Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • In order to survive in the world, we have little option but to spend our lives

  • being rather defended, that is, at one remove from are more vulnerable sides

  • closed off from certain emotions focused in many cases on not feeling

  • and yet in relationships quite the opposite is required to be good at love

  • means to have a capacity to reveal one's hurt, desire and tender sides, this is quite

  • a balancing act

  • great strength for most of the day and well handled tenderness for the few that remain.

  • it's no wonder if the journey from independence to vulnerability can get

  • rather fraught and if the desire for closeness can be accompanied by terror

  • and what looks like but isn't really, nastiness

  • even after years with someone that can be a hurdle of fear about trying to get close.

  • two major symptoms then tend to show up

  • firstly we can get distant or what psychotherapist call avoidant we want to

  • get close to our partners but feel so anxious that we may be unwanted

  • we freeze them out a bit instead we say we're busy

  • we pretend our thoughts are elsewhere we imply that a need for reassurance would

  • be the last thing on our minds we might even have an affair

  • the ultimate face-saving attempt to be safely distant and often a perverse

  • quest to assert that we don't require the partner's love , a love that we've been

  • too reserved to ask for or else we can get controlling what therapist called

  • anxious

  • we feel our partners are escaping us emotionally and we respond by trying to

  • pin them down administratively

  • we get unduly cross that they're a bit late will chastise

  • them heavily for not having done certain chores

  • we asked them constantly they've completed a task they'd agreed to

  • undertake all this rather than admit I'm worried I don't matter to you

  • we can't we believe force our partner to be generous and warm

  • we can't force them to want us even if we haven't actually asked them to

  • so we try to control them procedurally a tragic cycle that unfolds we become

  • shrill and unpleasant to the other person

  • it feels that we can't possibly love them anymore

  • yet the truth is we do which is fear rather too much that they don't love us but if

  • a rather harsh graceless behavior could be truly understood for what it is

  • it would be revealed notice rejection but as a strangely distorted get very

  • real plea for tenderness

  • we should have sympathy for ourselves relationships require us to put

  • ourselves in a very weak position visa fee partners if they ever want to use

  • the power they have over us (and sometimes they do they know) exactly

  • where to put the boot in this can be deeply frightening this aspect of

  • relationships is even more difficult if our early experiences and childhoods

  • have made closeness rather scary if we've encountered people who have taken

  • signs of vulnerability as targets

  • so we're not frightened of closeness because we're fools but because it is a

  • challenge to be around another person who might easily hurt us and to keep on

  • in a relationship despite the fact that they do sometimes use this knowledge to

  • strike out at us

  • closeness is inherently threatening but we can gradually with courage and

  • difficulty replace defense with explanation we can say we are frightened

  • and why

  • rather than turn cold or controlling and we can begin to see what our partners

  • might be trying to communicate through their off-putting behavior

  • we can never be through with a requirement for acceptance

  • this isn't a curse limited to the weak and to the inadequate, in security and love

  • is a sign of well-being

  • it means we haven't allowed ourselves to take another person for granted

  • it means we remain realistic enough to see that things could genuinely turn out

  • badly and that we're invested enough to care

  • we must get better at seeing the love and longing that lurk behind some of our

  • and our partner's most frosty managerial and brutish moments were just in our own

  • way of dealing with the anxieties of trying to get close

In order to survive in the world, we have little option but to spend our lives

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it