Strategies to avoid intimate love Anorexia: the silent treatment
intimacy anorexia is a term coined by sexual addiction recovery expert Doug Weiss to describe the active retention of emotional, sexual, and/or spiritual intimacy in the recovering couples he works with. I believe that intimacy anorexia is a particularly virulent subcategory of a more general relational pattern best described by recovery pioneer Pia Mellody as avoidance of love.
The love-avoidant intimacy anorexic uses multiple blocking strategies to create and maintain distance in their relationship; the silent treatment is a favorite. Anorexic intimacy puts up a wall to cut off the flow of meaningful communication in the relationship. While the wall kills any energy for verbal communication, the non-verbal communication of anorexic intimacy screams with icy indifference or anger: “I’m in control”, “Your needs don’t matter”, “I’m shutting you out!”
Although women are equally capable of anorexia in privacy, in my particular counseling practice the female partner is much more likely to come forward for help with deprivation of privacy as a result of your anorexic partner’s relationship walls of intimacy. Therefore, the following observations are more characteristic of the male intimacy-avoidant love anorexia relationship pattern.
The silent treatment can occur on a continuum. At one end of the continuum, anorexic intimacy may abruptly change the subject when her partner tries to talk about something important to her. Although anorexic intimacy hides behind a veil of superficial words, notice that there is no verbal acknowledgment of your partner’s desire to discuss a matter close to your heart. His body language communicates that there is no deeper connection; there is no emotional intimacy; she may be married, but she is alone in this relationship.
Further along the silent treatment continuum is the symbolic monosyllabic murmur that conveys a nonverbal message of “I’m going to give you the bare minimum.” This may progress to physically withdrawing to block any further attempts at communication by their partner.
The form of silent treatment that seems to be by far the most painful for intimate couples that I advise is the deathly silence that screams, “No matter how much physical distance there is between us right now, there are miles between us in our relationship.” . and alone me decide if that will change!” If you are the intimate partner, regardless of whether you are experiencing despair or anger, you are painfully aware of how helpless you feel in the situation.
Relationship expert John Gottman considers the silent treatment, or blocking as he calls it, to be a sign of a serious disturbance in the marriage. In fact, he is one of only four predictors of relationship destabilization and eventual divorce. The other three include contempt, criticism, and defensiveness.
In my experience, however, I have found that the love-avoidant intimacy anorexic is only superficially disturbed by the silent treatment, whether he is on the giving or receiving side. This is because for the intimacy anorexic, the silent treatment is a tool to get what she really wants: distance. From the anorexic’s perspective, the distance actually stabilizes the relationship. In the pool of committed relationships, the anorexic wants to be in the pool, but only wants to stay in the shallow end.
Avoiding the deep end allows the intimacy anorexic to remain in control and emotionally secure. If you believe, as I do, that the willingness to be emotionally vulnerable is a prerequisite for true intimacy, then anorexia of intimacy also implies an anorexia of vulnerability. The love-avoidant intimacy anorexic is unwilling to be vulnerable either in the relationship itself or in attempts to improve the relationship, such as couples therapy.
This is why traditional marriage therapy fails so often when intimacy anorexia is the underlying culprit. The intimacy anorexic will have no real motivation to end the silent treatment because she has been successful in creating distance with her partner. Also, working on the issues that seem to be generating the silent treatment will be ineffective because the issues are just an excuse to use the build-distance strategy.
Marriage therapists trained to treat intimacy anorexia usually require a commitment to changing intimacy anorexia behavior. prior to address the problems that cause anorexia. The underlying fear cannot be easily treated while the anorexic behavior is active because anorexia intimacy strategies help you avoid the underlying fear. More importantly, insisting on behavior change first puts an end to the spouse’s continued deprivation of intimacy.
If your relationship suffers from intimate anorexia, I urge you to find a counselor who understands the dynamics of love avoidance and intimate anorexia.