Last year more than 40 million Americans used online dating services in search of âperfect matchâ partners. The explosion of internet match services and social network sites such as myface.com and facebook.com indicates that people yearn for intimacy and connection. In spite of an increase in population, however, marriage rates are down. While people say they want intimacy, they also seem to fear and flee from itâpeople like John, Eric, Lindsey and Susan.
John is a hard worker who works seventy hours a week and has frequent rage attacks when little things go wrong. Despite his high job performance, he has been passed over for promotion because of his poor relationship skills.
Eric is bright and seems to handle life easily. He is a sharp dresser and has a likeable personality. Inside he feels insecure and has low self-esteem. Divorced at the age of twenty-three, he is still looking for the perfect woman.
Lindsey always looks as if she stepped off the pages of a fashion magazine. She is witty and fun-loving but is careful about letting people get too close because of her struggle with sexual intimacy.
Susan is preoccupied by her childrenâs activity schedules, fundraising for local charities, playing competitive tennis, and exercising at the club. She is so unavailable to her husband that he had an affair at the office.
The flight from intimacy is often caused by counter-dependency--the flip side of co-dependency. While people with co-dependent behaviors cling and act weak, insecure and helpless, people struggling with counter-dependency appear strong, secure, confident and successful on the outside. On the inside, however, they feel weak, insecure, fearful, and needy. They may function well in the world of business, but are often failures in the world of relationships. They often have poor relationship skills, are afraid to get close to others, and avoid intimate situations as much as possible. They also make sure that no one sees their secret weaknesses and vulnerabilities. In short, they are very busy convincing others that they are okay and do not need anything from anyone.
Counter-dependent behaviors can control and severely restrict the amount of love, intimacy, and closeness people give and receive in their lives. Counter-dependency often creates feelings of loneliness, alienation, and a sense of âquiet desperationâ that reveal peopleâs need for intimacy.
So, what causes counter-dependent behaviors? A failure to fully complete the two most important developmental processes of early childhood: secure bonding and emotional separation. When not completed at the appropriate age, they drive adults to addictions, recurring conflicts, problems with closeness and intimacy, victimization by others, and unfulfilling and unsuccessful relationships. From birth to about three years of age, all children need help in completing the processes of bonding and separation.
Secure bonding with parents and others, which usually starts at birth, allows children to develop a sense of basic trust and safety. It involves a deep attunement between parents and children that includes lots of physical contact, holding and nurturing touch, and giving the child pleasant reassuring messages. Children need to know they are loved for who they are and to feel wanted by their parents.
Secure bonding also provides a solid foundation for children as they to begin to separate physically and emotionally and allows them to gradually move away from mother and father, exploring their world safely and securely and learning to become emotionally autonomous human beings. Children also need guidance and support in order to become emotionally separate from their parents. More secure the parent-child bond, the easier it is for children to become emotionally separate. Ideally, children should be emotionally separated from their parents by about age three.
What happens during early childhood that interferes with emotional separation? Our clinical research, which we write about in our book, The Flight From Intimacy, indicates that the most common cause of co-dependent and counter-dependent behaviors is developmental trauma caused by subtle disconnects between parent and child that prevent or disrupt emotional attunement during the first three years of life. If these early disconnects are not recognized and addressed, they eventually create patterns of isolation and disengagement that cause people to fear intimacy as adults.
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Although people often donât remember many of these early traumas, they are visible in their relationship histories. Emotional abuse by a parent or other adult can include withdrawal of love, verbal abuse, a lack of understanding or respect for the needs of the child, and attempts to over-control the childâs activities. Strong adult indicators of undetected childhood developmental traumas include fractured relationships, abusing others, depression, divorce and addictions. Adults who were physically or sexually abused as children have difficulty being close to others. With physical abandonment, something tangible happened. Emotional and spiritual abandonment or neglect are more difficult to recognize because the parent was physically present but emotionally absent. They neglected to support the childâs emotional needs for touch, holding, and comfort. While subtle forms of abandonment or neglect are more difficult to identify, they leave deep scars just the same.
People with counter-dependent behaviors generally have problems with intimacy because their emotional needs were not met as children. They try to hide their âneedinessâ from others by using indirect or manipulative methods to control intimate situations. Eliminating counter-dependent behaviors requires that people lower their protective wall of defenses around early wounds and learn skills that help them experience authentic intimacy. People with co-dependent and counter-dependent issues are often attracted to each other, which creates predictable conflicts over intimacy. Those with co-dependent behaviors want more touch and physical closeness. In contrast, those with counter-dependent behaviors want intimacy but fear being suffocated or dominated by their partner and are alert to quickly erect protective boundaries.
Either way, couple relationships often contain intense competition and conflict and little authentic intimacy. People with co-dependent behaviors will create a conflict when the relationship is not intimate enough. Those with counter-dependent behaviors create a conflict when the relationship is too intimate. Much of couple conflict involves a struggle to determine how much intimacy and how much separation partners can tolerate in their relationship.
The bad news is that the closer your adult relationships become the more they will activate memories of old traumas of being dominated, invaded, betrayed, abused and manipulated. The good news is that these relationships are the best place to heal the trauma that causes co-dependent and counter-dependent behaviors. Unhealed trauma always surfaces in your closest relationshipsâit first occurred with your parents, then with other caretaking adults and eventually with adult partners and with your own children. So healing the trauma in the place where it happened makes sense!
We found that healing trauma in relationships requires redefining intimacy to include the conflicts and struggles that are a part of the healing process. This means telling the truth about who you really are, what your needs are, sharing power, finding soul-evolving solutions to all conflicts and being willing to openly share your life with your partner on many levels: mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical. Authentic intimacy involves seeing your partner as a complete and separate person with some traits you like and some traits you donât like. It requires negotiating with your partner to meet your needs for closeness and separateness. Most importantly, it requires being willing to ask for what you want one hundred percent of the time.
Once you expand your definition of intimacy to include healing each other, your relationships will shift dramatically. Youâll find more opportunities for intimacy that help you create an intimate partnership relationship.
To listen to us talk more about counter-dependency and our new book, The Flight From Intimacy, download the mp3 files below.
Download Lara_Honos_Webb_Flight.mp3 (924.0K)
I'm a single dad of 2 age 2 and 5. I recently came across this article and have been reading along. This is a greate site and contains fantastic contents. Your site contains a lot of valuable information as well.
Posted by: single dad | March 06, 2011 at 11:39 PM
I am co-dependent and have been recoverging for over 5 years so understand and am aware of my 'issues' i am in relationship (deep friendship) with a woman who seems to have a collection of people who depend on her for their problems - she draws people close to her so that they become clingy - does not want love relationship with anyone. We have become close but now the dynamics as you can imagine are difficult - could she be counter dependent??
Posted by: pamella | September 09, 2009 at 08:31 AM
Greetings! I read your book and really liked it. It was an easy read and had a lot of good info. It seemed most of the book was aimed at couples and working with couples and their relationships. My question is what about people who can't even get CLOSE to being in a relationship and have never had a relationshiop because of counter-dependent issues. Is there any hope? It seems most literature I come across (on intimacy, etc.) is aimed at folks already in relationships. I realize therapy is an option but that is only an hour here and there if one can afford it. Anyway, if you have helpful advice on where to find info on how to help "true" loners...that would be most appreciated! Again, the book was very informational. Thank you and Best to you in 2009!
Posted by: Shannon | January 02, 2009 at 07:34 PM