being rather defended, that is, at one remove from are more vulnerable sides

closed off from certain emotions focused in many cases on not feeling

and yet in relationships quite the opposite is required to be good at love

means to have a capacity to reveal one's hurt, desire and tender sides, this is quite

a balancing act

great strength for most of the day and well handled tenderness for the few that remain.

it's no wonder if the journey from independence to vulnerability can get

rather fraught and if the desire for closeness can be accompanied by terror

and what looks like but isn't really, nastiness

even after years with someone that can be a hurdle of fear about trying to get close.

two major symptoms then tend to show up

firstly we can get distant or what psychotherapist call avoidant we want to

get close to our partners but feel so anxious that we may be unwanted

we freeze them out a bit instead we say we're busy

we pretend our thoughts are elsewhere we imply that a need for reassurance would

be the last thing on our minds we might even have an affair

the ultimate face-saving attempt to be safely distant and often a perverse

quest to assert that we don't require the partner's love , a love that we've been

too reserved to ask for or else we can get controlling what therapist called

anxious

we feel our partners are escaping us emotionally and we respond by trying to

pin them down administratively

we get unduly cross that they're a bit late will chastise

them heavily for not having done certain chores

we asked them constantly they've completed a task they'd agreed to

undertake all this rather than admit I'm worried I don't matter to you

we can't we believe force our partner to be generous and warm

we can't force them to want us even if we haven't actually asked them to

so we try to control them procedurally a tragic cycle that unfolds we become

shrill and unpleasant to the other person

it feels that we can't possibly love them anymore

yet the truth is we do which is fear rather too much that they don't love us but if

a rather harsh graceless behavior could be truly understood for what it is

it would be revealed notice rejection but as a strangely distorted get very

real plea for tenderness

we should have sympathy for ourselves relationships require us to put

ourselves in a very weak position visa fee partners if they ever want to use

the power they have over us (and sometimes they do they know) exactly

where to put the boot in this can be deeply frightening this aspect of

relationships is even more difficult if our early experiences and childhoods

have made closeness rather scary if we've encountered people who have taken

signs of vulnerability as targets

so we're not frightened of closeness because we're fools but because it is a

challenge to be around another person who might easily hurt us and to keep on

in a relationship despite the fact that they do sometimes use this knowledge to

strike out at us

closeness is inherently threatening but we can gradually with courage and

difficulty replace defense with explanation we can say we are frightened

and why

rather than turn cold or controlling and we can begin to see what our partners

might be trying to communicate through their off-putting behavior

we can never be through with a requirement for acceptance

this isn't a curse limited to the weak and to the inadequate, in security and love

is a sign of well-being

it means we haven't allowed ourselves to take another person for granted

it means we remain realistic enough to see that things could genuinely turn out

badly and that we're invested enough to care

we must get better at seeing the love and longing that lurk behind some of our

and our partner's most frosty managerial and brutish moments were just in our own

way of dealing with the anxieties of trying to get close