In contrast to pursuers who fear abandonment and being seen as somehow “bad-bad” (bad object not to be loved), avoiders tend to be more focused upon the question of their performance in the world as capable/adequate/admirable versus incapable/inadequate/shameful. In contrast to pursuers functioning more from “their gut” avoiders tend to be more concerned with outside images of success and social appropriateness. Avoiders tend to be truly intimidated by the pursuers tendency to confront and seek to avoid vulnerability and socially appearing shameful and socially irresponsible or negligent, or even selfish.
The dynamic for many pursuers is that they end up in a place where they are left “all bad.” This is often the outcome of the negative cycle where their avoiding partner distances them out of their fear of confrontation, leaving the pursuer triggered into abandonment feeling, and more and more escalated and carrying the feeling of all the badness. It is my experience that pursuers, on the whole, end up carrying the “self-badness” feeling far more often than avoiders. The reason for this is that while avoiders typically clam up in defense as a response to conflict, pursuers become escalated and increasingly disregulated as they keep trying to reach their avoiding partner who is pulling away. In essence, the abandonment panic leads to escalated reaching on the pursuers part, which only shuts the avoider down further, resulting in a frustrated anger within the pursuer, which then causes the pursuer to become hunkered down or withdraw further. The pursuer then begins to feel that somehow the whole terrible cycle is their bad… that somehow they end up feeling that they themselves are the very reason they don’t get the contact they so desperately need. Over time, it is not uncommon that the “hopeful pursuer” eventually becomes the “burned=out pursuer.” This is a dangerous development in the marriage… if this situation persists too long without repair or therapeutic intervention, the pursuer can begin to profoundly detach and withdraw from the marriage, putting the very survival of the marriage at risk. Bringing the burned-out pursuer back into marital re-engagement can be a very challenging and uncertain process.
The problem of “object lack” in our lives is that it gets all mixed in with our own conclusions about ourselves as rejectable. And it activates our own deep shame over who we are. This creates a kind of fusion between the barriers towards towards the primary other we deeply need and the sense that our own badness/undesirablenessis is the reason for our being rejected or not responded to. This combination of factors makes it highly likely that trying to work past our issues with our primary other will result in activating defensive negative cycles rather than create healing. This is why couples therapy, such as eft, is so often needed to help couples disentangle their fused reactivities to enable truly connecting healing, conversations.
There is a notion in psychodynamic psychotherapy of “primary object;” in essence, the caretaker who held/nurtured us/made us safe in early childhood. The one, commonly the mother, sometimes the father, who we emotionally invested in and turned to in need. The relationship that forms the foundation of our attachment world. The contact with this person is literally life-giving when we are young. It is in this relationship where we first learn about love. And where we become awakened to the fuel that drives our lives.
To a degree, it is this same kind of feeling that drives us latter in life in our love relationship with our primary partner/spouse. Consciously, often unconsciously, we seek that same life-giving supply with that person. This morning, I am reflecting upon how totally painful it is, how much we suffer, when that emotional access to our partner is blocked… when we cannot make our way to the fuel supply of contact with the person we love. This is, inherently, a situation of powerful suffering. And, for some of us, an almost an unbearable repeat of what happened in our traumatic childhoods.
My reflection this morning is on this suffering… caused by blocked, unreachable, scared off, self-rejected, or minimized connection. Of course, for many of us, these feelings are hardly ever felt… they are warded off by powerful defenses, displacements and addictions.
This morning, however, I am in touch with how much pain we carry inside when the life-giving connection cannot be made, no matter how much the defenses or distractions operate. That the pain is too much, and how many of us… we numb ourselves – to survive!
Not uncommonly, my work has taken me into contact with extreme marriage-of-opposites contrasts. One such contrast is when a highly cultured intellectual person is paired with someone who primarily operates from their gut. Often, what I call here, “the over-regulated civilized”, is attracted to the aliveness and emotional heat ushering from their partner who functions from raw impulses or emotions. The, what I call here, “under-regulated primitive” is often attracted to the apparent cultural success/value evident in their refined, often highly educated partner. One person feels like they win because they are emotionally warmed up, the other because they have affiliated with someone who carries high currency in the larger society.
