© George Hartwell M.Sc., 2009, www.HealMyLife.com. (416) 234-1850. georgeh (at) interlog.com.
Love and marriage are not built in an atmosphere of avoidance of life. Avoidant persons by reducing risk in their life end up avoiding life. This is called flight from life.
Avoidant persons use manipulation and control of others to drive out risk. If I control others then I don't have to be scared of what they might do. This means that avoidant person cannot allow or support the free will and choices of others. They can not tolerate freedom. One simple example is their avoidance of making clear polite requests that use the the word: "Please." (Please means 'If you please' and acknowledges the free will of the other.)
In their flight from life and avoidance of risk, the avoidant must diminish the other person: diminish their freedom, diminish their self expression, diminish their expression of feelings, diminish their spontaneity. They use manipulation and control to diminish freedom and self-expression in their partner. (This is ultimately a form of shaming - denying the right of the other to be. It is a denial of life to another.) They cannot tolerate the risk of letting their partner be free to be themselves.
Maybe they are not good at 'self-soothing' - that is, they do not do a good job of controlling their own anxiety. They are not supportive and aware of their own inner core. Perhaps they grew up with shaming parents who tended to deny the right to life to their child. They may live more by rules (the law) rather than freedom and love (grace). They did not grow up with the security of strong healthy connection to strong healthy parants that gave them the freedom to be themselves.
Love involves regular risks: such as the risk of being real, open, and vulnerable. There is risk in making clear direct requests of one's lover and partner. There is risk in voicing your concerns and confronting the other directly. This is too much risk for the avoidant personality.
So 'life-avoidant' personality opts for a non-marriage - a silent divorce.
The avoidant life style focuses on life at home, within the home, almost house bound. One stays about the home and won't venture far away from home.
A life avoidant marital home looks like this:
1. Focus on nest-making.
2. Makes the home like a very comfortable womb-like cave.
3. Decorates with soft weak colours (nothing bold).
4. Never have windows open to the world. Block off any view of you from outside. For example: many curtains, sheers, total privacy landscaping.
The life-avoidant life style leading to silent divorce looks like this:
5. Avoidance of exposure, public display even nakedness with one's mate.
6. Avoid all decisions. Don't make a clear yes or no statement.
7. Avoid all confrontations. Don't be clear about how you feel.
8. Avoid any new situations, creative challenges, travel or change.
9. Avoid conversation that is personal, relevant, immediate. Focus in topics that are irrelevant, impersonal and not here and now. (Life is lived in the here and now, in the present moment.)
10, Give answers to people problems, not empathy or acknowledging their feelings and sympathizing with them as people.
Unwilling to venture in life, in intimate communication, in love and
in work, they are examples of the 'wicked, lazy servant in Jesus'
parable of the talents.
To understand this more consider a story told by Jesus called now the parable of the talents. It is a story about failure to risk (Matthew 25:24-30). Wisdom often comes in stories.
In the parable of the talents the risk avoidant person ends up losing all they have. That worthless servant is thrown out into the darkness! They are called a "wicked, lazy servant."
So, according to Jesus, buries his talent will lose what he thinks he has. As we might say: "Use it or lose it!"
Without trust (courage) there is no risk. Without risk, there is no growth. Without growth (movement forward), there is death! How is how this happens in marriages.
Avoidant partner(s) avoid all personal communication, adult consultation, playful interaction and all correction or negative feedback. Their partner is left lonely and vulnerable for communication and intimacy.
The avoidant partner minimizes all kissing, hugging, caressing and being affectionately physical together. As a result both partner can end up love and 'touch' starved.
When the genital sexual relationship does not develop into heart to heart bonding because of the avoidance of eye contact, stepping away from the afterglow period then a powerful opportunity to deepen the marital bond and feed and nurture one another's spirits is missed.
When decisions are not shared together, requests are not made, discussion does not happen the life together must of necessity become life apart from one another.
Both of the partners begin to deaden within, the heart sickens, the spirit languishes, one lives with constant residual depression and a search for life outside of the marriage becomes as search for life, love at the emotional and spiritual level. One strongly hungers and thirsts for that which will lift one spirits, heal one's heart, rekindle one's passion and bring the experience of community and intimacy to one's soul.
Then death creeps in as emotional and physical disease.
By God's design there is a powerful oneness created in sexual union, in cleaving to one's wife, in becoming one with her. But Jesus is right. After years of neglect (the burial of the possibility by the one ine flight from life) even that powerful God-given oneness does die.
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