An avoidant woman consulted me because of her inability to “meet the man of my dreams.” She sought treatment for being so shy with men that it had become difficult for her to get close to the men in her family, to make male friends at and outside of work, and to get beyond accepting a first date with a man to be able to go out with him a second time. As a result, she feared, and with reason, that she would never fulfill her wish to get married, have children, and live a “normal life with a husband and kids in the suburbs.”
Just having wishful thoughts about marriage frightened her. She first thought, “I better get serious and start looking for a husband, for after all, I’m not getting any younger.” Then she took that back with, “Marriage isn’t right for everyone, and it may not be right for me. I think I would be much better off single, being able to come and go as I please, and beholden to nothing and no one. As far as I am concerned, the single life is not only just as good and valid as the married life, in many ways it is even better. I really enjoy being single, and just having a few good friends. I actually prefer that to having a husband, because with friends you can beat a path out of the relationship whenever you want to—and without a lot of stupid paper work.”
Often the normal travails of dating left her feeling severely depressed. For example, when a man was just a few minutes late for a date, she convinced herself that that was the end of the relationship, for he had died in a car accident, and “there goes my last chance to get married.” Because the nice things men said to and did for her eluded her completely, she saw even a highly positive relationship with a man as entirely negative and would break off the relationship precipitously and without explanation. Part of the problem was that feeling she deserved no better, she picked men who were unavailable, either because they played hard to get or because they were already married. Then she complained that relationships with men could never amount to much or go anywhere, so that her fate was only to be hurt, abused, and alone, her sole source of love coming from tearful, caring, concerned friends and family rushing to her side and rescue, pitying her, and taking her under their wing, to nurture her and salve her wounds.
Soon she became paranoid as well as depressed. She began imagining that even a man’s compliments were criticisms, so that when a man told her that she looked great one day, she thought that he was actually telling her that she looked terrible the day before. She convinced herself that all men were just out to seduce and abandon her: planning to take advantage of her sexually and financially before dumping her precipitously. Serious feelings of jealousy also began to plague her. When a date was just a few minutes late, she convinced herself that he was not going to come at all because he was out with someone he liked better. So his being late was his way to send her a message that he would soon leave her for another woman, and she would be all alone in life now and forever. She even became jealous when a date looked at another woman on the street just to make sure he would not run into her, spoke to another woman at a party, said more than hello, looked as if he were enjoying himself, got excited not bored like she thought he ought, did not look uncomfortable as if he couldn’t wait to get away, and said more to the woman than (she was almost actually counting his words) he said to her all day. Once she became jealous of a boyfriend’s having close friends at work, even though he was only going out to lunch with his buddies. She panicked if she called him at work and he didn’t answer the phone, for then she started worrying about “what he might be up to.” She even started writing down where his odometer was set to make certain that he wasn’t making extra trips on the side to see another woman. She began to demand that he be avail-able/accountable to her at all times so that she could keep tabs on him 24 hours a day because “since all men are secretive, you never know.” Ultimately, she even came to believe that she could read his mind and pick up the negative signals he was sending her. She then confronted him with her imaginations. There would be a fight, and should he try to defend himself, that meant that he was defiantly challenging her. So she pulled back permanently, believing that he was not only being unfaithful to her, but that he was also lying about it.
Men were sometimes able to get beyond these relational impediments by handling her “therapeutically,” only to come up against an even more distressing problem: boredom that tempted her to break off what had finally become a working relationship so that she could move on and look for someone else. A little into what had, in spite of all, become a positive encounter, a pervasive sense of aching dullness impelled her to give up, move on, and meet a new man, for “every day with the same man was just going to be the same old, same old, tired experience for the rest of my long, troubled life.” Her need to move on became so pressing that she completely forgot how painful it was to have to look for someone new: having to reexperience all those terrible letdowns and disappointments where all she could salvage were a pleasurable self-pitying feeling and (a progressively dimming) hope for better luck next time. There were times when she gave up on all men completely, feeling that she would willingly undergo the lesser pain of permanent isolation to avoid suffering what was for her the greater pain of the vast emptiness predictably associated with being connected.
In therapy, we focused on how a measure of her “boredom” with the old was a defense against her fear of being controlled. Thus she was reluctant to make plans with any man in advance, even a dinner date, because she feared she would not be able to “wriggle out from under.” When a man called her and invited her over for “dinner this Saturday,” she accepted, only to feel trapped and cornered, so she added, “I will call if anything comes up,” leaving the man wondering, with reason, if she would actually make it over at the appointed time, and thinking, “Maybe I better back out first so that I don’t save the date only to have her cancel out on me at the last minute, leaving me with no plans for the big night.” Feeling trapped, she longed for her space and started thinking about how wonderful it would be to sit at home by herself “surrounded by the things I love, like my valuable collection of lovely appliqued teacups that fill the shelves in what used to be my basement bar (no longer working because all the china on the shelves left no room for liquor).” She might contemplate having a man over to sip from her cups, but afterward, she would ask herself, “How am I going to get out of this?” and cancel the engagement with only a few minute’s notice using a flimsy excuse, such as claiming she had caught a cold or had a last-minute family emergency.
We next uncovered how part of her distancing from men was attributable to her anger with them. She rarely expressed this anger with men directly. Mostly she expressed it indirectly and subtly: by becoming remote as her way to quietly say, “You make me mad.”
A great deal of this anger toward men was defensive: her way to seek out negative things about them to give herself the excuse she required to remove herself from their presence. She actively looked for reasons to complain that a man did not love her; didn’t accept her for herself; criticized her for anything she said or did; only saw her weaknesses and ignored her strengths; and subjected her to ridicule. She made certain that she interpreted anything that a man said that wasn’t a compliment as a criticism and that she saw his disagreeing with her as exactly the same thing as his savaging her completely. Humorlessly, she would deliberately take the mildest joke at her expense far too seriously. Once, for example, she confessed to a friend at a dinner party, “I have brittle bones.” She then asked a man seated next to her, “What about your bones, are they bad?” Others at the table, overhearing the exchange, jokingly remarked, “Don’t tell her! Your bones are your business!” So the man she asked, also as a joke, said, “I’ll never tell.” Whereupon she began to sulk aloud: “I told you about my bones, now why won’t you tell me about yours?” And she meant it, and refused ever to speak to that man again.