"Distancing" is a big category. Distancers come in many shapes and sizes. They can be single or in long-term relationships, gay or straight, women or men, old or young. Here are a few brief glimpses of typical distancers:

Typical Distancing Patterns

The sexual distancer

Yvonne dreads the weekends. Her partner will want to make love and Yvonne will find herself once again coming up with an excuse or else just leaving her body during the love-making. "I can feel love, but I can’t open myself up sexually," she writes in her journal.

Yvonne is a sexual distancer.

The emotional distancer

Howard is married to a distancer. He tells the marriage counselor, "I know that Sally cares about me, but she just never has time for me. It’s the kids, it’s her best friend calling up in the middle of some big drama, it’s a deadline at work—you name it and she’s got it." If a couple needed attention like a person needs food, this couple here would have starved to death a long time ago.

Howard’s wife, Sally, is a "Superwoman" distancer, keeping herself distracted from intimacy by all the things she does for others. Men also engage in this form of distancing, often as workaholics, sports addicts, or Superdads who have no time for their partners.

Chris is another emotional distancer. Beth complains about Chris, who is her partner, this way: "I just can’t get through to her," she says, with a weary shrug of her shoulders. "It feels a lot of the time like there’s nobody home emotionally." Beth doesn’t want to leave Chris—they’ve been together for ten years. But she does want a deeper emotional connection.

The controlling distancer

Rick is a thirty-something married man with two children. He is a big, powerful guy who was a football star in high school. He married Carla, his high school girlfriend, right after he completed two years of military service. Rick distances by being so completely in charge of everything that Carla equates their marriage to living in a perpetual boot camp, with Rick always barking orders at her and the kids. Now that their older son has hit adolescence, he is starting to rebel against his father’s military style of parenting. Rick’s efforts to take care of everything and everyone around him have led the couple to the brink of divorce.

Rick distances by being a control freak.

Mutual distancing

Jack and Diane are both distancers. Diane began breaking up with Jack not long after they began their love-at-first-sight steamy romance. "I’m really sorry, but I don’t think I’m ready to get into anything serious right now," she tells him. "I know, I know… I said that you were everything I ever wanted and I never wanted us to be apart. I’m really sorry, but I’ve realized I need to take some time for myself. I’ll call you…"

Diane will, in fact, call Jack. She will cajole him to come back before he’s even finished the two-hour drive back to Connecticut where he lives. This drama will be played out many times before Jack realizes that he has to be the one to walk away.

Diane is a very fearful distancer. She has a history of falling in love, but then changing her mind. Jack is a distancer too, but he always ends up looking like the "good guy." Jack distances by using high levels of denial, shutting down inside, and never recognizing his complicity in their mutual distancing dance.

The ambivalent distancer

Ben’s friends are talking about whether they should invite him over to meet their recently divorced friend Jill. "You know, I’d hate to see Jill get her hopes up…" Molly says to her husband. "Ben will just do what he always does. Start out as Mr. Wonderful and then eventually it will be ‘Hi Ho Silver Away!’ Jill won’t know what hit her."

Ben typifies the kind of ambivalent distancer who is great at the beginning of a relationship. Unfortunately, he always finds a good reason to back away when the relationship starts to get serious.

Varieties of avoidant distancers

Danny is another charming distancer with a slightly different operating style. He has been dating the same woman for three years, but keeps himself locked away in a mental fortress populated with fantasy characters. He is a successful young science- fiction writer, but he is afraid to enter the real world of the heart.

Janine has a great time with her friends, but she avoids intimate relationships completely. She is resistant when anyone tries to get her to meet a man. She says she’s "not interested." Yet Janine secretly hopes that one day the right man will magically step into her world. Janine is the classic "someday my prince will come" distancer, terrified of being vulnerable, yet hoping The One will show up and magically make love feel safe for her.

Andrew is like Janine—he’s a distancer who can’t get close enough to a potential partner to establish a relationship. He can’t slow down long enough to make it through an entire evening, let alone a lasting relationship. Andrew spins through life, a charming, desirable young man who wants an intimate relationship but has no idea how he can make that happen.

Andrew and Janine are both examples of distancers who seem to be relationship phobic and yet long to find love.

Finding the Distancer Description That Fits You

This is the first of many exercises designed to help you find yourself, and give you the tools you need to help in analyzing and eventually changing your distancer patterns. This is the time you should start the journal discussed in the introduction.

Take a few minutes right now to write down whatever first impressions come to you about the distancing styles you’ve been reading about.

If you have trouble starting to write, you can begin by answering these questions: Whom do you most identify with? Do you think you have a little bit of each distancing style in your repertoire? Has your distancing style changed over time?

Even if you just write only a few sentences, it will help you begin to keep a record of your developing awareness about the distancing you do in your relationships.

Excerpt from Stop Running From Love: 3 Steps to Overcome Emotional Distancing & Fear of Intimacy by Dusty Miller, Ed.D.