The incredible irony of relationship addiction is that at the core of this obsession with another person lies deep fear of intimacy, a fear we never have to face as long as we continue to choose partners who are, for one reason or another, impossible. ~ Robin Norwood
Intimacy requires closeness, being vulnerable and letting go of fear. If you’ve been hurt in your life you might not be capable of that closeness, vulnerability or fearlessness…it’s just not possible until you look at your stuff and work through it.
If you suffer from fear of abandonment you will continue to find relationships with people who will abandon you because the hurt of abandonment is less than the fear of being close. You also are trying to WIN over the abandonment and find someone who won’t leave you. The irony about abandonment issues is that we gravitate to people who will abandon us. And so fear of abandonment CAUSES abandonment.
The opposite is fear of enmeshment. If you were enmeshed with your parents in early life, you will gravitate toward people who will enmesh you…typically a person with abandonment issues…and you will try to win over your struggle for freedom with your parents by gravitating to people who will enmesh you and keep the struggle going.
The only way to win is not to play the game but you have to become AWARE that you are playing. And then work on your own issues.
If a person with enmeshment finds a person with abandonment issues….the person who was enmeshed will have a natural “comfort zone” of closeness because that is what they KNOW. But their struggle is to get away from possible enmeshments. They tend to run out of relationships like their hair is on fire.
The person with abandonment issues has a fear of people, of being hurt, and they don’t know how to be close in a healthy way so they appear standoffish. They usually don’t leave relationships well. Even if they’ve spent the entire relationship pushing their partner away, they will suddenly cling to the relationship like a drowning person clings to a piece of flotsam.
But initially the abandoned person’s standoffishness attracts the enmeshed person. The enmeshed person desire for closeness attracts the abandoned person. And initially they do a dance of just close enough to become a couple.
But then the overdeveloped “stuff” comes into play. When threatened or feeling insecure (any threat, real or perceived, can trigger this) the abandoned person will automatically cling and try to control. The enmeshed person will sense suffocation and pull away…and the abandoned person will pull them closer and that will send the enmeshed person fleeing even further.
And so they both are now in the struggle they need to resolve but because of who they have chosen, never will. This struggle and the issues that are triggering them, can be seen on Day One of the relationship by a trained bystander but the couple cannot see it. They are too lost in the draw of new love.
It’s up to each person to resolve the particular issues that draw them to a person who is only going to create the issues they need to look at. Once we resolve our own issues, these intimacy struggles disappear.
You can’t become intimate when you’re really at war with someone. Picking people we are going to be at war with keeps the struggle going and keeps intimacy at bay.
The key to loving relationships are people who are not afraid of intimacy and to be not afraid it is important to address and work on the fear and to work on that which keeps us locked into our fear.
If you have abandonment issues you have to go back through your history and find the times when you were abandoned and self-soothe and validate the hurt and the fear that the child you were suffered. You have to acknowledge your parents were not there for you when they should have been. You have to acknowledge that you have anger and hurt about that. Look at it, acknowledge it, and explore it. Write letters to your parents about how they let you down and how you needed them and they were not there. Allow yourself the grief and the anger and the hurt and the pain. LET IT OUT.
Then so some self-soothing and self-caring things for yourself. Write affirmations that target the abandonment. Make sure you do nice things for you and for the child in you rhat was abandoned.
Although enmeshment seems to be the opposite side of the coin, it’s really not. While abandonment stems from under parenting, enmeshment stems from over parenting. Inappropriate roles assigned to the child. Do the same exercises for enmeshment, the letter writing and the self-soothing. Many times people are ashamed of their enmeshment. Sometimes a person took on the role of a surrogate parent and had a very unhealthy relationship with one parent. They might have abandonment issues with the other parent. So they have to write each parent and take them to task for what they did not get.
Explore the dynamics in your relationship. Explore the role you take on and others take on. Look at your fear of intimacy. What is it really a fear of?
And what can you do for yourself today to work that out? Do it!
You can do this!!!
I needed this… again i am completely blown away by what I am reading… its like you can just look at two people and their current circumstances and accurately predict their future. Unless the two people realize where they are at, then things will end very badly.
I am currently listening to Mars and Venus on a Date. He talks a lot about soul mates… and how you might meet them but because of where you are at “now” you will blow it because you are not ready…. That’s how I feel about my ex GF…. I was not ready but I so wanted to be. I wanted to be “secure” I wanted her to be happy. I wish I could share this post with her… I felt she was a “soul mate” but sometimes its all about timing….
i loved her dearly.
Rob,
I agree with you. I read this post and wanted to smack myself on the side of the head. Like you, I wish that I could share this post with my ex. It is all about the timing…
Thanks Susan. I also had thoughts of sharing with the ex but then that whole NC thing. I actually find it interesting that this was the first time this particular dance happened in my life and did not in other relationships. I am thinking the fear of abandonment must have developed after the ex wife issues occurred. I do find it strange that you say I fear intimacy though. I really thought I craved intimacy. I do realize I chose someone with extreme intimacy issues and definitely would not let people inside as much as possible. It seemed to be a struggle for her even when it was all good. She actually would say things like, You know it’s hard for me to tell you this….” And it would be about personal stuff or even sexual wants. I so realize now more than ever the dance that was danced (or since going to broadway last night the play that was played out) :)
Rob, I am really wondering if we are living in parallel lives. :)
it seems i have both types of issues, being simultaneously enmeshed by my over-protective mother and abandoned by my workaholic father. i exhibit the symptoms of both, at times pulling away due to my own insecurities and fears of being dumped, and other times clinging to and suffocating the other, struggling to entangle him in the relationship. i hate the steps of this dance. they make me go back and forth back and frth trotting at same old spot without actually taking me forward in either diection
I def. have abandonment issues but am so clueless as to where they stem from. I can remember them early on in childhood, but I cannot for the life of me determine where they originated. I really want to so that I can work through it and not have these fears anymore. I fell in love with my ex because I thought he was everything that my ex before him was not. The first ex was very mean, cold hearted, verbally/mentally abusive, and was just very closed off to everything and everyone. Looking back now I see that my most recent ex, and the person I thought to be the “one,” actually shares more of those traits then I thought. They both do not allow others to get close to them, they remain gaurded constantly, and because of this have no trouble throwing away their relationship with me (one was 4 years, the other 3). This of course hit on my abandonment issues and I immediately take each as a reflection of my worth. Please let me off this merry go round, I am scared I won’t make it through the next spin!!
Hope, I think mine stem from when my brother & sister were born, and I was suddenly not the main focus for our primary caregiver– in fact, with two babies being born, it’s a given. Also, there might be some childhood events- being left at preschool and believing no one would come back, etc…Also, Halpern in his book “How to Break Your Addiction to a Person” explains that there is some genetic tendency for some people to be more sensitive to abandonment than others.
Maybe doing your Life Inventory will help you figure out some reasons.
I have this issue in a big way too, and I’m trying to figure out what kind of work needs to be done on it. There are affirmations, but another thing I think I’m going to try is exercises from Bradshaw’s “Homecoming”- I think susan has a link to it here on the blog.
Remember Hope- You are OK. You are SAFE. You are TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF.
My father left when I was 2 and saw me a couple of times of year every year after that. He didn’t call, never spent holidays with me, didn’t go to any of my graduations, or religious sacraments, and was never around on my birthday, though he did send me a gift each year. I don’t rememebr living with him and after he left my mom he never lived in the same state as me. He’s not a warm person and was not involved in my life. I know i have abandonment issues and I try to overcome them with every relationship I get into. The problem is, I fell like I am covering my eyes and leaping off a ledge every time I get involved with someone. I never know what to say, think or feel. I always feel like I am overreacting (even when I am underreacting.) And deep inside I am desperate to be loved though I don’t really believe that will ever happen.
I’ve been reading this blog since September and have grown a lot as a result (journaling, relationship inventories, writing and burning letters to people who have hurt me, etc.) I’ve come to realize that the pain I associated with my last breakup was actually an accumulation of pain from unresolved grief. I’ve been working through all of that. But the bottom line is, how does one ever open themselves up when they’ve never been able to? How does one form a healthy relationship when they’re as clueless as I am? How would I even know if I found one?
Serenity – you are my life saver! Thank you as always for your support and encouragement. I am hoping that I can break this cycle and replenish my water level so that I do not attract more users. It would really help if I could just pin point what event made me this way. My psychologist says that she can only really diagnose me with being too nice and attracting people who know that I will not judge them. I am just so sick of overcompensating for my partners and feeling so broken when they are thru with me.
Genevieve – I know those questions so well. I too wonder if I will sabotage a healthy relationship because I am so concerned over finding unhealthy traits. Sometimes the uncertainty is so overwhelming.
Hope, I can relate to you because altho I know I am an “enabler” and way too accomodating, overly “tolerant of bad behavior” and nice in relationships, have no idea where this comes from. Had no real major childhood issues, had a wonderful childhood, warm, caring parents. The only thing I can think of is the same thing, sibling/birth order issues. One of 6 kids, my mother couldn’t give ALL of us undivided attn, so the older ones had to help out alot? I don’t know. I guess it doesn’t matter HOW we got this way as long as we can learn to stop being this way. I have never been accused of having low self-esteem, in fact am successful in most other aspects of my life. I guess I just have to keep working thru it and hope that in the end I get better with boundaries and walking away from the first “pinch” instead of standing there and getting slapped, to quote Susan. Stay strong!
I seem to have both abandonment and enmeshment issues, though I think abandonment has the stronger hold over me because that happened at an earlier (and more formative) point in my life. My father is an alcoholic, so he abandoned me emotionally despite the fact that he was there physically. My mother was codependent and bipolar, and many times too worried about holding the family together due to my dad’s issues to give enough attention to me. My sister was born when I was 3 1/2 years old, and suddenly I was not the center of the (little) attention there was available to go around. Plus, my sister had colic and my mom developed post partum depression, so neither of those things helped improve the situation. I ended up a very lonely child. Later on, as I became a teenager, my mother became enmeshing – very controlling and critical. We fought like cats and dogs until I left for college, while my father never stuck up for me (and therefore continued to abandon me) to her because he just wanted to keep the peace and avoid a confrontation with her. (She was misdiagnosed for the bipolar for many years before she got the proper treatment, so her manic phases brought on the worst of the fighting.) So these are all issues I’m working through – it’s scary to face it, but I know I have to do it if I’m ever going to be happy and have hope for a truly healthy relationship.
I think I attracted my ex because he might also have both abandonment and enmeshment issues – his father died when he was 16 (abandonment) and he became the “man of the house” for his mom and younger brother (possible opportunity for enmeshment?). I know for sure he has abandonment issues because after one particularly bad fight, he broke down in tears and at one point said “everyone I ever love leaves me.” Maybe I’m off about the enmeshment part, but I think our individual issues played off of each other’s really well (or badly, I guess). After bad fights, I would often leave the house and go to my mom’s – I think I did it for 3 reasons (one healthy, the other two not so much) – I needed a breather because I would get so angry I knew I’d end up doing or saying something I’d regret. But (and here’s the unhealthy part) I was also afraid he would leave (so I “preempted” by leaving before he could) AND (I am ashamed to admit this but it’s true) I knew it upset him and I wanted him to understand my hurt. It was one of the only ways I could “get through to him” when he seemed indifferent to everything else – another clue that it was definitely not a healthy situation.
I am commiting to working on my fear of abandonment/enmeshment before getting into another relationship. I have fought the battle with three different relationships, and I’m tired of beating my head against a wall!!!
Lucy – when my ex and I would fight I would pack to leave but not actually be able to do it. I was in a place that I knew no one and was no adjusted to or familiar and I just wanted some sort of comfort. I had told my ex when we moved in that I would probably have to fight the urge to run home and that I was sorry ahead of time for that, but that I was committed to getting adjusted and making a life together. I think he forgot this. His mom had recently moved out on him (mind you he is 23) after the traumatic divorce, and his brother had also made every arrangement he could to not be home with their abusive father. I wanted to get him out of that situation more then anything and that was one of the major reasons we moved in. Anyway, I would pack and sit and cry and he would cry and say that he saw I was unhappy and didn’t want me to leave but didn’t want me to stay where I was unhappy (one of his most endearing moments – but he also did nothing to make me feel comfortable, loved, wanted, desired, validated, supported, etc). But then he would use it against me – as a form of me giving up. I tried my best to explain to him that it wasn’t the case, that it was just kind of that I felt threatened and scared and wanted someplace secure. I wanted support. And rather then try to understand where I was coming from, what I was feeling, and really listening to me when I would explain myself, he always took it as me pointing a finger at him. From the time I moved in he was gathering evidence as to why I wasn’t the perfect partner for/to him.
So to this day, packing will be my number 1 regret (although I probably only really did it 3 times). Because at the end, when I was actually packing to move out, he wasn’t emotional at all and didn’t even bat an eye.
Hope, I doubt your packing was the cause of the trouble—more like, his reluctance or inability to give you the love and support you surely deserve. Regret that he couldn’t offer you more than he did, but maybe don’t be so hard on yourself for just trying to get his attention and say “I matter. My feelings matter. Please see me.” I think maybe it was actually the healthy part of you trying to make him notice that you needed more. He was just not the right person for the job. And, as Susan says, his not batting an eye only meant that he couldn’t deal with the loss, not that you didn’t matter. It probably hasn’t felt like it, and maybe doesn’t seem like much consolation right now (it will, eventually! (-;), but your sadness means you are the stronger one. I know, I know… What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, but hey, we were already strong enough. (-;
Genevieve,
Hang in there. You will make it. This was (IS!) the hardest thing in the world for me to finally (!)
realize (then immediately forget again, but I keep coming back to it, at least), but you don’t need to wait for someone else to love you—that will happen in its own time. It may not make much sense to you right now, but the person you desperately wish to be loved by is you. Once that happens, the rest will follow. Keep reading this site, keep journaling, keep rejecting the rejectors in your life, keep acting as if you’re already who you want to be, keep replacing your old negative inner dialogue with loving self-belief, keep doing nice things for yourself any time you can and things will start to change for you.
It will take some time and the very difficult work of feeling all the things we set aside precisely because they’re so painful. But you’ll come out on the other side if you just keep trying. It’s a messy process and very much one step forward and two steps back, but you’ll start to gain ground. And you will know that special person you’ve been looking for by the fact that he treats you with love and kindness, and respect for who you are and who you yet want to become (as Susan says, look at his ACTIONS, not his words). And he will appear when you will accept nothing less because you know in your heart that you deserve love and happiness. You do!
I’m still working on these things myself, a day at a time, and failing a lot, but because of this blog and Susan’s straight talk and kindness I know what to try for, even when I don’t quite make it. And truly, there are things I now wouldn’t tolerate from anyone that would have seemed wholly natural to me just six months ago. As the poster child for self-abandonment, I know if I can begin to change, anyone can. We don’t have to, can’t afford to, wait for someone to come find us, though. We have to do it for ourselves.
Bluebird – thank you for understanding and providing me with more support and a better perspective. That was really all I wanted, was for him to realize that I was hurting and me telling him wasn’t working, nothing was, and nothing did! I felt so childish every time I did it, but it was instinct not to fight and instead fight the flight response that was happening. He has to be a victim of everything so he made me pack and leave and that was very hard to overcome. I am doing my best but am very hard on myself. I am hoping that I can love myself more and thus demand more love from others.
Hope, go to a bookstore and spend an hour and take the tests in the book “Reinventing Your Life”. It may give you some insights you don’t have yet. It did me.
I also saw a book there about “people pleasers”, which may also be helpful.
People pleasing patterns-
This was eye-opening to me. I just found it: http://www.earley.org/Patterns/people_pleaser.htm
I am now realizing that I have both of these issues, and so does my ex. My dad flipped an emotional switch, abandoned the family and started a new one, and didn’t really strain his neck looking back. My mom was a control freak and tried to micromanage just about everything I did, and resented when I didn’t allow it.
I think I held onto my screwed up ex as long as I did because I couldn’t bear to lose the most important man in my life all over again. I thought somehow if I made things work with him, I could compensate for my dad leaving me. Didn’t work, and instead I stayed with a less-than-wonderful man for way longer than I should have.
I don’t know why the fear of rejection is larger than the fear of wasting years with someone who doesn’t deserve your company. The human psyche is a complex beast, what can I say,
Thank you serenity!! I will check out both the book and the website!! I am determined to be the best ME I can be and to make it through this grief work whole.
I am grateful for your help and wish I could help you as well in some way!! XOXO
Bluebird –
Thank you for your insight and support. It’s a tough process but you are absolutely right. The uncertainty has always been rooted in a lack of self love and/or confidence. If I work on that the rest will fall into place and things will be more obvious. Sometimes you can’t see what is right in front of you. I’d know in a split second if someone wasn’t treating a friend right but when someone mistreats me, I have no idea if they actually are mistreating me or if I am being overly sensitive.
Susan –
You and this website are a gift to all of us. When you feel alone it helps to know that you aren’t actually alone. When I come to this website, thanks to you and all of the wonderful people who post here, I know I’m not alone. Thank you. You are doing an unmeasurable amount of good with this website. :)
Hope, you are helping me. It’s so helpful to have everyone sharing and supportive here.
My face-to-face friends are as supportive as they can be, but they don’t really understand the extra drama/trauma of these kind of breakups most of us are talking about. And I think they’re getting a bit tired of how drawn out this process is.
With this blog, we’re really not alone. And sometimes I feel that to the extreme- I live alone in a huge city three hundred miles away from my family. When the breakup happened, I had only one good friend in the area outside of the relationship.
And I had a hellatious time for the first five months and am *still* working through the grief.
Anyway, I appreciate you valuing my posts. My ex totally invalidated me- almost everything I had to say about anything was ignored, devalued, put-down, or uncredited, even if he put it to use. And I stayed and put up with that c&*^p far to long (he also had a super-sweet people-pleasing to the max side!! talk about having different personalities), SO it really wore away at me–being so unappreciated.
Moving On, I recently figured out that my connection to the ex and inability to get away from him (addiction actually) is *so* rooted in trying to win the approval of someone who could never approve of me. (Similar to my father.) My brain was *fixated* on winning that approval. Talk about Susan’s “moving away from a pinch”. I stayed and stayed while I was emotionally “bruised” by his constant disapproval of who I was and what was important to me. NOT EVER AGAIN. I REFUSE TO PLAY THAT GAME.
And I wish the obsessive thoughts in my brain would stop playing that last game that’s *over* LOL!
Serenity,
I know what you mean….I made the choice to stop playing this foolish game, by walking away. But that doesn’t stop my brain from still playing it every now and again when things are going better in general. I must say I am getting a bit bored of this “movie” playing in my head of what went wrong. Too bad in this case there is no projector to smash!
But yes, trying to “win” approval is not ideal. I think in my case I became more verbally aggressive to him because I got fed up with the lousy way he was treating me, and hadn’t done enough the whole time because I wanted him to think well of me. I liked that he saw me in such a positive light. But I should have paid more attention instead to the negative light that I saw him in, long overdue.
I always chose partners who are impossible. I never see it coming, and the relationships are always fantastic in the beginning – some have even been great for 3+ years before something triggers my irrational fear of abandonment. It can be a word, an action, or just an inkling that I have and then all hell breaks loose. I start to believe that my partner no longer wants to spend time with me, that his feelings for me have changed, that he will find someone better, that he will leave me. I then start to push him away because of my fear of confronting the real issue.
I honestly cannot recall any major abandonment issues from my childhood, other than the occasional brush-off from my mother because she was always so busy raising three children. Therefore, I struggle with trying to “make myself better” when I truly don’t know where to begin! I can’t seem to put my finger on the root of the problem.
2lazydogs, I think you put your finger on it right there. What brushing off looks like to an adult is the *world* to a child whose major caretaker has to do it…And this is *not* blame for your mother, but knowledge for you. Burney says that rational minds aren’t really developed until the age of 7, which makes sense. Even if you kind of “understood” it at a young age, odds are you felt it as something different.
I mean, this is just like the child’s view of school- remember how school meant *everything* to you in slementary, junior high and high school. It had the impact of being THE WORLD.
Birth order may be an issue here too- especially if you are not the youngest. It’s when a younger sibling is born that suddenly mom’s attention gets pulled away (and for good adult reason). And did you have any other caretaker? My dad was pretty absent, so for me it was only my mom, and that’s a pretty heavy impact.
Serenity –
Thanks so much for your input. I was the eldest of three (we were each two years apart) and my younger brother is mentally handicapped so my Mom was pretty busy caring for him. She was a stay at home mom and my Dad worked long hours and traveled a great deal, so the brunt of the caregiving was upon her. I struggle with the fact that this could have so much impact on my adult life…and…how do I go about healing these wounds from childhood?
At the start of every relationship I always say to myself “I’m going to be fine…it won’t be like all the other relationships”, and then something triggers me, I go off course and am not able to pull myself away from thinking about being abandoned! It’s very frightening to think I may end up alone because I cannot handle this issue properly – even with the help of my therapist.
2lazydogs,
I’m struggling with this too, and one of the hardest things I’ve had to realize (or I keep trying to, anyway!) is that I’m the one who abandons me in relationships. I’m still working on the why of it, like you. But that’s the crux of the biscuit, I’ve come to think. Trying to get to the point where I can truly say, I will never abandon myself again. No matter what happens, or whoever else comes into my life, or leaves it, I can count on myself. I’ve never really had that, and I think the lack of it is what attracts the people who hurt us. The paradox of relationship is that in order to stay, you have to be able to walk away if you need to. I’m just beginning to understand that.
And I know we all are working to make ourselves better, and that’s necessary and wonderful, but part of that means understanding that we’re beautiful, too, right now, as Works in Progress! And to heck with anyone who would try to convince us otherwise. Try to treat yourself with infinite patience and kindness while you’re searching. You deserve it.
bluebird,
Strangely enough, I have spent a great deal of time working on “me”. I spent six years without dating ANYONE, focused on my needs; took self reflection classes, self-help workshops, etc. It truly was the happiest time of my life. So, why, after all this work on “me” is it that as soon as I get into a relationship I lose myself? I can see it happening time and time again, but can’t seem to do anything to stop it.
When I’m in a relationship one little thing triggers me and I start to change. I start to believe that I’m not good enough, that he wants someone different, and I, in turn start to become what I think he wants. Is it just that I’m continually picking the wrong guys?
2lazydogs:
In Beyond Codependency, Melody Beattie talks about balancing self work with
relationships. Her chapters “Improving Our Relationships” and “Overcoming
Fatal Attractions” are pretty helpful.
Kathy,
Thanks for the reference – I don’t have that book in my self-help library so I just ordered it.
2Lazydogs, Burney suggests that we have inner children of different ages inside of us. This seems to make some sense to me…so when I feel as if I’m being abandoned, the part of me that felt that at the age of 3 when my mother gave birth to twins and pretty much did all the mothering herself (and so, the toddler got a lot less attention) comes to the fore. Perhaps there’s a voice of an inner child at a certain age that gets activated when you get into relationships- kind of taking over the wheel from the mature, balanced, reflective self that usually drives the bus?
Serenity,
Yes, I have done some reading regarding the inner child, and have also taken a workshop where we worked on healing the inner child. I guess my question is still this – how do I redirect my inner child when, in a relationship she starts to throw tantrums when things don’t go her way and she sees no alternative but to leave the relationship? The strange thing is that I always see it happening, I just can’t redirect or pull myself out of the downward spiral. My therapist has said it will take continual work and I will eventually find a way to redirect this behavior. Right now, it just seems like it’s a never-ending battle!
2lazydogs:
I think inner-children “throw tantrums” because something in a relationship is triggering
a past experience that is unresolved. So we can 1) heed the warning–we don’t want
to be with people who trigger the tantrums and/or 2) become better self-soothers
and work through the tantrum on our own instead of putting it on other people. I think
your therapist is right: it gets easier (and less frequent) with practice. I also think it’s
not so likely to happen if we refuse to get into relationships (or too deep into them)
with people who make us feel all crazy and unsafe. For me, the inner child can cause
problems, but can also be the first to see a red flag and sound the warning bell. She
doesn’t want me to hang out with folks who hurt her!
The suggestion from Burney was to start talking to the child and “parent” it- he says he did this every day in the morning around a certain issue. I think this perhaps fits into a ’self-soothing’ strategy. I’m going to try it at least.
2lazydogs-
I relate to what you said about something triggering you, how you begin to change in a relationship and feel that the person wants someone different. Also, not being in a relationship for long time, working on yourself, but still having the same issues when you start a new relationship.
During my last relationship(the one that brought me to GPYP), I had this emotional lightbulb moment where I realized that I was going into what I called “reverse,” with this guy. What I meant by that was that I stopped taking care of myself in ways that were important to my self-esteem and identity. I stopped doing creative work; stopped going to movies, especially odd/quirky movies; stopped dreaming about traveling to far off places(places I wanted to visit, and could visit), etc. I seemed to be going into a deprivation mode. And, I was doing it voluntarily. My ex — who did other stuff — was not doing this to me, I WAS doing this to me.
As I thought about it , it occurred to me that I pretty much had shifted into that gear, reverse, in virtually every serious romantic relationship. It was like I was flying on a plane that I knew was going to go down. I was getting rid of anything creating excess weight, like the luggage, the seats, the carts, then moving on to the instrument panel and eventually the engine.
Anyhow, what I came up with was: that when I was in a relationship, that instead of being nurtured and being fed by the relationship I was going into some kind of deprivation/starvation mode. Somehow I think I felt the only way to stay in the relationship was to starve myself of myself: to throw out parts of myself to stay airborne.
I compared it to the “failure to thrive” syndrome found in children who had lived in orphanages( during the second world war I believe)and were eventually adopted. But only after they had spent their first year in the orphanage. These children had minimal cuddling and attention, and spent a lot of time alone, because it was an orphanage. They did not receive the affection and attention needed to bond to a caregiver. The children who were later adopted, often by loving parents, never managed to connect or experience closeness with their adopted parents or others. And they had other difficulties, as well. In one study of them, the researchers called this phenomenon: a failure to thrive. A failure to thrive in relationships and life because of their early emotional and physical deprivation
Without comparing my life to these orphans, it seemed that I stopped thriving, when I was trying to get close to someone. I didn’t pull away from the other person. Instead, I pulled away from myself.
Not sure if this makes sense, but that’s what occurred to me this past summer — while my ex and I were still together.
I’m really looking hard at this as I move forward.
seeif, there’s a lot of really sad data now on serious attachment disorders coming from children who are adopted from eastern Europe…. But what this makes me think of is my ex– his parents ignored he and his sibling and left them alone at home a lot. He never even learned to speak their first language because they didn’t talk to him that much. Did I do something similar to what you describe (shut down, cut off fun things, narrow down my world) because I was matching his way of being? Or because he was interacting with me the way his parents had interacted with him? (absent and critical)
seeif,
Thanks so much. It truly helps to know that there are others that are dealing with the same or similar situations. This hasn’t happened in every relationship I’ve been in, only when I am deeply committed and in love with the person. It’s as if I am so afraid to lose him that I will do anything, including changing who I am, to keep him. I believe this is due to my “love addiction”. I tend to over-analyze and worry about everything and even if my significant other isn’t showing any indication of leaving me it’s as if I will dig deep and try to find the tiniest clue that there is something awry in the relationship.
In my last relationship all it took was for him to mention a conversation he’d had with his parents about our age difference (he was 12 yrs. my junior). I took that and ran with it – and made it into something so huge that I could not let it go. On top of that he began spending more and more time at work (it was the busy season for his company) and I took that as a personal attack – that he didn’t want to spend time with me. It’s like I start to loose control and create all sorts of scenarios in my head once the ball starts rolling. Eventually, I could no longer deal with the possibility that he didn’t want to spend time with me and that he may just leave me…so I ended the relationship. He was in shock. He knew things were strained but he never saw this coming. Of course he didn’t – because most of the issues were being created in MY own head!
Serenity, for myself I realized that my behavior, my throwing my identity out the window was something I do in a close relationship, it’s automatic. It was not a reaction to my ex’s behavior. It was something that belonged to me. That’s one of things that made me realize I needed to get help for myself…that something deep was going on inside me…apart from the other stuff with my ex.
Neglect –whether intentional or not — can be very damaging. Technically, it’s considered abuse but it’s often downplayed in behavioral health. And I think a lot of people have been damaged by neglect but don’t realize it. Day in, and day out routine neglect can be devastating to someone’s spirit.Talk about something creating an attraction to someone who is unavailable. And if you throw in intermittent enmeshment with the primary caregiver who is emotionally neglecting you, well… Realizing and recognizing all this has gone a long way toward helping me in my recovery.
Neglect and emotional abuse are still the step-children in research on what effect abuse has on children — or adults.
Hi,
I have been suffring from a very long time. I dont even know where to start with this but I was hoping I could talk to someone tha has enmeshment or better still HAD that problem. I have been fighting against myself my whole life, I have some horrible issues that Im working on resolving.
i can relate to being in relationships where I look for someone to complete me. Ive done it all my life. Im in one now, and this is where I have learned about enmeshment. It feels like my partners soul is inside me, and I feel smothered. So im oushing him away but at the same time I pullig him back to try keep a balance and “space” beween us. It seems impossible right now, nothing I seem to be doing is working. Usually I would just end it, but I guess Im so attached and “enmeshed” that I cannot even see my own feelings clearly so I feel stuck.
If anyone can offer any advice to me on how to get rid of this howwible negative energy in me, or how to work on my relationship at the same time without ending it, please please help me.
Robyn x
Hi Robyn,
Melody Beattie’s book “Codependent No More” and Pia Mellody’s “Facing Codependence” helped me sort out some of this.
They helped me see patterns of self-neglect and the resulting feelings of sadness and fear that made me vulnerable to enmeshment with others. It allowed me to understand some of what I call the “helping” illness or syndrome.
Also reading all the posts to do with “breakup” and “grief” here at GPYP helped me get a better perspective on what was true for me in the relationship that brought me to this blog.
Welcome. Good Luck. And keep posting.
Enmeshment is a very good topic — one I’m sure many of us can relate to. It’s often very personal and individual. It may take some reading and reflection for you to understand how you experience. But it’s possible.
Meanwhile, I would also encourage you to read posts about nurturing yourself as you go through the process.
Thanks for your comment.
Seeif
Robyn, start writing, a lot of the kind of negative stuff you are feeling is based on shame, and it goes way, way back. Start looking back in your childhood. I read something the other day about making a list of eeryone in your life who ever shamed you. You make this list then let it go for a week and do nothing, because this is heavy duty work.
You come back a week later and start writing letters to every one of those people (that you will never send). These letters are from the perspective of the person you were at the time, if you can remember your age and how you felt back then. You are GIVING BACK THE SHAME to the person who passed it on to you. Try it, it´s pretty good. I am using it combined with EFT (do some net searching, there is plenty of information online) to release a lot of negative toxic shame-based feelings and reactions. It works. It is painful and a bit scary … but it works. Deal with it, get it out of your system. You are halfway there already in that you recognise there is stuff you need to address … you get get this stuff cleared and form better relationships with better people …
Lola
Hi there
I totally forgot about this blog. My bf and I have since broke up ( he ended it) which of course has *killed* me inside. Im trying to win him back yes, but also now trying to let him go and if its meant to be will be….whey then if we have broken up, do i still feel his energy in me? I till feel a deep sense of shame probably over a lot of things, i believe i need to FEEL this shame at the moment im emotionally numb, but i guess part of me does part of me doesnt and i have no idea how to get round my psyche in order for my body can feel this pain, register it and then rlease it with the energy….any ideas?
I hope everyone is okay and still having as much fun as they can have on this journey, u still need to try have fun, even if u feel u dont deserve it
Robyn xx