Avoidance and growing past avoidance.

After a childhood of extreme emotional neglect - narcissistic unpredictable mother  (who incidentally was raised by a father who was the same - used to not speak to her for months as a child) and father who was absent - working abroad for the most part, I grew up the cool emotionally distant person that seems to typify the DA. I married a man who was out of touch with his emotions - too busy to really notice what I was up to, and in this relationship felt safe as I could avoid anything verging on the intimate and for the most part pretend to be normal.

Of course pretending eventually falls apart and much to my shame, I left my husband when the pressure of pretending became too much to bear - I felt nothing in the last few years, really completely emotionally numb, lonely, as though I could deal with anything and continue to appear calm.

Fast forward a few years and a recently ended relationship with a DA I have spent much of the last few years uncovering layers of feelings, learning to tolerate and not run away from unpleasant emotions, learning to recognise them, sit with them and allow them to pass. This has, I think, been the key to my journey - prior to this I could not bear conflict of any sort, whilst I appeared confident, attractive and successful, inside feelings vacillated between numbness and lack of self confidence. Relationships superficially made me feel good about myself - being admired made me feel admirable but I could never take the leap to real vulnerability and intimacy.

This fear of feeling did not relate to a particular person - it was something that was triggered by any threat of having to open up, to be less than perfect, to be real. It was similar to being trapped within a prison of my own making, with an extreme need to control my life in a way that was perhaps not externally obvious. 

Since I began this painful journey, I have realised that we all have to be responsible for our own experience - the preferences and hurts that have, over the years, solidified into personality. I have also learnt that it's unrealistic NOT to expect an intimate partner to trigger our internal wounds and some point - and that it's our ability to deal with this in a way that is compassionate to both ourselves and our partner that indicate real emotional maturity.

I am certainly not there yet - and am still riding the waves of hurt after ending my last long term relationship with a man more avoidant than me. I spent a good while trying to avoid even this pain by blaming or by keeping busy, achieving more, working, exercising to excess, eating - you name it I have been the poster child for it! I do however feel optimistic for the future. 

Focusing on my last relationship itself became a form of avoidance - to escape needing to experience my own feelings and deal with my owned rafts of stored pain. The start of a New Year seems a good time to really move on and I look forward to keeping in touch.