- Why do we run away from the relationship?
- How do we escape?
- How bad can it go?
- What can we do?
Introduction and summary
Running away from any problem only increases the distance from the solution.
The easiest way to escape from a problem is to solve it.
Overall, we can withdraw physically as well as not physically in and out of the relationship. The motif can be very different. It can span ordinary and daily skipping actions. It can also be a more permanent avoidance behavior where you eventually end up living two parallel lives together. Or, it may be related to attachment problems that make it difficult for the parties to bond with each other and the relationship. And finally, there can be paired back doors and emergency exits (escape hatches). These have the function of creating a form of false confidence, security and safety. The back doors are the small loopholes in the daily life of the relationship, through which we little by little pull ourselves. The emergency exits are the bigger and more serious exits in the relationship that can lead to real breaks/damage. At the light end of the scale, you can, for example, hide behind the TV, PC and smartphone. At the heavier end of the scale, you find workaholism, alcohol abuse, adultery and violence. See overview below.
Regardless of type and purpose, the avoidances, like the many small streams, can make a big stream. It is therefore important to be aware of possible avoidance behavior and its development. Above all, it is important to be aware of the underlying motive in the behaviour. There can be many motives behind our behavior, but in reality it is only avoidance behavior when the motive is avoidance.
Therefore, talk together about how you are feeling. Listen to yourself, notice and ask your partner if you are in doubt. What do you do and why do you do it? What do you want? What do you avoid? Do you feel isolated or that you isolate yourself? Does your partner do it? After all, this is how your experienced reality is, and it is important to talk about it and do something about it.
Why do we do it?
There are many ways in which you can withdraw from a relationship, avoid being together or achieve the exchange and what you really want. This applies to both positive and negative situations – real and expected. It can be a physical or non-physical form of avoidance behaviour. Either of a more permanent nature or in the form of individual skipping actions, which can be general or appear in special situations. On a practical level, it can be about avoiding risks and pain or about not wanting to pay the price to get what you want. On a deeper and perhaps existential level, it can relate to themes such as responsibility, guilt and shame. There can also be dilemmas such as individual-community, freedom-bonding, control-surrender, etc.
The four types of avoidance behavior
- Daily skip actions
- Separate liv
- Connection problems
- Back doors and emergency exits
Daily skip actions
Overall, you can avoid contact, closeness, intimacy, sex, dialogue, discussions, challenges, problems, conflicts, solutions and opportunities, etc. through small and daily skipping actions. It can be uncertain, vulnerable and challenging to have to confront ourselves and each other in relation to what we want and don’t want. We do not know how the other will receive us and what we say or how the other will react to it. There are many uncertainties and we risk rejection.
Separate liv
When hope, energy and initiative fail and negative experiences and beliefs take over, we eventually give up. Then the small skipping actions become entrenched bad habits. After this, dialogue, process and development stop at the same time as we resign ourselves to living safe and secure but boring and lonely lives, together. It can be safe to live like this and for several different reasons we continue for many years. For example, we avoid divorce, division of property and having to jump into a new life alone. Including relating to ourselves and taking responsibility for life. Choosing and finding, for example, a new home and partner.
Connection problems
Some people want closeness and are, for example, afraid of being swallowed when they go into it and get it, which is why they might shy away from it. Others want to have closeness, but are afraid of losing it again, which is why they may do or avoid things that could threaten cohesion. The first category could roughly be called contact phobic and the second category could roughly be called separation phobic. Both types of behavior can have problems with commitment and rejection, respectively, in their own way. It can create a dynamic in the relationship where the parties are constantly on the lookout for and test what they want and fear most, as well as create a movement where they constantly seek and reject contact and the relationship. In and out of the contact and the relationship.
Back doors and emergency exits
Back doors and emergency exits are the escape routes of relationships. Either in the form of small detours or the very big exit. This means small and temporary or larger and consistent interruptions of the relationship, whether it happens internally or directly.
The theory of back doors and emergency exits is based on transaction analyst Frank Ernst’s exercise called Escape Hatch. Imagine a perforated rectangle that symbolically represents the boundaries of your couple team. The small perforated holes in the sides are the smaller back doors in the relationship that you can slip out of when the relationship becomes too much/too good and/or you seek false security, safety and satisfaction. This can for example consist of TV, PC, games… Then imagine that in the corners there are definite escape routes out of the relationship, which for you and your partner will mean a final breakup. They can, for example, consist of adultery or violence.
The problem with escape hatches is that they drain the relationship of energy and prevent you from being together and solving your problems so that you can get what you most want.
Make a list of your escape hatches, choose the ones you want to reduce/remove starting today and inform your partner. Saying your goals out loud creates commitment. The list of escape hatches is very individual and can be long. Below you will find several examples that can be perceived very differently individually.
Examples of avoidance behaviour, back doors and emergency exits
- Escape in reading/television/movies or sleeping in front of the television/newspaper/book
- Work on e.g. a PC in front of the television in the company of the partner/family
- Excessive phone talking/texting/use of smartphone/computer/Facebook
- Withdraw into yourself/put on the hood or a mask
- Go out of self/daydream/dissociate
- Avoid being in the same room in the home or going to bed at different times
- Practical duties/house and garden work/pets
- Children/other family/friends/leisure interests/exercise
- Overtime/study/travel activity
- Overeating/sweets/gambling/alcohol/hash/medicine
- Not listening/talking together or talking about trivialities
- Not looking each other in the eyes/touching each other
- Don’t answer/talk past each other/talk about trivia
- Provocations/stubbornness/power struggles/argument
- Threaten to leave/throw out/make it over or to leave/throw out
- Flirting/adultery/pornography
- Resignation/hopelessness/abandonment
- Depression/anxiety/insanity
- Making accidents and doing harm/self-harm
- Roll your eyes/make lots of laughs
- To click with the tongue/call each other names (naming)
- Aggression/destructions/violence/violence
- Break up/divorce
- Suicide/murder
What now
If the damage has occurred, the same applies as usual. first aid: Stop the accident – First aid – Get treatment. You can also read more about love, relationships and couple therapy at www.parterapi-parterapeut.dk. If you want couples counseling or a consultation in couples therapy, call 6166 1900.
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Kasper Larsen
Family and couple therapist
© Kasper Larsen, 2014. All rights reserved.