Your partner’s neediness overwhelms you. They are always complaining about something, and you wish they would get over it and move on. Nothing ever seems to be good enough. They say that you seem distant and want more from you. You don’t get why they think you are distant. You are home almost every night, and you always make sure things around the house get done. When you get angry with your partner, you don’t blow up at them and make a scene. You deal with it. And frankly, sometimes you just want to be left alone.
If this resonates with you, you may be an avoidant partner, and counseling can help you.
Growing up, you learned to do things on your own and get things done yourself. Doing things on your own and not needing help from others is a sign of strength and independence. Avoidant individuals often grew up with internalized values from a childhood of needlessness and wantlessness. You learned to build walls to protect yourself, and now you wonder why people are so intense and demanding.
When you think back to your formative years, you think your family was normal, and you were a pretty happy kid. If someone were to ask you about type of parents you had, you would get pretty angry. They were good parents. They might not have been perfect, but they did the best they could. Your needs were met. You had a roof over your head. Bills were paid. You got up and went to school each day and had shoes on your feet.
But let’s look deeper into your relationship with your parents and how this may have influenced what is happening in your current relationships with other people in your life.
How were emotions expressed in your family? Were emotions expressed at all, or perhaps only certain emotions? How did your parents deal with conflict? When you fell off of your bike and were hurt, what did you do? Whom could you go to?
Good parenting provides you with guidance, limits, and nurturance. This encompasses not only meeting your physical needs but also your emotional needs. Were you allowed to cry or be angry? Did your parents walk you through those emotions? Did they teach you it was okay to cry? What did your father do when you cried? What did your mother do when you cried? Were you allowed to be angry as long as no one was hurt?
If you came from a home where emotions were minimized, not acknowledged, or dismissed, that creates an environment for you to learn to cope with emotions by avoiding them. You avoid feeling those feelings in hopes that eventually it will just go away. But that doesn’t work in relationships. Conflict is healthy in any relationship. If conflict isn’t happening, usually one of two things is going on. Either one partner has all of the power in the relationship and the other has no say, or you have two avoidant partners who aren’t talking about things that need to be talked about.
Avoidance will severely undermine your relationship and create a relationship that lacks of intimacy and connection. The good news is working through your avoidance issues gives you a whole new world of emotion and intimacy to explore! Interested in setting up a counseling appointment? Call 701-478-4144.