Drs. Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks on Why We Push Love Away
Gay describes a moment that arrived in maybe ten seconds. He was criticizing Katie, and somewhere underneath the criticism he caught sight of what was actually moving in him. Not anger. Fear. He asked himself what he was afraid of, and the answer surprised him: he was afraid of losing her. He had wrecked nearly every relationship before this one, and a quiet part of him assumed this one would go the same way. So he did the thing that felt like protection. He pushed her away. If they never got too close, losing her later would hurt less.
He remembers stammering it out loud. "I'm scared. I'm afraid I'm going to lose you, and that's why I criticize you." The criticism switched off almost on contact. Katie was right there with him for it.
Out of that, Gay offers one plain piece of advice. The next time you find yourself stuck in some tangle with a partner, don't ask what you're angry about. Ask what you're afraid of. Give it a moment and let the sentence form: I'm afraid I'm going to lose you, or whatever the real fear turns out to be. That small admission does most of the work.
Katie adds a second piece to it. Over the years they've learned to talk in a way that doesn't tip into argument, even in the stuck moments, and it starts with the body rather than the head. When you feel the conflict rising, ask yourself how you're experiencing it physically, right now, and then try to put words to the sensations. My neck feels tight. There's a hotness in my cheeks. None of that has to sound deep. Because it's true, it builds a connection almost immediately, where trying to control the other person or win the point only pushes you apart.
Her point is that staying entirely head-centric cuts you off from a lot of information. Drop into the body, speak from there, keep it simple, and you open up what she calls the fifty trillion cells of intelligence you carry around. Sharing a plain feeling or a plain sensation moves you from head to heart. That shift, she says, has mattered as much for them as it has for the people they teach.
Then Eric turns a question back to Gay. Before the two of them met and married, Gay was blowing up his earlier relationships, something a lot of people recognize in their own history. What caused it, and how did he turn it around into a marriage that held?