I might have even put up with that, except for the fact that he never talked to me (or anyone), and when I talk to him, there is a particular anger toward me, which came out in full force yesterday.
The tension between us resurfaced Sunday night when he fed my dog a chicken leg (bone and all), and I was livid. He said I was acting crazy, all dogs eat chicken. Yesterday, when I was supposed to pick up my other son from school (he got out early that day), my electric garage door got stuck and wouldn’t open, so I knocked on my eldest son’s bedroom door (it was 10:30 a.m.; he usually gets up at 1 or 1:30 p.m . from his late nights) and said, “My garage door is stuck, would you go and pick up your brother with your car? He is waiting and there is no one there to give him a ride.” He said nothing, so I asked him again and then went to the front yard to rake leaves to the street curb for the collection. Next thing I know, my little dog had been set loose and was running toward me out onto the busy street. This kid comes out in his underwear and pulls open the garage door, berating me for not being able to do it myself. Trying to grab onto my dog before she gets squished by traffic, I yelled, “Asshole.” I felt terrible that that slipped out, but he almost seemed to be trying to harm the dog to get to me. His response was, “What a crazy bitch you are.
It’s only a dog,” and then, “If I’m an asshole, you go and get my brother yourself. Your door is opened.”
I was a nervous wreck. I said, “Son, this isn’t working. You don’t respect anyone in this house, you don’t pull your weight,
I asked you to rake the yard because your father has been sick (he had a bad flu last week and couldn’t move) and you refused to do it—this isn’t how a family is supposed to work. I feel terrible that you walk right by me every day without talking to me, and when you look at me you are always so hostile. I didn’t mean to call you an asshole, I was just nervous and trying to grab the dog while in the middle of traffic. I think it’s time for you to launch your life now, this isn’t working for either of us.”
R: Are you throwing me out?
T: I told you before, you can stay until you have a steady job, providing you work toward getting one, and in the meantime, you either pitch in with the chores or pay rent and treat all of us like we are human beings. You don’t need to be partying every night and staying in bed ‘til 1:00 p.m . every day when you could be looking for a job.
R: What do you think I want to be, a hermit like you, a 45-year-old loser with no friends, no job, who sits on her ass all day in front of a sewing machine?
T: Is this what you think of me after I spent my life loving and caring for you?
R: You never did a thing for me except get on my back. You have three kids who hate your guts. Do you think that’s us, or could it be you? 1
He said, “You both hate me,” and started to cry. I said, “We both love you and want to try to make this relationship work while you stay here and work toward your independence. Can we try to be a real family who loves each other and helps each other out when we need it?”
He just shook his head. And cried. Then he left to go who knows where. And that is the last image I have of my son. I didn’t sleep all night.
Early Trauma
Avoidants avoid new situations and relationships that resemble old, traumatic ones. Avoidants who experienced incestuous sexual seductions, or who underwent severe punishment for trivial manifestations of their sexuality, steer clear of activities, places, or people that arouse these recollections. Thus a patient who, at age three, was severely whipped for “playing doctor” with the little girl next door became, as an adult, a celibate avoidant—his way to keep himself from being “whipped” once more by those who might once again censure him for having and even wanting sex. I have had a number of patients avoid commitment because it makes them feel tied down and smothered, just as they felt when in their first years of life when they underwent unpleasant operative procedures such as a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy.
Early Parental Relationships
Millon speaks of how shyness develops out of early parental “rejection, humiliation, or denigration.”2
A Case Example
A shy, hypersensitive, avoidant patient felt uncomfortable meeting new people because he failed to distinguish making an insignificant social blunder from ruining himself socially completely. His fear of ruination originated with his parents turning on him when he made childish mistakes, which, of course, he predictably made because he was, in fact, still a child. It also originated in his relationship with a rejecting father, who paid little attention to him, hardly played with him, and never took him to the movies or museums, and in his relationship with his mother, who demanded absolute “apron string” fidelity in return for giving him any love at all.
Benjamin notes that patients with “AVD began the developmental sequence with appropriate nurturance and social bonding [giving the avoidant-to-be] a base of attachment that preserved normative wishes for social contact.” However, the AVD-to-be was “subject to relentless parental control on behalf of constructing an impressive and memorable social image. The opinions of others outside the family were given high value. Visible flaws were cause for great humiliation and embarrassment.” At the same time, the message was sent that “those outside the family were . . . likely to reject the AVD.” This led the AVD to be “concerned about public exposure” and to make “impression management” a priority. There was also “degrading mockery for any existent failures and shortcomings,” backed up by “shunning, banishment, exclusion, and enforced autonomy.” As a result, the AVD developed “strong self-control and restraint to avoid making mistakes that might be humiliating or embarrassing.” “When internalization [occurred the individual became] very sensitive to humiliation,” leading to defensive “social withdrawal in anticipation of rejection and humiliation” and an “unwilling[ness] to reach out unless there is massive evidence that it is safe to take the risk.”3
Those who suffer early in life from excessive parental control may grow up feeling as if every new adult relationship is a trap—as one patient put it, “an involuntary commitment.” Some of these individuals become excessively dependent avoidants, who give in, submit, and do exactly what they are told. But others become excessively independent avoidants who rebel and do only the opposite of what others expect of them. For example, though they want to get married, they refuse to do so just because it’s what their parents want them to do (and they see everyone as their parents).
Bruising parental criticism for being overly emotional can lead a child to grow up remote and unfeeling to spare himself or herself such further assault, for example, criticism for being a crybaby. Children who are told that “it’s bad to feel, and worse, to get at all angry” might, as adults, discourage all relationships in order to avoid subjecting their partners, and themselves, to their own angry outbursts. Children negatively compared to their siblings can grow up feeling devalued compared to everyone else and either retreat to avoid testing their unworthiness or attempt to feel more worthy by turning every new potentially loving relationship into a jealous, competitive, rival-rous situation, where winning to feel valued for the first time in their lives becomes the only thing, and all they care about.
Parents who infantilize their children in order to have them all to themselves can create an avoidant-to-be by keeping the child at home away from all his or her friends. In the case of the married couple, now separated, who lived apart in two connected houses (discussed in chapter 4), the mother would not let the daughter visit her father unaccompanied, even though they lived in a safe neighborhood and the father lived just down the porch. Instead, the mother insisted upon escorting the child from her house directly to the father’s door and watching until the child got safely inside. Infantilized children like this often pay the price, when they are still children, in the currency of defective relationships with siblings and compromised relationships with others outside the home and family. When they become adults, these children often pay another price: they become avoidants who have regressive relationships marked by an isolating dependency (codependency) on one, associated with a disinterest in, fear of, antagonism to, often based in jealousy of, all.