love avoidant...

Love Avoidants have the conscious fear of intimacy and the unconscious fear of abandonment.

After fighting to be in relationship with Luke for months, the Captain was a welcome reprieve. His need of love filled me with the love I’d longed for from Luke. I was aware that my feelings for the Captain were not as strong as they were for Luke but I figured it was because he was returning my affection. He was always there. No need to chase him. Within days of our second date he had ten shirts in my closet and I didn’t fuss. I didn’t think it was too much too soon because I was in the desert and he was my oasis.

Until I felt like his mother, reminding him to brush his teeth, eat healthy, exercise and to be more responsible financially, soon all attraction washed out the door like after a flood. I suddenly was overwhelmed and drained. I was already raising one child, I didn’t need two. The Captain made me responsible for how he felt. If we were okay, he was okay and to keep him feeling we were okay, took too much energy. I was getting zapped and dragged down into the murk.

So I broke up with him –not easy for a love addict/avoidant but I did it.

Because suddenly, taking care of me was more important than taking care of him.  I had enough faith to believe that if I said no to him, he would not be the last man to love me (not easy for an addict who has been deprived all her life) and this was the beginning of my recovery –the very beginning because I still was unaware I had a problem.

I’m sixteen, walking into my family’s house. It is a split level house. The entry way is a landing with stairs going up or down. My mother is upstairs in the spare bedroom watching TV. My father is downstairs in the basement watching TV. Which way should I go? Up or down? Who will I hurt?

According to Pia Mellody, I was emotionally sexually abused by both my parents. 

“Enmeshment is a form of emotional sexual abuse. It happens when parents draw a child into the midst of the adult relationship they are having. Parents who draw their children into their relationship are usually too immature to be intimate with another adult; they find it too threatening and too painful. But they realize they can be intimate with their children because the children (1) are vulnerable and (2) won’t abandon them, but must stay near them for survival. So one or both of a Love Avoidant’s parents have a relationship with him or her that is more important to this parent than the relationship with the other parent.” –Facing Love Addiction by Pia Mellody

My parents hated each other. I was the significant relationship for each of them because I was an emotionally vibrant child -accessible. My sister was stoic and unreachable.

All of this abuse completely invisible. It was just a slow turn of the screw over many years.

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