Let me share a personal secret. I have been an expert at “keeping intimacy at bay” for much of my life and it is an area of my life that requires constant learning and a willingness to open to such closeness, love and connection. It isn’t that I set out deliberately on this path, but one that is only now being revealed in its fullness.
The death of my grandmother when I was 14 was traumatic. Feeling unsupported in my grief, I subconsciously chose a more “closed off” world where I kept to myself, became emotionally independent from others and nestled down into a world of eating and weight issues, academia and high achievement. This was my private world, where I now realize I abandoned a loving and affectionate parent-child bond and closed myself off from forming close friendships and intimate relationships. Not allowing others to love and care for me, I also chose to not care about myself enough to accept love. I went into my own “prison” and shut the door to intimacy. And it has been in my adult life, where I have sometimes been challenged in this area when people get to see my vulnerability, sensitivity and my discomfort sometimes around love and intimacy. It is ironic too that it is really secretly something we crave for, yet perhaps fear to a degree.
So here are 5 ways, amongst many, that we sabotage love and intimacy especially in regards to our bodies.
1. We pack on the weight to hide “within”. Yes, weight has to do with food, but at a deeper level, this is sometimes a way to keep people at bay. “If I don’t love myself, no-one else will. If I stick in a body that I do not like, there is reason for someone not to get close to me or approach me sexually or intimately.” Also when we stuff down our emotions by filling the void with food, we intentionally or unintentionally avoid the opportunity to connect emotionally with others.
2. We close down within our bodies. We become more stuck and rigid in our movement and we lose the spring in our step when we lack love. We may also manifest women’s health problems particularly related to our sexual organs and sexual and reproductive function. e.g infertility, endometriosis, polycystic ovarian syndrome and menstrual problems to name a few. Sometimes our health issues may be a result of, or cause of our “closing down”.
3. We don’t express our emotions and we start suffering from “depassion.” (another name in my books for depression) For those of us who learned very early not to be emotional, our emotions have to ‘sit’ somewhere. In many cases it sits in the form of depression which interferes with our ability and openness to intimacy as well as our “joie de vivre”.
4. We may go to the extremes of sexual exploration – denying or closing off to it completely, putting ourselves in dead-in or abusive relationships, or having lots of casual encounters that keep us from the “fullness” of sexual intimacy and love. A quick encounter may relieve sexual tension, but not create closeness.
5. We become busy. For those of us who struggle with intimacy, it is much easier to get busy and share ourselves around. We are often great mothers who care deeply for our kids. We work hard, help lots of people, become rescuers, martyrs and general “busy-bodies”. Yes we do this lovingly, but it might also be our means of staying away from more intimate closeness.