Hi :) So...anyone else distance themselves from others?

[ams24]

Hi everyone

I became a member just this morning. It began with my google search... I typed in "distancing yourself," hoping to find others who posted something online about why they do it, who they do it to, and how they stop it. When my search led me to this website, I knew it was a good place for me.

Even before I got married, I had trouble keeping myself open to my fiance and not distancing myself; but then after we got married, we saw that it hadn't changed. He asked me to explain myself, to explain why I do it, and I couldn't. The only thing that occured to me was that I had been doing it all my life, and that it was automatic. My initial reaction to any kind of hurt, tiny or huge, is to distance myself from it and from those that are too close to me. But if I knew how, I would stop it. If keeping myself open to painful feelings, allowing myself to simply go through the motions until I reached the point of resolution, didn't make me feel so naked, I would stop distancing myself.

Can anyone else relate to this issue? Before I met my husband, it didn't seem like a big deal to me. Like one of my friends once called it, it was simply "self-preservation." But it's harmful now. Like my husband says, "everything that happens between us is important."