every year of their relationship. While one continually demands more closeness and the other demands more distance, neither recognizes that they are both helping to maintain their comfort level, which was established in their separate families of origin. A couple like this may end up getting divorced and then later marry someone else, believing that the new mate is just what they really wanted and is totally different from the former mate. Invariably they again choose someone with the same comfort level. The whole drama will be replayed a second time, though perhaps with different content and perhaps with other roles. What they fight over may be different, and the former pursuer may become the distancer, but the basic pattern stays the same.
People can change their level of comfort on the closeness/distance scale. They can move up or down on it a few degrees, but they still work at finding a balance in their relationship at their new level.
2. Appearances Are Deceiving
One of the tricky things about closeness and distance is that most outwardly independent people are only pseudo-independent. They use distance as a way of controlling their fears about closeness. They may have tremendous needs for closeness, but have become afraid of it, so they distance instead.
The person who has no apparent need for closeness will choose for a partner someone who insists on togetherness. This partner represents the other side of the person’s own ambivalence about closeness and distance. The two of them will, in fact, have the same comfort level. However, the relationship will be turbulent because of their different ways of handling their needs for closeness or distance. They will fight over their emotional thermostat the way some people fight over the furnace thermostat setting. One turns it up and the other comes by and turns it down; neither is happy about the other person’s actions, but they manage to keep the temperature at a fairly constant level midway between their extremes.
The paradox of this is that even those who openly admit their need for togetherness are not usually capable of intimacy. True intimacy means having an accepting, open relationship with someone who is different from us. People who need constant closeness and togetherness have trouble accepting that others are not the same as them. They have trouble thinking of themselves separately. They talk about what “we think” and how “we feel” rather than what “I” think or feel. They insist: “We think about each other before we think about ourselves.” They talk about sacrificing for others and not being selfish. They espouse the values of love and compassion for others but often use those things in a manipulative way. They feel responsible for the happiness of others, and if someone is not happy ask, “What have I done wrong?” They also blame others for their own unhappiness.
Those who use distancing as a way of keeping the balance talk about lack of support, caring, or consideration from the pursuer who is nagging them. However, the favorite response of distancers is silence. They simply withdraw. They also say, “I don’t know,” as a way of avoiding an encounter with others.
But remember, even though they look very different, the pursuer and the distancer in a relationship have the same basic need for togetherness.
Try the following exercise to see how distancing and pursuing affect your relationships with people.
DISTANCING AND PURSUING
Decide whether you are usually a distancer or a pursuer. Then select a person who plays the opposite role in a significant relationship of yours. For a week, try playing the other person’s role — the opposite of what you are usually like with that person. Try doing a better job at playing that role than the other person does. If you are playing the distancer, be even more distant than the distancer usually is. Take note of what reactions and changes, if any, occur in both you and the other person.
Now do this with a parent or another family member where you tend to have one set pattern.What happens to both of you when you change this pattern?
3. All The World Wants A Mommy
The need for togetherness originates, like everything else, in the family of origin. Somewhere around the ages of six to nine, we begin to realize we are not going to get all the love and acceptance and security we want from our parents. As we get older, we slowly begin to develop a fantasy, which tends to peak in later adolescence, that somewhere out there is an ideal mate who will fill the emptiness we feel. We look forward to a time when we will be “in love” and experience true togetherness. What we didn’t get from our parents, we imagine we will get from our mate.
A major hidden expectation is that this person will provide for us the long-awaited bliss of perfect union. The more starry-eyed among us think this person is “everything I ever wanted in a mate.” The rest of us just think we will be able to turn that person into everything we ever wanted.
Example
Judith’s father had been hospitalized several times with emotional problems. Her mother was a highly anxious person and had little ability to nurture others. As the eldest of three, Judith basically ran the family and kept things going. She dreamed of the day when she would escape and live a more normal life.
After the failure of her second marriage, she sought therapy, wanting to find out what was going wrong. In spite of being an attractive and capable woman, her adult life was turning out much differently from what she wanted.
She discovered during therapy that she had been expecting her husband to give her the good feelings about herself that she never got from her parents. She had been the emotional pursuer, but since she had never really experienced closeness, she was, in fact, uncomfortable with it when it was available. She had chosen men who were basically at the same comfort level of closeness/distance as her family. They were unable to provide what she both wanted and feared. When she dated men who could give it to her, she distanced and did not continue the relationship.
The more children are deprived of nurture and guidance in early years, the stronger their fantasy later that this special person will make everything better. They fall in love with the image of what they think this mate will provide. When the reality strikes, they feel angry, frustrated, hurt, and disappointed. Then they usually try to figure out how to get what they want from the other person.
People usually find fault in someone when they’re not getting what they think they need. If they blame themselves, they try to find out what the other wants and then act on that to win approval or love. They give to get.
If they decide the fault is with the other person, they try various methods of changing that person. These methods may include everything from flattery to criticism to physical attack.
Example
Lela, the oldest of three sisters, had a chaotic childhood involving many moves and times when she lived with relatives rather than her parents. Her parents fought a great deal, and Lela resolved that when she married she was going to have a stable, happy family. She developed the skills and techniques she thought would help make this happen. However, she married Hank, an emotionally remote only child, who did not share her ideas about family. He was basically a loner and did not have much interest in parenting or in family life. He just wanted someone who would look after and admire him. What they wanted from each other was in strong conflict. Each handled the conflict the way conflict had been dealt with in their family of origin. Lela began to sound more and more like the “bitchy” mother she had hated, and Hank was increasingly like his distant father who had many affairs and stayed away from home. They moved a lot and fought a lot. Jani, their 19-year-old daughter, started saying exactly what Lela had said at that age: She wanted a “stable, happy home life.”
