Recognizing And Fostering The Need For Separateness
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
There is an important paradox in intimate relationships that we must consider for the sake of becoming whole. The paradox is that a genuinely close and evolved relationship can only succeed when each partner is also willing to be completely separate. We humans feel an equal need for autonomy as well as closeness, and there is often the fear of both, in the professional view of Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks
The ambivalence that we feel regarding closeness and autonomy relates to how we learned to express these needs. For example, we needed closeness with our caretakers but it was based on being powerless. Independence, in turn, might have been associated with a deep fear of feeling alone and rejected. So as adults, we are often afraid of losing the independent sense of self, of being engulfed in close relationship; yet as we withdraw in order to achieve that needed separateness, we fear being lonely and not being able to get close again.
Since it is easy to be caught unconsciously in the reactive chain of events, we must recognize our fears of engulfment/isolation. We can begin by centering ourselves, and examine what is under our compulsion to get closer or retract our energies. Some questions we can ask ourselves include the following ones:
- Are we feeling a legitimate need for some interpersonal space, and not asking for it? (Or, do we fear our partner’s request for space?)
- Are we controlling/monitoring our partner because we fear that they will close off to us? (Or, do we isolate without explaining our need, or reassuring our partner that we are not abandoning them?)
- Are we rushing in to assuage our partner rather than giving empathetic space for them to cycle through disturbing emotions? (Or, can we ask for the same, without threatening/projecting on our partner?)
Even
though we have a strong need for autonomy, many of us fear being
alone. Integrating the fear of being alone in life is fundamental
to us, since we are social animals. The fact that we come into and
leave the world all alone is intellectually obvious to us, but emotionally
we tend to repress it because we fear it. We can become conditioned
to believe that we cannot exist without others, and many people develop
strong co-dependent behavior stemming from this deep-rooted fear.
John Ruskan is a teacher and author specializing in emotional processing and integration. He observes that when our fear of being alone is not integrated, it leads us into escaping the sense of isolation through intimate relationships. Dependency on others to reduce our loneliness and anxiety can become addictive and difficult to be without. However, if we can integrate our fear of being alone, Ruskan states in his book Emotional Clearing (1993), “…we enjoy our aloneness. We become creative when alone, recharging our energies, and even look forward to being alone…being with others in a non-dependent manner, which makes our company even more pleasant.”
Integrating the fear of being alone allows us to move from the states of isolation/dependency to the healthier states of autonomy/relatedness. This transition seems logical, but is sometimes quite difficult for many of us. According to Ruskan, the key to achieving this different state of consciousness lies in an apparent contradiction: in order to be able to grow into a healthy balance, the need must become one of giving up the futile search for happiness outside the self, i.e. through relationships. In his teachings we are also encouraged to accept all aspects of our being without negative judgment. From this standpoint, our highest good can develop with an intimate relationship playing a key part, but it is not necessarily our primary focus.