Emotional closeness: The hidden fear in marriage
David Thomas

Nobody could accuse Don, a marketing manager in a multinational firm, of not being a hard worker.

Don’s wife appreciates the fact that he’s an excellent provider but she yearns for something more. He doesn’t seem to want to be with her, rarely is in the mood for love, and hardly ever says something endearing to her.

The wife of a stockbroker, Anita is a woman of great enthusiasm. Her world compromises two "C’s" — clubs and causes! She’s president of a local school organisation, secretary of a club, and deeply involved in the conservation movement. Beautifully organised, she keeps the house picture-perfect, and the children scrubbed and neat.

Anita’s husband appreciates her outstanding qualities, but there are also things he strongly misses — things like just having a quiet cup of tea at home, sharing trifles, exchanging warmth.

Such stories of the husband and the wife are hardly unfamiliar. Variations on their themes are to be found in legions of marriages all over the country. They bespeak a special kind of heartache that’s experienced behind shuttered windows and an outward veneer of tranquillity.

The essence of marriage is closeness and intimacy. Yet Don and Anita, and all the other husbands and wives like them, reject closeness and shun intimacy as though it were a deadly disease.

In a sense, that’s what it is to these people, for they are afflicted with a kind of psychological malady.

As one prominent psychoanalyst explains, "Some people have an intense fear of marriage, of emotional closeness. They may be able to live together with someone of the opposite sex without apparent anxiety, but with marriage their anxiety becomes acute.

"For some the fear is so intense they actually feel claustrophobic, overwhelmingly shut in. One man said that as soon as the marriage ceremony was over, he became depressed. He told me he felt like a child locked in a closet, desperately trying to get out".

This man really had to get out. Though claiming to love his wife, he had such a violent reaction to marriage that he was forced to get an annulment. Many such annulments take place each year.

In many other instances, husbands or wives fear emotional closeness in less virulent form and remain married for years, or even lifetime, but always have the underlying sensation of "wanting to flee...."

In effect, it is a wall that keeps them from consummating their marriages in emotional if not physical terms. Sometimes they are aware of the wall, and of their role in building it — sometimes not.

Some people have such a high degree of anxiety about closeness that they are always obviously on guard, obviously keeping their mates at an arm’s length.

Others do relax their defenses now and then, come closer to their spouses, are seized with fear, then do something to distance themselves again. Whatever the pattern, the fear of marital closeness shows up in four common ways.

Always being busy: People can become so preoccupied with activities, that they just aren’t available. It’s a protective device. After all, one’s mate can’t make emotional demands on one if one isn’t around.

Promoting closeness with others: There are people who find it difficult to be close to anyone — spouses, children, friends, anyone at all. Others unconsciously adopt the slogan, "If I give so much of myself to others, there’s very little left of myself to have to give to my mate."

Nagging: When they find their distance-creating defenses crumbling, some fearful spouses begin to find fault with their mates. Things that did not bother them previously now suddenly seem important. Nothing the partner does seems to be right.

Infidelity: In many cases, persons avoid closeness by engaging in a number of affairs. It’s a way of reasserting their independence.

Some people who have considerable anxiety about being close do manage sexually satisfying marital relationships. They’re able to divorce the physical aspects of sex from the emotional.

Many others, however, aren’t able to do so, especially if they feel cornered by a spouse who demands much more from them emotionally than they’re able to give.

It’s by no means uncommon for such men to be impotent with their wives but virile with other women with whom they don’t have any meaningful relationship.

Where does intense fear of marital involvement originate to produce such extreme reactions? Most often the roots are to be found in childhood experiences, particularly in the parent-child relationship.

Ted’s is a typical story. His father was ineffectual, his mother a strong but flirtatious kind of woman. She overwhelmed the boy emotionally and made him feel cornered.

This type of situation is tremendously threatening to almost all children and adolescents; rarely do they come out of it without some traumatic results. The results for Ted were: fear of women and an inability to forge close relationships.

Karen’s is also a typical story: The only child in her family, she was unplanned and unwanted. Her parents provided her needs and treated her with superficial affection but, in all kinds of subtle ways they themselves weren’t aware of, they gave her the message that she wasn’t really loved.

Psychiatrists all over the world stress that every child needs love and warmth in order to grow into a psychologically healthy adult, but this was something Karen got in very meagre doses. For the most part, when she reached out to her parents, they responded by subtly rejecting her, and this had a profound effect on the girl. She grew to distrust close human relationships.

Why do these people, who are so terribly anxious about closeness, marry at all? The answer is to be found in the complex nature of the human personality. No person is all of a piece; through all of us run feelings and emotions that are in direct contradiction to one another. So it is with the people who fear closeness in marriage. They need that wall desperately, but at another level of response they wish it weren’t there, wish it were possible for them to be warm and intimate with the persons they married.

It’s a matter of the fear being the predominant emotion, and one they can’t control. Marriage counsellors explain it: "They’re starving for closeness. They want it — they get married for it — but what went on in their childhood years has given them such intense feelings of shame and guilt, of worthlessness, that now they feel they really deserve to be deprived".

Another intriguing question concerns the kind of marital partners they seek out. Sometimes they marry people like themselves, those who also have trouble letting go of their defenses. If neither husband nor wife wants emotional closeness, they’re apt to reach a point where they lead separate lives while living under the same roof.

Often, though, the relationship is marked by a constant underlying tension.

In many, many cases, of course, the other marital partner really wants to be close, doesn’t understand why warmth and intimacy aren’t forthcoming, and often feels cheated and resentful. If the fear of closeness is not too intense, it may gradually disappear. The partner has to be able to walk a delicate psychological tightrope: show strength without being dominating, be able to give without being demanding.

People who fear closeness are at one extreme of the continuum of mental health. What about the other extreme? At the other extreme are what one American psychoanalyst described succinctly as "self-actualisers," persons who exemplify the pinnacle of emotional wholeness. Self-actuating lovers don’t use defenses with each other. In their love relationships they display a strong urge to be generous, "to give and to please". Whatever they do has more spice, more meaning to it if their beloved are present. They exult in shared experiences.

"We can only love a person to the extent that we are not threatened by him," Dr Carl Rogers, a famous American psychologist, has said. This, of course, is at the heart of the difference between the people who have an intense fear of closeness in marriage and those who welcome such closeness fervently.

As for most of us — who are probably somewhere in the middle between the two extremes — well, Dr Rogers’ wise remark may also be worth thinking about.— AF

Can you and your partner swap roles?

You may think that your partner has all the luck, but if the chips were down, could you really cope with role reversal? Answer these questions to find out.

a. fed up

b. reasonably contented

c. very happy

a. jealous

b. you are not really interested

c. interested and intrigued

a. quite happy

b. bored

c. contented

a. jealous

b. interested

c. not interested

a. yes

b. no

c. if you went into a bit of training

a. yes

b. no

c. yes if they did a bit of research

a. no

b. yes

c. not yet, but it would be relatively easy to pick it up

a. yes

b. no

c. Would need some help at first, but would cope

a. adventurous

b. cautious

c. willing to try

a. old stick in the mud

b. have a go hero

c. willing learner

1. a10 b5 c0

2. a10 b0 c5

3. a5 b10 c0

4. a10 b5 c0

5. a10 b0 c5

6. a10 b0 c5

7. a0 b10 c5

8. a10 b0 c5

9. a10 b0 c5

10. a0 b10 c5

70-100: You and your partner are capable of role reversal. You are both open-minded and willing to give anything a try. You are also restless in your current roles, which gives you the impetus to try something new. It’s time that you sat down together and discussed the future.

40-65: You and your partner could switch places, but you wouldn’t really want to. Neither of you finds the other’s lifestyle very tempting. However, both of you are mildly dissatisfied with the way your lives are going, and it could be productive to discuss ways of changing your routines — perhaps even careers — in order to find life more rewarding.

0-35: You and your partner are incapable of changing places. You would be hopeless in his or her position, and vice versa. Neither of you have the will or the experience to succeed in the other’s role, and more importantly, you are both happy with your different lives. Don’t change — you’d hate it.— AF