The Viable Alternative

A few years ago, I was involved with this girl, and during one of our late night conversations, she mentioned to me, “You know what, though you’re the oldest child, you actually behave like you’re either the youngest or the ONLY child.”

“What on earth do you mean?” I responded.

She then went on to explain that I wasn’t nurturing. I protested to her and gave examples of how I was affectionate to her, and she responded reaffirming her original statement, “No, you are loving, but you’re not nurturing.”

She went on to explain that a lot of the actions I do, I do it for only myself in mind without taking the other person’s well being into consideration. She said that to be nurturing is to take the other person’s well being, needs and wants into consideration, the way a parent does for a child, an older sibling does for a younger sibling, friend does for another friend, an owner does for his pet, or a lover does for his or her partner.

She then went on to tell me that an example of being nurturing was offering to get a glass of water for your partner after the two of you finished “doing the do.”

As I’m all about growing and becoming a better person, I appreciated hearing this, so the rambling diatribe I gave in response was, “Hmmm….interesting.”

I broke down what she said as me needing to be more thoughtful, and though I was correct in interpreting what she was saying in that way, I was still missing the overall point that she was trying to make.

The point she was trying to make speaks to a bigger issue.

I will admit that in many ways, I’ve been an unfeeling a**hole.

Though the chasm has lessened a little bit as I’ve gotten therapy, while we do get along very well, I’ve never been close to my siblings and always had problems being the “big brother.” I’ve traditionally been closer to some of my friends more than my family.

On top of that, though I love watching animals and am fascinated by them, I am also uncomfortable being close with animals. Every time an animal seeks affection from me, I feel EXTREMELY weirded out. I remember when one of my roommates had briefly adopted a cat to get rid of the mice we had in the apartment, I was utterly annoyed (and alarmed) at how “needy” the cat was for affection. I was like, “Damn, I thought cats are supposed to be all independent and isht, what happened to you?”

Also, I love kids, but when they want to sit on my lap or any type of affection, again I feel extremely uncomfortable.

Adding women to the whole equation, I’ve only been in one committed relationship in my life when I was in college, and I made such a mess of that I vowed to myself that I wasn’t going to get into a relationship again until I was ready to get married. As such, I’ve tended to be the guy who did short or medium term relationships with women, but never the long term.

I have no problem receiving or giving physical affection from women when it comes to physical intimacy, but when you add emotional intimacy into the equation, once again, it makes me want to run for the hills. Getting “unsolicited” affection from a woman I’m involved with, partly because it’s out of my control thus making me feel very vulnerable, and partly because of feeling obligated to return that affection, also weirds me out.

Looking at all this from the outside, I come across as being emotionally unavailable with a wall around me that says, “Stop here, don’t get any closer.”

It also gives the impression that I’m thoughtless and selfish, only thinking about myself and not about the needs of others.

Originally, I chalked this all up to me having a fear of abandonment from my mother as a child which made me put a wall around myself and not allow people to get beyond a certain point of closeness with me. The logic was that I didn’t want people to get close to me because it left me vulnerable to being left, so rather than go through the eventual pain, why not just keep people at arm’s length?

Makes perfect sense except for the fact that as I learn more about myself and delve deeper into therapy, I’m learning that I was kind of wrong….

Well sort of….

I do have abandonment issues that affect aspects of my behaviour with relationships but my intimacy issues go deeper than that.

Last year I read two books, one called, “The Emotionally Unavailable Man,” by Patti Henry and “Drama of the Gifted Child,” by Alice Miller, and both of these books touched upon the subject of emotional incest. Emotional incest is when a parent inappropriately looks for a child to fill his or her emotional needs that should be provided for by an adult.

As this concept came to light in my head, it made me reflect on my own childhood, and why people over the years would say that I was emotionally available and always seemed to have a wall up around me. It made me realize that I, myself was a victim of emotional incest from my mother.

To put it nicely, my father, though being a good provider, had “challenges” being a good husband as well as a good father. Thus, because my mom’s emotional needs weren’t getting met by my father, since I was her first child, those needs were transferred on to me, and on some level, most likely unconscious to my mom, I was used to fulfill these needs.

I’m not mad at my mother for this, nor do I think she’s a bad person for it. She was a great mother and did the best she knew considering her own circumstances. From what I read, a lot of Moms do this to their kids. It is what it is.

As an infant, though I wasn’t yet able to speak, I was able to feel on an energetic level the inappropriate adult expectations placed upon me. Because they were adult expectations I didn’t know how to process them and they made me feel very uncomfortable. Thus, growing up until this present day, situations such as being close to my siblings, being nurturing, receiving nurturing, etc. triggers those discomforting emotions from childhood and makes me run away or close myself off to avoid experiencing those emotions.

So yeah, on the outside, I have come across as selfish, unfeeling, closed off, or unnurturing, but in reality, all that external behaviour was really me engaging in is a form of self-protection from those uncomfortable feelings caused by emotional incest that get triggered by potentially “intimate” situations between me and people, animals and women.

Last year, when I first brought this up to my therapist, after some delving it turned out I was indeed onto something, however, I haven’t really started addressing it consistently until quite recently. When he makes me connect to these emotions by triggering memories, I get nauseous and the inner child in me starts to make spitting noises and flail his arms as if he just tasted something nauseating.

This runs deeper than my other issues because it precedes when I was able to speak so it’s purely on an energy level. I know I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember.

Now I know why it has always been so challenging for me to be thoughtful, especially if they’re close to me. I can see why whenever I thought of doing something thoughtful to someone, I’d start overthinking it and then talk myself out of doing it. Or why I couldn’t stand the feeling of either an animal or a child wanting affection from me, or me being open with family members.

It’s all a way for me to avoid feeling those uncomfortable, “nauseating” feelings.

My goal now is to learn to get comfortable with these feelings so I can eventually be able to have a true connection with people (and animals, who sometimes behave better than people).

…and to all the animals, women, kids, family members and people out there that I’ve been an emotionally distant douchebag to, I apologize and hope you can forgive me. I’m a work in progress.

This is The Viable Alternative.

Hope this helps,

Ike Love