Ride The Lifetrain w/Chuckie

First, let me once again thank all my fellow passengers for sharing their thoughts on this subject.  I was astounded by your very astute, candid and knowledgeable inputs (see previous article “Ketchup”!).

As promised here is my take on what has prevented me or provided barriers to intimacy for myself.  However, so as not to over burden this topic I decided to switch tracks and just release the whole kit and ka-bootle (is that how you spell Ka-bootle?).  Anyway, being the conductor I can do that (he he).

As I approached my thoughts on this subject I took a long look in the mirror and decided to open my kimono, be vulnerable and expose myself.  Here’s why.   Since my divorce I have struggled with intimacy, i.e. being able to truly trust and stabilize into a wholesome and monogamist relationship.   During this time of healing for me I have found that there are a lot of confused and hurting people.  My primary goal is to share and hope that via the love of Jesus our lord and Savior that healing might occur.  OK?  Still love me?  And note I am not seeking pity. I also want to in some way answer the question I am often asked, “why aren’t you married?”.  Well, I suspect that some of that might lie in the fact that I don’t have Denzel (Washington) cosmetic qualities and a few other reasons as follows, read on:

I discovered that I am now recovering from a  fear of closeness and intimacy. You might ask, has he lost his mind, his manhood?  Why would someone be so afraid of becoming close to another person?  My self discovery reveals that the sufferer must be believe that closeness and intimacy must be dangerous and threatening to their well-being.  A possible origin of this fear might be as I look back having suffered a traumatic loss of a loved one or a love.  Alternatively, another possible reason might be that as children of divorce we have  witnessed our parents fighting and quarreling.  So, one could conclude and believe that closeness is dangerous.  While it is understandable that such a conclusion could be reached, it is also premature and prejudicial: I now know that all relationships are not dangerous.

I truly believe that a fear of closeness is a phobia-driven illness, and for me, I know my cure lies in my now progressive attempt to safely and methodically get closer to another person who is capable of doing the same.  No relationship can survive in a healthy fashion when the fear of closeness exists in any measure.  Can I get an Amen?

As I start seriously pursuing and attaining closeness with a loved one I face the inevitable fact that I WILL ultimately lose them. It is the reality of impermanence that makes the pursuit and attainment of intimacy and closeness even more meaningful, worthwhile, and necessary.

As I continued in my self-evaluation having lost the love of MANY a good woman over the years, I now know that I have been sabotaging myself and my  possible “Love of my life” opportunities.  I found that I can categorize my fear in the following categories.

Lack of Self-Knowledge

When I found myself suddenly and expectantly divorced, I had a gut wrenching big belly laugh.  Suddenly single…I HAD NO IDEA who I was.  I was so focused on being a good christian husband and provider that I just did not know who I was.  When women would ask me “So, you got any goals?”  I would scratch my butt and feel real stupid having not the faintest idea of what I liked in life, what were my passions.  I was just that consumed by my marriage.  So, I have now concluded that the deeper we know ourselves the more fully we can be present with others and consciously share our experiences.  The less we know the more difficult it becomes to communicate our feelings and desires effectively to your partner.  Intimacy requires both partners to communicate in an open and honest way, to be able to say to the other what we cannot to anyone else. In other words, we are communicating about the effect we have on one other, both our delight in them, and how we feel uncomfortable. The less we know about ourselves and the less comfort we have in focusing on our internal and felt experience, the more tendency we will have in interactions to focus on the other and assign blame.  If this is not present for me, the ability to express myself to the person of the opposite sex without fear of judgment, I realize that that particular union might not be healthy for the both of us.  No matter HOW FINE she might be.  WHY DID IT TAKE ME TILL 50 to learn this!!!!

We always reside in awareness and unawareness (or conscious and unconscious).  When we are coming from an unconscious place we tend to feel disconnected from those around us, and have less control of our feelings, desires and behavior.  During these times for myself  as I look back I found that my communication became confusing, and I had a tendency to project my feelings on to my beloved instead of expressing them and experiencing them directly.

I believe it is our responsibility to keep working on moving from unawareness into more awareness.  To do this we need to take time to reflect, deal with unresolved issues, and learn about ourselves.  Ok, Ok enough of that one.

Unresolved issues – Family and Relationships

Here’s the big boy for me…  A particular aspect of working on self-awareness relates to unfinished business.   All of us bring our past into relationships and no one escapes this. When we have not examined unresolved issues but rather attempted to move on by saying to ourselves ‘the past is the past and has nothing to do with me now’, we may believe we have gained control over painful memories and experiences. However, we are likely to find that the same tidal wave keeps coming at us in an unconscious re-enacting of those experiences, and at some point we have to stop and consider that we have gained no more control than we do over an actual tidal wave. It becomes clear that we do not come into relationships objectively or with a clean slate. We carry a veil over our partner and the world that we see through. A veil of projections, that in order to really see and connect, we have to remove.  Hopefully by being totally honest with you, my fellow passengers, you will see that my veil is lifting and yours can to if necessary.

Emotional wounds occur in early relationships, and when this happens we develop self -protections; unconsciously or consciously we are saying, “I am not going to let that happen again.”  The ways in which we protect ourselves can range from withdrawing, fighting and blaming, trying to please or sabotaging (there’s that word again!).  For me, these behaviors prevented intimacy, and created distance between me and my partners.  My apologies here, to you…and you know who you are…just know…I was really hurt…and I had no manual. Anyway, the following for me were my most common issues as a result of my past wounds;

* Unmet Needs. It would be impossible as we grow up for those adults around us to anticipate and fulfill our every need. Of course there are some that live in the desert compared to others, but all of us end up with areas in our psyche where we have experienced deprivation, an un-fulfilled need that still seeks to be gratified. We have been starved of attention, pride, care, or support. The list (mine) goes on. Coming into relationships I (we) carry a longing for that person who will know us so completely that the pain of unmet needs gets washed away.  How often have you heard at the beginning of relationships such expressions as; I feel so cared for, finally someone understands me, he/she really see’s me, etc. These are the statements of hope that things will be different. What we find is that things are not that different and the same kinds of disappointments emerge as relationships progress. These disappointments tend to have a familiar quality for each person. For some it is the familiarity of not being heard, for others it is feeling judged. Just like our parents who could not meet all our needs nor can our partner. I now realize that “EYE” have to resolve the past within myself so as not to burden my future beloved with the task of meeting all my needs.  …and again, why did it take me till fiddy to understand this?

* Attachment difficulties. The ability to form secure intimate attachments for me was a result of the kinds of attachments I experienced early in life. Depending on how our separations, in my case the divorce of my parents, was dealt with during informative periods and it possibly determined for me how insecure I would feel later in life regarding attachment and separation. Difficulties tend to manifest as fear of abandonment and fear of engulfment (e.g., “Don’t leave me” or “Don’t get too close”).  I researched and found that highly differentiated people can maintain strong emotional bonds while still maintaining their individuality. WHAT A REVELATION!  They can tolerate intense connection and periods of solitude. Separation and loss is the underbelly of relationships.  As we open our hearts to someone there is the knowledge that they will be torn from us, either as a choice to walk away, or in death. So times of separation from each other can evoke strong feelings. Partners can deal with this by trying to hold on too tightly or alternatively, maintain their distance emotionally.

…Dishonesty

BIG BOY Jr.  …Intimacy requires openness between partners. Honesty is also very much related to self-awareness. We can only be honest about what we know. Being honest is obvious in the big things that we know we are actively keeping something from someone.  It is in the everyday avoidance of being open about our experiences with one another that I feel it is a problem, mainly because it is so easy to do, and so easy to justify. For example, when I was married, picture the man who is looking forward to seeing his wife after a stressful day so he could have someone to talk to, and gets home to find her out with the girls (again) or engrossed in a project of her own giving no  attention to her husband.  Over time that could potentially make one resentful and disappointed but in a passive aggressive way nothing is said so as not to create any conflict. So what happens over time is this unexpressed experience begins to build a wall between partners. Each incident is dismissed as unimportant and with it a dismissal of what is important to ones self. People are driven by fears of how their partner will take the truth. So people tend to withhold things that they believe will get a negative response or disappoint their partner.  Honesty becomes a particular challenge at times when negotiating differences, or expressing feelings about the other that are threatening, such as jealousy, criticism, disappointment, and hurt.

Trying to Please (Raising my hand and shouting …Guilty).

For me this was a  common process associated with a difficulty in being honest. This often relates to an avoidance of conflict by developing a focus on their partner’s needs and feelings.  Even though women tend to be the caretakers it is not exclusive to women…trust me. Taking on this role in relationships begins early in life when children’s needs are neglected or criticized. As a  child I remember focusing on trying to please to develop a connection with caretakers.  In this society where women’s roles have changed and have increased in independence and achievement, the process of pleasing can take the form downplaying their skills and achievements in order to maintain their male partner’s expectation that they should carry the personal success. Another area that can be difficult to be honest about is in the arena of sexual experiences.  You’ll have to buy my book for more on that…

Addictions.

Addictions take energy and attention away from the relationship. It is easy to see the destructiveness of a substance or alcohol addiction on a relationship, but less obvious is a work addiction. Work is hard to confront because it is legitimized by our need to earn a living, and is seen as supporting the relationship and family. However, when one or both partners chronically spend long hours at work there is no time to spend in the relationship. The relationship and their lives become out of balance.  Got the tee-shirt…

Finally..you are almost home…I am about to take the offering (LOL)

Lack of Time

Intimacy takes time.  The longer you are in a relationship the more trust is developed, the more you get to know about your partner.  Time also relates to making time to spend in each other’s presence.  Where you have time to have fun together, as well as address conflict or address feelings within the relationship. It is important to give yourselves enough time to transition from the rest of your life to really ‘be here’ with your partner, to experience co-presence. In all relationships there are times when things outside the relationship take priority, such as work, school, family commitments etc. Problems arise when there is a pervasive pattern of not making time to be present with one another. The more time goes on where both partners have not connected in an intimate way the more likely certain experiences in the relationship go unaddressed. These may be resentments and conflict issues, feeling unloved, or decisions are made without the full involvement of both partners, lack of fun, less and less shared interests, lack of sexual intimacy and individual changes not shared. As these experiences build up, the motivation to spend time together decreases because there is so much to repair. Over time, from my experience, couples tend to avoid one another and the minefield of unresolved issues. Ultimately, “lack of time” can be a red herring, a euphemism for avoidance of relationship issues and fear of intimacy.

Hey, I am not sagacious or authoritarian.  But, I do know…when it’s all said and done for me…I hope that I would’ve left my mark on this earth by opening up and sharing some things that may help others.  Especially those things that for us men folk that we find hard to express.

All Aboard…The LifeTrain!

And now…HUG BREAK!!!

Ok…to dispell any rumors…my (married) see-ster…