Deep Intimacy #04 ~ Avoidance

☕️ Reading time: 4 minutes

A new relationship…

Everything is unfolding beautifully.
Excitement is high!
Passion through the roof

Yum Yum Yum

And then… a bump in the road

Suddenly one partner is pulling away
Feeling like it’s all getting a little too much
Questioning
Doubting
Is this really it?

And the other partner becoming frantic
Wondering what the hell is happening
Chasing
Needing
This is supposed to be it!!!

What happened!?

You might already be familiar with the anxious-avoidant dance
You have probably experienced it before in some way or another

Yet what actually is this dance?
What are we really dancing around?

Find out in this issue as we dive in deep to explore the relationship between Intimacy, Avoidance & Fear… 🥶

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Welcome to Issue #04 of the Deep Intimacy Newsletter

In this issue:

• Pragmatic Explorations: The Terror of Intimacy
• Mystical Musings: A-Void-Dance
• Guided Practice: Embracing Fear, Deepening Intimacy

The Terror of Intimacy

Both anxious and avoidant attachment are responses to fear.

This fear, as counter-intuitive as it might seem (especially for those more anxious), is a fear of intimacy.

Intimacy means death.

Death of the superego, death of the wounded self, death of the parents.

And death is inherently terrifying… because it represents the biggest unknown out there.

Who am I when I am dead?

Who am I if the constructs my child-self developed to protect itself from the pain of feeling unwanted were to dissolve?

Who am I if I actually get to experience the love and intimacy my wounds tell me is not possible to have?

Who am I if I am no longer limited by the unconscious map of love imprinted by the availability (or lack of) from my mother and father?

Do you know who you would be?
Can you feel it?

And can you feel alllllll the unconscious processes kick into gear to protect that from happening?

“But I’m not ready”
“But they are too needy”
“But they are too unavailable”
“But I’m not truly loveable”

To love is to be transformed.

There will never be a time that we will not feel fear as we continue the journey of intimacy, because fear let’s us know we are on the precipice of real change.

To go deep in intimacy is to meet these portals, these moments of fear, to see them for what they are - opportunities, and to take one step deeper into the mystery.

When we feel our avoidance… and we start questioning and doubting and dismissing and thinking of greener pastures…

It’s an opportunity to ask:

“Am I afraid of going deeper into the mystery?”
“Will I keep running for the rest of my life?”

When we feel our anxiety… and we start clinging and chasing and needing and obsessing…

It’s an opportunity to ask:

“Am I afraid to trust the mystery?”
“Will I always be chasing for the rest of my life?”

Because we can go around and around… chasing and running… forever.

The chaser needs the runner and the runner needs the chaser and together they BOTH get to avoid what it’s like to truly experience intimacy.

Which only happens when both stop avoiding the fear… take each other’s hand…. and dive through that portal.

What happens on the other side is the ‘mystery’ and it’s always going to be MORE.

More love, more depth, more passion, more connection.

Yet it requires dying to who we once were, so we can be born into who we are becoming.

Together.

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A-Void-Dance

As we explored in the last mystical musings, intimacy brings us closer to the rich aliveness of the moment, to truth, to life.

Each moment offers a gateway into deeper intimacy, through ourself, through another, through the world around us.

The price of admission through the gate is surrender.

Before we can pass through and enter into the next dimension of intimacy we meet an initiation with the unknown, avoidance ~ a dance with the void, that asks us to surrender our human awareness for a timeless moment to the universal choreography, letting life lead the movements.

This alchemical process asks us to hold some biiiiiiiiiig sensations in the body as we bridge here and there, death and rebirth… and trust.. and trust.

This thresh-hold (holding self in transfiguration) is a flex, like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly we are transforming, expanding our capacity to hold and stabilise the next version of us, more alive, more connected and more whole.

Yet to the ego-mind it’s just death.

We are so acutely present to what’s right here in these moments, that we can’t be anywhere else and so the false self just falls away. It dies if only for a brief moment, but long enough to recognise it’s own fragility.

Naturally then these invitations to intimacy can trigger threat and fear, but more accurately, a resistance to fully feeling the vulnerability of the moment ~ an avoidance of life and love.

If we can catch these intense moments of heightened sensation and rather than flee up into the ego-mind and it’s swirling dramatic world of survival, we instead sink deeper into the body… coming more into the moment, breathing and opening to feel more sensation.

We are then able to pass this initiation and the terror fades away as we cross the threshold and enter the portal into more.

And there is so much more.

Embracing Fear, Deepening Intimacy: Guided Meditation

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As always, it is such a pleasure to be sharing this journey with you.

Intimacy, love and connection is such a fascinating thing to explore, and it seems to never end.

Every edge we encounter is really just a membrane before we burst into the next layer of the mystery.

It’s so so beautiful.

And if you are excited to dive in even deeper… stay tuned, we have some big news coming soon!

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In Love and Service,