her caregiver, psychologists Cindy Hazan and Philip Shaver adapted the theory and applied it to attachment styles in adult relationships.
When we display anxiety such as the anxious-resistant children, we are doing so from insecurities. We feel insecure about the other party’s feelings, we doubt whether anyone can truly love us or be trusted. We become paranoid. As a result, we overcompensate and become clingy, confrontational when things do not go as expected.
Further extending the theory, the psychologists Kim Bartholomew and Leonard Horowitz suggest that we display adult avoidant attachment styles in two ways: Fearful-avoidant and dismissive-avoidant.
With these two attachment styles, the modus operandi in relationships is avoidance. When we fear disappointment or rejection, we avoid opening ourselves up to others and thus fail to connect intimately. When we display dismissive-avoidant style, we avoid hurt and rejection by pretending not to care.
By adopting these styles, we stay in control by avoiding any possibility of people hurting us. If you do not connect with others, you are not vulnerable. If you ignore the issues, you can pretend they do not exist. If you reject others before they reject you, you are in control of the situation. These actions are coping mechanisms to help us deal with relationships.
Your Expectations Are Unrealistic
Let’s go back to Villanelle in Killing Eve. Villanelle was given up by her mother as a child and left at the orphanage. As she was picked up to be trained as an assassin early in life, her childhood was not rosy and she developed a very dangerous attachment style of overt clinginess and complete control over people she wants to be with. As you might deduce, this is to avoid feelings of abandonment and rejection. She loves them to death and if they try to leave or reject her, she disposes of them before they can hurt her.
Often, many of us can develop unrealistic expectations of what love looks like. In some cases, we want complete dominion over the other and in some we expect the romance all the time. Some of you might have grown up with parents who are controlling or have parents who fight all the time, split up often and then get back together to repeat the cycle. Some of you might have parents who were not there be it emotionally or physically. In these instances, you might come to expect to be a controlling partner or exert control over your partner. You might also expect the other party to disappoint you by not being there all the time.
Whether realistic or not, these are your expectations that you have acquired over time. Even when they do not benefit us, we somehow find a way to meet these expectations whether by our own actions or finding people that will behave according to how we expect them to.
The Past is Not The Present
The bad news is that very often we cannot separate the wheat from the chaff. We hang on to lousy relationships, bad situations and toxic people thinking they are good for us or that we cannot go on without them. Yet, at the same time, we push away people who might actually care for us.
Here is the good news however, your past experiences do not have to dictate your adult relationships.
You do not have to stick by these expectations, you can move forward from them. It may take time and I will not profess to be able to help you deal with a lifetime of attachment issues in this short article but hopefully you can see that you are not broken, just work in progress. You are not destined for a lifetime of loneliness. By acknowledging what your attachment issues are you can go beyond them and stop pushing people away.
This article was first posted in Mind Cafe Publication on Medium.
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