Why you avoid being intimate

People resist intimacy primarily because they are hurt and afraid. To whatever degree you find yourself pulling away from your partner, resisting having one or buffering yourself from really being close with someone is the degree to which you are caught in a cycle of hurt and fear followed by all of the strange ways of being that we use as responses to that hurt and fear.

The hurt and fear, along with all the overlaid responses are what we call your relationship blueprint. Hurt and fear underlie the relationship blueprint and are the source of many relationship problems. They are the underbelly of the blueprint. The blueprint is used to protect ourselves. As children we felt hurt, quickly followed by fear. Makes sense, right? Then we quickly put together a system to handle that.

The hurt comes from a variety of experiences: different versions of being abused or not being seen and acknowledged. Basically, we are raised in a less than ideal environment. This is inevitable, to some degree, because the environment can never be ideal.

The problem is that the blueprint, the distancing ourselves from others, ends up creating more hurt and fear. We end up in the vicious circle caused by responding to our hurt and fear in ways that cause more hurt and fear, damaging our relationships and love life.

The most common relationship blueprint orientations, in response to the hurt and fear, are: attacking, avoiding, acquiescing and ignoring.

We’ll explore these relationship blueprint orientations in future topics. For now, the most important point is to feel through the blueprint to it’s underbelly of hurt and fear. This is where healing can happen.