Type IIc
Type IIc avoidants remove themselves from others via a process of reaction formation, where they distance from all by becoming overly involved with, or actually immersed in, a regressive relationship with one. This type is exemplified by the codependent individuals described by Melody Beattie,6 some of whom are avoidants who move away from home and in with a steady partner or spouse to become immersion junkies, who seem nonavoidant because they are in a close, all-encompassing, loving permanent relationship with one person, but are, however, not relating to one out of love, but hiding out from all out of fear as well as out of anger that leads them to show their dislike of, and try to defeat, all the other people in their lives.
Sometimes these bosom relationships work, and last, but if the number of books written on how to overcome codependency is any indication, all is not well in the codependent life. For codependent relationships are often not as loving as they seem to be; rather, they can be unhealthy hostile-dependent relationships that, though they often last, less often really work.
Other Type IIc avoidants stay too close to their parents, living at home with no partner or spouse, as did the man who worked at home from his computer as a stock trader and had few or no friends, didn’t go out on dates, and watched pornography all day long on the Internet. Then, after years of refusing to marry a woman because he didn’t want to hurt his mother, he finally acquiesced—but he never told his mother, or the rest of the family, that he had done so, and instead, to the full detriment of his marriage, hid his wife from all concerned and continued to live at home and otherwise act as if he were single, hoping to avoid disappointing his mother, just so that he could keep from causing her to get sick over him.
CHAPTER 3
Healthy and Normal versus Pathological Avoidance
HEALTHY AVOIDANCE
Avoidance can be healthy when it is, as Sullivan suggests, a conjunctive force used to “enhance security.”1 Healthy avoidance can also consist of a rational philosophical desire to be alone. As such, it is preferential, that is, something individuals have reasonably decided is both good and good for them and so have comfortably built into their lives—a splendid self-sufficient self-containment that allows them to achieve their desire to remain independent of others, be their own masters, and enjoy the peace that comes from removal and detachment. For such avoidants, the song that refers to jangling spurs that say that you should roll merrily along, being glad that you are single, is apropos. For these are independent souls who aver that relationships, and particularly marriage, are not right for them because they want to come and go as they please, because for them, being “me” does actually require “being free.”
Some Case Examples
One such avoidant would regularly and comfortably eat dinner in a restaurant all by herself reading the Sunday newspaper on Saturday night and go walking alone by the seashore day in and day out. Most of all, she liked closing her eyes and putting hot compresses over them; having a few drinks at home alone; rocking by herself on her porch in her favorite rocking chair; self-hypnotizing by submitting to the drowsy nirvana- and sleep-inducing drone of the lulling train or car ride; being soothed by monotonous ragas; and performing repetitive activities like crocheting or knitting. She also relished reading escape literature that took her away to the cold North or out West to the lone prairie, where she fantasized riding a horse by herself under the stars. If she suffered at all, it was not from her isolation, but from the social pressures that made her feel guilty about being as isolated as she really wanted to be. She wanted to eat, live, and play alone, but a critical world, and an uncomprehending therapist, made her ashamed of feeling that way, although that was what she wanted and exactly what seemed right for her as an individual.
A married writer felt, “I would like to retreat from the world, line my room with cork like Proust, and write, write, write, alone, all day long.” Then he did essentially just that: he purchased a house trailer, which he parked in the driveway of his home, and worked there “to avoid having my family disturb my concentration.” Eventually, he moved from California to New York, leaving his wife and children behind, commuting but only on occasional weekends. He acted not out of a pathological fear of closeness, but out of a desire for separateness—in the belief, later proved correct, that distance would lend enchantment both to his work and to his relationship with his wife, who, “fortunately” being an avoidant herself, was even more comfortable than he was with the arrangement.
A middle-aged patient had a job working as a blackjack dealer in Las Vegas gaming halls. One day, she had an epiphany. Tired of “stealing money from drunks,” she instead decided to buy and go live by herself on five acres of land in northern Arizona. Her land was a piece of desert without water or electricity, two miles from her nearest neighbor, a place whose extreme remoteness she called “the main advantage of living in the wild.” With her own hands, she built a log cabin out of limbs she cut from the trees in her backyard. She now hauls her water from 30 miles away in her Chevy truck, uses solar panels to make electricity, and heats her home with other logs cut from the trees around her house. She never gets bored because “she has to work too hard for that,” and she loves her existence because daily she reminds herself that life is all about not what she has, but what she has left over to give to others.
Avoidance is also healthy when it is a limited, small-scale, creative, distancing maneuver appropriate to specific circumstances or for the ultimately greater nonavoidant good of providing a welcome escape from a tumultuous world too much with one: a world full of uncomfortable, unimportant, but upsetting relationships likely to spread to contaminate, undermine, or destroy what potentially more meaningful social and personal contacts remain. Such avoidance as a useful method for dealing with stressful external situations is a justifiable self-protective reactive response that wards off properly anticipated or actual humiliation or rejection at the hands of the inconsiderate or hurtful others that come into everyone’s life, such as the intrusive, backbiting professional colleague or the undesirable, overly aggressive personal suitor. Potential lovers should at least consider avoiding partners who do not reciprocate and offer love back, and we all should at least consider avoiding people who torture us by nagging us, hurt us by being prejudiced against us, or threaten to harm us, if not physically, then emotionally, by reviving old, unmanageable traumatic interpersonal agony or by suddenly rejecting (dumping) us. Nor is there any sense in being a hero with wild, potentially dangerous paranoids, having a fight that wins points but costs lives. In short, there are many self-help books out there on how to get along with difficult people. What many avoidants need is a self-help book on how to get along out there without them.