People who never really separated – emotionally or psychologically- from their birth family will have great trouble forming families of their own. They won’t be able to achieve true closeness with their partner because that space in their lives will already be occupied. As a result, they will try to imitate closeness in bizarre ways that don’t lead to actual understanding or to profound relationships.
Here are some methods of generating this fake closeness:
1. Stalking behaviors, going through the partner’s things, their phone, computer, etc.
2. Positioning oneself in the role of the partner’s child, demanding constant care and attention.
3. Trying to displace every other interest – career, friends, hobbies – from the partner’s life.
And so on.
None of these methods work. No closeness is achieved. And the efforts to fake closeness become more desperate and intense.
Clarissa's Blog 
” fake closeness”
Would include ideas about not having any secrets? I keep seeing this idea pushed that people who are close should have no secrets from each other and it seems insane to me.
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Absolutely. And this idiocy perfectly mimics the obsession of controlling parents who are terrified that their children will have secrets from them.
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\People who never really separated – emotionally or psychologically- from their birth family
I wonder whether some of those people are aware of lack of separation, but still can’t let go. May be, separating seems too hard and frightening, as being left alone instead of becoming stronger?
How can they really separate, yet keep close (and healthy) relationships with relatives?
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“How can they really separate, yet keep close (and healthy) relationships with relatives?”
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\Like any colonial country: waging war for independence.
What about other cases?
I think there are cases when the war is against oneself, one’s own fears and laziness and weaknesses, OR simply being very comfortable and happy in many ways in an existing situation of non-separation, while separation and leaving are (rightly) understood as being liable to lead to worse inner situation / feelings.
Relatives are not always to blame, and may even push non-separated resisting changes person to become more independent.
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Ah, the good old “I’ll make you this way and then make you feel guilty for it” trick. Classic manipulation. Example: a father keeps telling his son that he needs to get out more, get better people’s skills, date more. The son feels like a total loser every time he’s reminded about his poor people’s skills and rare dates and forgets to ask how come his social life is so poor and who raised him to be socially inept.
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The son in your example wants to date and have social life. What if he did not want to despite understanding that it is not a socially acceptable way to be and that his (lack of) desires and fears derive from his dependence / lack-of-separation to a large extent?
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All of the wants and not wants in this situation are defense mechanisms. He will only be able to discover what he actually wants after he wins his war.
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“Like any colonial country: waging war for independence.”
What if the war for independence model doesn’t really fit? In retrospect my family always felt more like a loose confederation of individuals with some shared interests rather than a single colonial empire and my parents were very non-authoritarian, non-prying and non-interventionist*.
The downside was that I didn’t have that much to rebel against. The upside was that becoming independent wasn’t as traumatic as it maybe is for some people.
I moved out and that was it. I kept in touch but on my terms.
In colonial terms I would be less like America and more like New Zealand.
*don’t want to idealize things here, there was family trauma and some dysfunction and more chaos than is supposed to be good for small children but leaving home was pretty simple. I’d say I felt detached when I left but I’d never felt all that attached in the first place.
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\If they are already dead, one is screwed because the whole thing becomes impossible.
Why impossible? It’s counterintuitive.
Also, I thought you believed people have full responsibility for the way their lives turn out and can not say “They are dead, it’s impossible to become independent. I can do nothing now.”
\What if he did not want to
I meant: what if he did not want to leave his parents and live independently with any woman?
You talk about the difficulty of finding a woman, I talk about a man who knows he does not want to find her since it means going away from relatives bith physically and mentally.
What should such a man do, if his feelings are conflicting but strongly on the side of not leaving?
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\All of the wants and not wants in this situation are defense mechanisms. He will only be able to discover what he actually wants after he wins his war.
Could you write a post about it? It is an interesting issue, and despite your comments I still do not truly get it.
If his wants are false, what will push him to change?
What does “winning” mean in practice? Renting a flat instead of living with relatives and hoping subsequent loneliness will push him into somebody’s arms? Does not seem healthy either.
What would “winning” entail, if both his parents and society are already pressuring him to become more independent? Seems like some war against oneself and I fail to see where the motivation for it will come from.
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This is a very good question. Many people never even begin to question their reality. They self-medicate, become sick, self-sabotage, consume themselves in a variety of different ways.
What can push a person to seek liberation from the weight of psychological problems? It can be something really huge, like a serious diagnosis or, to give a positive example, falling in love. The love of another person can give enough energy to start the journey towards freedom.
Or it can be something small. A movie or a book, or a conversation one overhears. Or simply the feeling of not wanting to go on as one does.
Or it can be a newfound source of psychological energy that is always there and gradually gives enough fuel for one to seek change. One knits and knits and knits and suddenly feels prepared to start making some changes.
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If the parents really wanted him to be independent, he would be. But he knows, deep inside, that they won’t really accept him as truly independent. So he fulfills the real mandate, not the pretend one.
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I’m still wondering why it’s impossible if they are dead.
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It’s not impossible but very very hard. De mortius nihil nisi bonum. There is a huge taboo on criticising the dead that reinforces the taboo on criticizing parents. Struggling with two taboos at the same time is not easy.
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Besides, you need a moment of reckoning, the time when you lay out your hurt and receive a response. Kind of hard to do that where there’s nobody to listen and respond.
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You have described my mother. She never left her ancestral home — lived with her parents even after she got married and had children. Her relationship with her mom (my grandma, a remarkable brilliant woman, but also a possessive mother) was deeply disturbing, I could tell even as a child; my grandma didn’t actually like my mom very much, but loved the older daughter (my aunt). These are all things that are painfully obvious when you are on the outside (and they don’t pay attention to you ’cause they think you are a kid and don’t know anything). My mom spent her entire life under grandma’s paw, trying to get some crumbs of love. If messed up her relationship with my dad (although he was plenty to blame), and with my sister and me. While I can’t say that my parents were bad parents at all, I was so happy to be far away from all the drama. Interacting with my mom makes me feel really agitated and just plain weird and uncomfortable; we should be close, but we are not, because (since I am going full TMI here) I think she doesn’t actually like me. She doesn’t understand me (what is important to me and why) and is in parts frightened (I’m “too smart” and she doesn’t understand what motivates me) and disgusted by me (’cause she thinks I am fat and frumpy).
I would also say that having kids while you are in this relationship where you never actually stopped being a kid yourself is a recipe for fucking up everyone involved. And never underestimate kids; they are not stupid, and they are not blind. If you have a sensitive kid, they will know from a young age that things are fucked up.
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In my country, we also have these dynamics a lot. In repressive regimes, people are already infantilized by the state and never find a way to be fully adult.
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