It is not uncommon to find someone who fears engulfment matched with someone who fears abandonment. This can be a lethal combination unless both partners are able to work “through” and learn to “hold” their fears and understand “how” it causes a significant amount of insecurity and lack of intimacy in their relationships. The two partners dance back and forth, sometimes for years, and more often than not, they trip, step on each others feet and are constantly questioning why dancing isn’t as fun as it used to be. Bryn Collin in her book Emotionally Unavailable describes the dance routine of the person who fears engulfment this way… The emotionally unavailable person has come to believe that letting someone get too close is risky and when someone gets too close, alarm bells off and they back away. But that is not the end of it because when the unavailable partner gets too distant that turns out to be just as scary, and this causes them to seek to initiate a connection until they back off again and thus the cycle is repeated…but, at some point along the way the more available partner stops being able to trust or predict the relationship and instead lives in constant questioning mode and insecurity. This pattern of approach, pull back, keep partner at arm’s length, not too close and not to far keeps the relationship in neutral and unable to grow.

David Richo has his own description of the dance routine of those who fear abandonment and engulfment and he describes it this way…
The fear of abandonment is present when one is afraid their partner will leave and so she clings; he fears she is getting too close and so he flees. This keeps them in an endless dance in which one chases and the other runs. One partner is needy and desperate and the other is aloof and harried. A neurotic fit has occurred, and the partners may continue this pattern for years. One partner is so afraid of being alone that they may line up a back-up partner, and when that new partner seems to offer all that could they could possibly want, they may leave the original partner for them…..Both fear of abandonment and fear of engulfment are phantom fears, like phantom pain. Abandonment and engulfment already happened in the powerless past of childhood and cannot really happen to adults. An adult cannot be abandoned, only left, not engulfed, only crowded.


If this dance sounds familiar to you you are not alone.We have all danced this dance before but some of us have never gotten past this particular routine but once we become familiar with the dance routine hopefully we can change the dance before it's too late and we have to find a new dance partner.