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Intimacy

Creating intimacy with a person, either a partner, a friend or even our therapist, is not always a smooth and easy process for everyone. In this instance, the word intimacy means not only a relationship characterised by physical closeness, as we may spend a lot of time with a person without being intimate with them. For an intimate relationship is meant as an emotional relationship connoted by affection, familiarity, mutual support and sharing of our thoughts and emotions. Being intimate with someone entails revealing our deepest secrets, weaknesses and vulnerabilities: this is the reason why it is sometimes hard to get so intimately close to someone.

The role of our past experiences

Our personal way of dealing with intimacy usually reflects a pattern that we have learnt through experience during our life. Our early-years experiences and relationships seem to affect this pattern the most.

This pattern has been discovered by psychiatrist John Bowlby in the 30’s, who named it attachment style. The original theory has been enriched and expanded thanks to the work of many authors and it still remains the benchmark for understanding people and relationships.

Attachment theory suggests that each of us has its own specific attachment pattern based on deep and established expectations rooted in our infancy, but that keep on influencing us during our whole life.
These expectations include specific beliefs about:

how much we feel to be love-worthy
how much the attachment figure (our parents in our early years/our partner in our adult life) will be availableand loving
the outcome of the relationship: positive, rejective or unpredictable.

These patterns are usually well recognisable in our relationship history: in our adult life it is indeed very common to find ourselves in relationships where specific patterns tend to be replicated and as a consequence where specific issues are re-experienced.

In the best-case scenario, people with a secure attachment style will choose a “secure-attachment” partner. They will create long-lasting relationships based on trust and where intimacy and independency are well balanced.

But for around 40% of people, the scenario is more complicated as they carry an insecure attachment from their childhood.

Intimacy and ambivalence

Sometimes, as intimacy implies opening up to the other person and showing our weaknesses, some of us may feel intense and conflictual emotions. Indeed some of us may intensely covet being intimately close to a person but at the same time may experience intense fear of being hurt, used or rejected, or intense anger of being so vulnerable, thus the relationship will be accompanied by an intense anxiety. These emotions, if experienced altogether in a close relationship, can be very confusing but if we refer to attachment theory, these reactions are totally understandable.

Ambivalent attachment adults experienced in their childhood unpredictable caregivers, who in certain instances responded properly to their emotional needs and in others did not respond at all. This unpredictability didn’t allow the kid to form a stable image of the caregiver and of himself as love-worthy. As a consequence these kids intensely suffered separation, as they were not so sure if the caregiver would be back, and they desperately attempted to be as close and dependent as possible to the caregiver. At the same time they did not enjoy the time spent with them, as they were already fearing the future departure. This ambivalent attachment is re-experienced in adult relationships: the person intensely swings between being dependent and very close to the partner and feeling angry, jealous, not wanted or rejected.

Another type of attachment is the avoidant style: people who keep distances in relationships as a protective way for avoiding being hurt or rejected.

Even if attachment plays such an important role in our relationships, the good news is that it is not stable. Attachment style can change during lifespan: as Patricia Crittenden theorises, there are particular moments in our development that represent potential shifting points, where attachment can be reorganised towards a more secure organisation.

Change is possible thanks to its acknowledgment, new experiences, new positive relationships and psychotherapy.

Criticism and relationships

Being criticised is a very common experience that can occur in every relationship, at work, at home or with friends.

In particular, criticising and reproaching a bad conduct may be a natural way of expressing our disapproval for a certain behaviour and our feelings related to it. It is indeed normal to be ourselves sometimes – the ones criticising or being criticised by other people. In the end no one is perfect!
But there are different ways of reproaching.

Positive and negative reproaches

A constructive and positive way of reproaching a person is when this relates to a specific behaviour and is supported by reasonable explanations. Moreover, this type of reproach may imply suggestions on how to change and repair the “wrong” behaviour, thus putting ourselves in the shoes of the other person.

On the contrary, sometimes it may occur that the reproach is expressed in a very negative and judgmental way, without expressing what the wrong behaviour is or how it could be fixed. Furthermore, in some instances the reproaching person may shift his or her judgement to the person as a whole instead of criticising the single bad behaviour, which is often followed by a negative emotional response in the criticised person.

Let’s focus on negative criticism. Negative criticism can be defined as a constant, pervasive and repetitive tendency to reproach another person. In particular, criticism in parenting may become a style of relating to children and adolescents (Apparigliato, 2011). As anticipated, the criticising person may show his or her disappointment for a particular behaviour (or the omission of a behaviour) in order to change it, but he/she may not consider the son’s preferences and believes to know what is good and what is not for their son.

Consequences of criticism

Research suggests that high levels of perceived criticism have been linked to higher relapses in depressed and schizophrenic patients, and drop-outs in patients with eating disorders. Plus, parental criticism may develop excessive perfectionism in children, who may try harder than usual to satisfy such high demanding and difficult parents. And perfectionism is a well known anxiety-related feature.

Given what literature suggests, it can be really distressful to live with such a critical parent or partner, with sometimes negative psychological and self-esteem consequences. In particular, growing up in this type of environment, with a parent (or both) always prone to criticise and demanding to reach their own high personal standards may lead a person to doubt one’s own abilities, talents and strengths, causing suffering and distress.

If you recognise yourself in these dynamics, you may consider discussing this delicate personal issue with a psychotherapist that can help you elaborate these feelings and handle criticism in different way.

What to do

Meanwhile, here there are some little tips that you could try to use:

Try to take into account only the good in every reproach. If you have been negatively criticised, try to think if there can be a positive information for you in it. Sometimes a reproach, even if expressed in the wrong away, is made for a reason. So try to trash the negativity, shame, guilt or anger that you may feel and ask yourself: is there a real reason for being criticised? Was there a better or useful way to behave? Could I fix or change something of that behaviour? The answer may be no, but sometimes it may be yes.
Do not accept generalisations: if the blame gets born from a single behaviour but it becomes generalised to your whole person… use boundaries! You are who you are and a single specific wrong behaviour doesn’t imply a total and negative judgment of you as a human being. Try not to take it too personally.
Very often the problem is not yours but theirs – people who constantly and negatively criticise usually have something going on in their mind. It may occur that when going through rough times, someone may try to vent their problems in this way. In other cases instead, someone could have experienced a very reproaching relationship themselves and negative criticism may be the only learnt and well known way of expressing care in a relationship.
Be assertive – communicate the person when the boundary from positive to negative criticism is crossed and how that makes you feel. And if you have to make a reproach … remember the aforementioned features of constructive reproaches and try not to fall into the trick of negative criticism.