My fear of abandonment keeps raising its ugly head because I’d rather put my reliance on a relationship, a group, a job, a status, on anything rather than to do the work to become self reliant and self-validating. For example, I’ve joined shuls and then done almost all of my socializing with that group of people, and when I left that shul, I felt bereft. I’ve joined relationships and done almost everything with her, and when we broke up, I felt bereft. I’ve thrown myself into my work or my hobby or my schooling and when that ended, I felt bereft. I find it much easier to keep seeking out external validation rather than to take a hard look at myself and figure out why I feel such lack of ease with myself.
Through therapy and 12-step work, I’m making progress.
I’m thinking about my last relationship. I had given up on earning my living from blogging and I was in my first year of training to become an Alexander Technique teacher. I was used to getting validated by constant appearances in the news media and getting lots of fan emails. I liked walking into rooms and sensing my power. I felt people drawn to me because of my power and the dexterity with which I used words.
Then the recession hit in 2007 and I saw that I’d no longer be able to earn a living by blogging (particularly if I shied away from porny topics). I had to go cold turkey on the adulation that was holding me up.
My position in the Orthodox Jewish community was insecure. I was finishing off a formal conversion, something I’d been attempting to do at various times for 16 years. In case something went wrong, I pulled away from most people in Orthodox life. I didn’t want anything sabotaging my conversion. I no longer socialized so much with writers because I was no longer writing full-time and many of my friends who were writers had similarly lost their jobs or moved away. I had to save my money so I didn’t go out much period. I dropped my membership in the LA Press Club. I took up yoga and a quieter life.
I took up with a beautiful girlfriend and she pre-occupied my thoughts and my spare time over the next year. The rest of my life was in flux and so I only felt like a man when I was conquering her. I was poor. I was unpopular. I was struggling with a new beginning. So I put more weight on my relationship than it could stand. I kept looking to her to validate me and this made me weak and unattractive in her eyes.
All addictions spring from a desire to avoid necessary pain (aka growing up) and to avoid facing ourselves and working on ourselves to the point where we can stand on our own two feet. If you have no girlfriend, it’s easy to get stuck in porn. If you have no life, it’s easy to fantasize that a relationship will transform you. If you’re not strong enough to be on your own, it’s easy to seek fusion, enmeshment and co-dependence.
From second grade on, I dreamed that a loving relationship would heal me. There was this solid redheaded girl in my class for three years at Avondale College Primary School, Debbie Hick. She seemed so strong and handy (girls love it when you call them “handy”, it is one of their favorite compliments), I dreamed that if I could only connect with her, everything would be ok. I think I kept these thoughts entirely to myself and now that I have come to terms with what I was feeling, I can’t even find her on Facebook.
In the weeks before I collapsed into six bedridden years of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I was taking 24 units at college and working 30 hours a week. It was early 1988 and I was walking bent forward into life, tight, compressed and pulled down. I kept saying to myself, “I’m gonna break through or break down. Either way I’ll get the love I need.” I had been working hard to get ahead with my life so I could get a hot wife and a prestigious place in the community, but I was so disconnected from other people and so emotionally bereft that part of me, against all reason, yearned for total collapse and abdication from the responsibility of being Dr. Desmond Ford’s son. I yearned to return to a helpless childlike state, to those first years of life when I had no mother, and to heal what went wrong.
