Long-distance relationships with a stalker cause a lot of heartache, especially for the stalker. Get to know the mind of the distant person to understand your or your partner’s behavior so you don’t take it personally.
As codependents, we often gravitate toward insecure relationships where we are distant or chased. We may be distant in one relationship and a stalker in the next. This is due to early attachment problems and dysfunctional parenting.
The reaction makes it worse! The alienator’s reaction by withdrawing or the pursuer’s reaction by pursuing exacerbates conflict and unhappiness.
#Understanding the mind of the far-away
Idealism – the pursuer and the distance
In the romantic phase of relationships, we feel amazing. Idealizing our partner helps us fall in love and fills the evolutionary drive to procreate.
We are uplifted by our positive feelings, and the possibility of healing our emptiness and loneliness through our partner’s loving gaze.
If our self-esteem is unhealthy, idealization makes someone worthy of our love, and conversely, it raises low self-esteem because this wonderful person wants us.
We project aspects of our parents (and sometimes our siblings) onto our intimate partners in the hope of unconditional love to repair the early trauma of inappropriate parenting. In our attempt to heal, we look for the positive aspects of what we experienced as children and also imagine that our partner will fulfill what we missed.
We quickly become disillusioned with reality and its lack of perfection. In some cases, they may treat us worse than our parents did. The dissonance between our ideal partner and our real partner is most difficult for perfectionists and narcissists who seek perfection as a defense against shame.
As time together and intimacy increase, our dissonance and disappointments increase. At the same time, so are our fears of being dependent, abandoned, controlled, or belittled as we were by our parents.
To defend against once again feeling trapped like a helpless, dependent child, we avoid our partner and devalue them.
We act one-sided, shy away from emotional intimacy, project negative traits, and impulses, and magnify their failures. Minor flaws, habits, and mistakes lead to aversion and fear that our relationship is doomed to failure.
This distancing strategy and behavior helps us mentally “leave” our partner while we are still in the relationship. It is also an artificial attempt to complete the incomplete process of separation and individuation from our parents.
Related: If your man regularly crosses these 9 boundaries, you owe it to yourself to walk away
incision
However, we have a dilemma, because we are now attached to our partner, whom we fear losing, creating abandonment anxiety. To manage, we resort to childish defenses: denial and division.
The infant and child are not cognitively mature enough to understand that not all people are bad and not all good. Children compartmentalize their mother’s negative aspects to preserve the good.
Mentally, we divide our partner into two parts: the idealized good and the devalued bad. Now, the ideal version of our partner takes a back seat to the new, lower-value version.
At the same time, we feel superior to our partner who is unworthy of our love. This justifies our hatred and compensates for our inner shame, fear of abandonment, and insecurity.
Distancing behavior and attachment styles
As distancers, our behavior can be described as avoidant and uncommunicative, passive-aggressive, addictive, and subtle devaluation such as eye-rolling, or anger that ranges from irritation and negativity to anger and abuse.
The more we devalue our partners, the less attractive they become, creating a spiral of internal disharmony and abuse.
Aggressive and dramatic behavior likely indicates a personality disorder and an inability to exist and relate to someone as a real person in the present.
Due to childhood trauma and shame, the distant partner similarly has an insecure attachment style. It also uses denial and division. They don’t need to withdraw or devalue us because we devalue them and provide distance that reduces their unconscious fears of intimacy and dependency.
(The exception is when two abusers or narcissists get together and attack each other; e.g., Mr. and Mrs. Smith) They maintain contact with us by internalizing our devaluation and feelings of inadequacy; Perhaps as we did with a disgraced parent or sibling.
To varying degrees, they deny the abuse or its impact and seek to restore the ideal version of us by acquiescing, pleasing, defending, and explaining themselves to be lovable. This has no effect because we are determined to devalue our partner due to our internal fears.
As estranged, we withdraw, but rarely leave completely because we must avoid triggering our fears of abandonment. If our partner withdraws too much, we try to restore the relationship.
And the hatred or contempt we may feel toward our partner can become increasingly uncomfortable, especially when we realize we’re not ready to leave. In the end, we feel bad about ourselves, just because we are still in the relationship.
Therefore, we can feel trapped. A healthy response is to accept our disappointment in our partner and remember their positive traits and shared experiences.
Among insecurely attached couples, typically, the love bond is temporarily restored in two ways: by reviving their partner’s idealized image and flirting, accommodating, communicating more, giving gifts, and seeking physical contact and sex.
The pathological reaction, typical of Cluster B personalities, is to escalate the abuse to push their partner away, making them less unwanted. This way, they feel safe from the bad, their partner is worthless in their eyes, and they don’t risk losing anyone worthy of their affection.
An abuser or narcissist might say, “You’re too old; no one will find you attractive.” While devaluing you, the dependent narcissist is simultaneously asking you not to leave to allay abandonment anxiety! This maneuver also restores the narcissist’s pride and false security: “I’ll leave you before you leave me” (if only it was in my mind); That is: “You can’t hurt me.”
The partner’s attempt to rekindle the initial romantic phase and restore the ideal distance through accommodation will never succeed. Alienators and abusers only pay attention when faced with the threat of abandonment, such as when partners withdraw their attention or, in extreme cases, threaten divorce.
If the partner responds to distancing with firm boundaries or threatens to leave, alienators temporarily awaken from their projection wave, and attempt to restore the bond by making false promises and using the pursuit strategies mentioned above, or by offering self-rescue responses; For example, “You can’t take a joke.”
After a breakup, they may seek to reconnect like a narcissist, or quickly find another person whom they can idealize again, but then repeat the same process of devaluation.
We may alternate the roles of pursuer and distancer, being the pursuer in one relationship and distant in the next. The pursuit and distancing behavior will continue until codependency is overcome and we gain greater internal security and individuality. But we can change our attachment style!
This usually requires individual therapy because many of our thoughts and behaviors are driven by unconscious forces that imprison us.
[mashshaare]
