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Post by gaynxious on Apr 17, 2017 17:59:12 GMT
Have any anxious people here found they prefer relationships where they don't actually love the person they are with.
I personally felt the most at peace in my relationship with an avoidant when I channeled my anger and resentment into loving him less. I still enjoyed having someone to come home to and I did my best to monitor my behavior not to hurt his feelings but I ultimately just didn't care whether he left me or not at that time. When we had disagreements I always ended them with 'you can always leave me'.
But once he changed a bit and started being more available I fell back in love with him more than he loved me and I found simply being his partner painful on a near constant basis. I couldn't stand the way he treated me but I couldn't get myself to leave. My main issues were how little time he wanted to spend with me, how resistant he was to affection, and that he wanted our sexual relationship to be much more open and basically like two single people that happened to live together. Living in sf I find that I am likely to have to tolerate a more open sexual dynamic than I am comfortable with if I want to be with someone I actually find attractive. It seems like that will be easier to tolerate if I keep my feelings more platonic and caring rather than actually attached and devoted. I'm not sure if this is realistic for an anxious person although I seem to be making great strides toward earned security lately. Although perhaps these feelings indicate I am over compensating by adopting an avoidant style as a defense mechanism.
Do any of the anxious people on this blog have any insight?
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Post by Norma on Apr 21, 2017 8:31:12 GMT
Yes, if I am honest to the level I am in a journal, I've felt this. There's power in not caring or being able to walk away, kind of like in a negotiation. It's just that for me it didn't work just like you explained. During my first year with an ex I would regularly find myself not liking a lot of things and it made me less attached. Then I just loved him despite it all and that wasn't as good since I couldn't walk. I felt all in so it make my anxious side take over. My new theory is to pick someone I like from e beginning because knowing me I can get attached and will anyway.
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Post by Megan on Apr 25, 2017 23:46:32 GMT
i hear you, and relate so much to taking on your partner's distancing strategies as a way of negotiating and calming your own insecurity... and tricking yourself into believing that you have more power now that you're the one who's indifferent. for me, i found that the pain and power dance was neverending, and eventually, i had to face the truth: i was catering to my partner by lessening my own need for closeness, redefining intimacy on his terms (as a power dynamic/thing to be controlled!), and that just won't fulfill me. maybe it would temporarily create "peace" and more closeness, but without compromise and awareness of relational patterns on both partner's ends, it's just another thing you're not talking about!
it sounds to me like you're placing a lot of power in your partner's hands: power to drive the relationship, power to define closeness, and power to control YOUR happiness. you're externalizing. and i get it. i'm there a lot, too. it's hard to forget that maybe we also have limiting beliefs about the intimacy we deserve, the types of partners we can attract, and how we FEEL love (not how we think we want to be loved, but how we end up associating love with struggle and having to prove ourselves and being too needy). this directly affects the partners we attract and are attracted to! they validate our feelings of how loveble we are or what love is, and if you're anxious, i can imagine that you might think you have to work harder than you really should to get the love you deserve.
i hear you saying that you have no choice but to be in an open relationship if you're going to be with someone you find attractive. what about lowering your standards of attraction? what about learning how to desire certain emotional qualities of your partner as highly as you do the physical ones? you have control! you're not at the whim of someone else.
side note: today i was thinking about my latest breakup with an avoidant, and i thought about how it would look if my emotional style was the one dictating the relationship, i.e. if my avoidant partner felt the same obsessive need to prove himself worthy to me as i did to him (by me learning how to be more distant and prove that i could 'control' my emotions/totally deny myself my basic need for intimacy). i thought about him trying to be more emotional to please me. i thought about him pleading with me to not leave, and telling me that he would learn how to be more emotionally present, open, and receptive to my needs. i thought about him pretending to care and be more emotionally aware. and to be honest, it felt crappy to imagine that scenario. i would feel awful in that position. i would feel awful making someone feel like they weren't good enough for me the way most avoidants do... anyways, just a thought for you.
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Post by annieb on Apr 26, 2017 0:21:54 GMT
Megan -
Thank you for the insightful moment about having to dictate an emotional style of a relationship. I remember I realized very quickly that my dismissive avoidant has the issues he has, but what I found really poignant what that he didn't see it that way. When I called him out on his behavior of distancing, he felt genuinely bad and as if I was accusing him. To me he should have just fessed up that he doesn't care, but the truth was that he cared deeply, but was unable to even express a slightest vulnerability. You could see the pain in his eyes, but he was frozen to actually reach out to me. Now somone my think that I am just filling in the blanks, but at the same time, I am a very intuitive person, an I can read between the lines. In the end my love and my willingness to give him incredible amounts of space and freedom didn't align with my values. As much as I wanted to love him and let him be, he would have to commit to me for me to be able to give and he wasn't going to budge on that one. For these relationships to be sustained, some kind of compromise must be reached, and while we can be aware of each others difficulties, both have to come half way. And while I was willing to go half way, even 75%, gosh more like 90%, he wasn't going to give me even his pinky finger.
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