In the singles bars he attended he played Berne’s game of “Kiss Off” or “Buzz off, Buster.”5 He dressed to look sexy, stood in alluring poses, and gave others come-hither looks, only at the first sign that others were interested in him he removed himself, becoming aloof and disdainful even though he was the one who had first extended an invitation. In ongoing relationships he said, “We must get together again sometime,” but he never made the next date, or, making one, broke it, reassuring the victim that this was the very last time it would happen, just so that he could make it happen again. In his sexual behavior premature withdrawal was the order of the day—not to prevent conception, but to first tempt and excite then to frustrate by starting just so that he could stop short and avoid fulfilling the woman completely.
Many such men and women form these pseudorelationships based on a fascination with other peoples’ superficial qualities so that they pick others according to such surface attributes as their looks or possessions, substituting impersonal for personal relationships by relating to attributes rather than to people. Still others relate, but to an anonymous, collective “them,” as did the avoidant who was active with his fan club to avoid having relationships with any one personal fan. Notable for many are a lack of affectional reciprocity: they give affection when it is unlikely to be returned, but withhold it should it appear to be forthcoming.
Unlike Type I, shy avoidants, who are neophobes—that is, individuals who cannot initiate relationships because they fear the new as something unknown—Type Ila “mingles” avoidants are neophiles who want to, can, and like to attend social functions and initiate relationships once there. Only they have to move on because they long for the challenges involved in meeting someone new. Becoming restless and impulsive in familiar situations and feeling contemptuous of present company, they grab at the latest, newest thing. Underneath, many fear success due to a masochistic need to suffer that makes it difficult for them to accept being happy and fulfilled. When these avoidants say, “This relationship is wrong for me,” they really mean that it is wrong: because it is too right.
Many of these avoidants join groups of other avoidants with the same or similar problems. Now they all head together for, but never seem to find, a conquest. All concerned roam in “packs,” hoping to “snare a man” or “get a woman into bed.” Instead, all they relate to is the collective, with each group member making certain that the other members don’t bolt, while simultaneously maintaining group cohesion by ostracizing outsiders from their magic inner circle. Often heavy drinking and drug usage are part of the picture and can even become the main purpose of the group, the group’s real, or even only, “social” activity.
Not all type IIa avoidants with isolating social rituals actually get to the point of burning through relationship after relationship. Some, instead, compulsively plan for, but never actually proceed with, a seduction, as did the individual who decorated and redecorated his apartment so that “women will yield when they see my beautiful place,” only to never actually invite women up to visit, and developed an all-consuming and all-surpassing desire to be “where it’s at, with the in crowd,” at “in” resorts, rubbing elbows with “celebrities, not lowlifes” in the trendy bar or restaurant that only special people know about, a place “where you can really meet women,” although during all the years I treated him, he rarely went to such places, and when he did, he never once even attempted to say hello back to the many women who, clearly interested, came over to say hello to him.
Type IIb
Type IIb, or seven-year itch, avoidants seem able to form more or less full and satisfactory relationships, but only for a time. Unlike Type Ila avoidants, who have difficulty relating/committing fully right from the start, they at least seem to relate well/commit fully in the beginning. But all the while, they are planning their escape. Not atypical is the patient who, after a three-year engagement, seemingly without warning announced that he was taking a hiatus from the relationship and would call again after the few months’ time he said he needed to work things out in his mind. A year later, he had become a bitter, lonely man, who still hadn’t made the promised contact.
Many of these avoidants are typical “dumpers,” who opt out by precipitously rejecting an innocent and unprepared victim, spurting out something like, “I want some down time to think,” “I need a break,” “I want to be free,” “I met someone new and fell in love, so I want a divorce,” or saying nothing, just disappearing forever out of a formerly significant other’s life—even when, or just because, the relationship seems to be working. They leave their innocent victims feeling mystified and hurt, thinking “I didn’t do anything to deserve this,” especially because when they go, they typically cite their partners’ defects exclusively, while whitewashing their own limitations entirely.
A Case Example
A personal friend, a dental school student, called me up once or twice a day to unload his serious emotional problems on me. After several months of this, he suddenly stopped calling. Concerned, I called him up to ask him what was wrong. To my question, he replied, “I can no longer speak to you. I just got an important sensitive academic position and I cannot even let on that I know you. You know much too much about me for that.”
Type Ilb avoidants are often narcissistic individuals who typically leave after using people up, dumping others precisely when they seem to want something from them in return. Often they actively provoke their partners to get annoyed with them so that they can have the excuse they need to abandon them. This way, they can look more like the victim than the victimizer. A husband wants to go out drinking with the boys, but his wife disapproves. He has no trouble antagonizing her by picking on her for small things like vacuuming when he is trying to watch television. She gets defensive, saying, “Who else is going to clean around here?” and now he has the reason he needs to stomp out: he is a poor, henpecked husband, undeservedly married to a harpy.
Type IIb avoidant adolescents characteristically have a history of having dumped their parents without warning. Many elope, saying they did it to break free from long-resented parental domination—but the domination is more fantasized than real because they are acting on fearful fantasies of being controlled that are, in reality, the product of their own avoidant transference toward their parents.
A Case Example
My daughter Carley was a girl all set to go to nursing school. The hospital where she worked was going to pay 80 percent of her tuition if she promised to work for them for three years afterward, and she had so wanted to be in the medical field for years that she even used to go to the medical school cafeteria dressed in surgical scrubs to pretend she was a doctor (weird, but no weirder than the crush she developed on her dermatologist, whom she used to follow around with a girlfriend, who was also in love with him). So what does she do to avoid the responsibility of developing herself and a career, as I had hoped? She runs off with a schizophrenic stalker who believes the president of the United States is going to send him to Iceland to develop an energy formula, cuts off everyone in her family who can give her a reality check, drops all of her former friends, and immerses herself in his crazy family where she can live in the land of the blind as the one-eyed queen. She has basically reinvented her life from scratch, embracing everything she used to hate about her former life (she used to hate it when I had relatives over, referring to them as “hellatives,” but she is now entrenched in a numerous-clan family); and then she would never go to church, even when her religious school required it, but now she goes every Sunday because her husband’s parents are religious fanatics. She marries after only knowing her husband-to-be for a short period of time—and this after she told me she is part of an age where it is considered wiser to live with someone first. She then rushes to have a baby to lock herself into her predicament so that she can avoid having to go back to who and what she used to be. Cutting off her entire old personal history and roots was her way to avoid taking responsibility for her life by escaping into a totally new fantasy world, where nothing is expected of you in terms of developing yourself and working at a career, and all that is now demanded of you is to be physically present for your husband.