Am I Caught Up In A Fantasy Bond?
Behind our fear of intimacy, we may live out a fantasy bond as a substitute for a loving relationship
Most people have certain fears of intimacy and can become self-protective yet at the same time fear being alone. Our solution to this dilemma is to form a fantasy bond which can reduce the possibility of being in successful relationships.
What is a fantasy bond?
A fantasy bond allows us to maintain our imagination of love and loving- an illusion of love, closeness and connection with another while at the same time preventing real emotional contact. This self-deception enables us to maintain a belief of closeness and intimacy, yet we act in ways that belie love through robotic forms of going through the motions in our intimate relationships.
A fantasy bond brings about specific changes in a relationship and usually appears following significant events that indicate the seriousness of our relationship. These may include deep moments of feeling love or loved, mutual expression of love, living together, marriage, start of a family.
When love between two people grows deeper it becomes more frightening and as a relationship becomes more intimate and more important to us, we start to feel more vulnerable and susceptible to loss, hurt. In place of our real feelings of love, we substitute our fantasy of being in love. We move away from being initially vulnerable and relating with another person towards being safely involved in our own internal world that excludes anyone else.
A fantasy bond is a substitute for missing care and love in our early life , acting as a painkiller, cutting off our feeling responses, interfering with the development of our true sense of self where the more we rely on our fantasies of connection the less we are able to receive ,give love and affection in intimate relationships now.