When a couple chooses Isolation

I have a friend here in Luxembourg, a very gentle person, who stopped meeting the rest of us completely once he got married. When he started dating, they would go out with us often, but when things became serious between them, they went into total isolation. Even talking on the phone became difficult, they would always be on their way out or going to bed or whatever! We are all waiting for them to come out of their cave! ;)

I have been through this when I was younger, but with time I learned to balance things better; when I was in NH with Jason, we were also living in our own world, not really willing to be with other people all the time, although we did go out with friends sometimes, maybe once a week. We had our family breakfasts every Sunday and Jason's sister and her boyfriend went with us to the movies a couple of times. We managed to stay pretty much in touch with everyone, while living our story.

It seems to me natural that a newly formed couple seeks some kind of isolation from the world, especially in the beginning of the relationship. Maybe because there’s so much to find out that nothing else seems to matter for a while. Everything naturally revolves around themselves, they are their own amusement.

Couples may look as if they don't appreciate their friends anymore, but most often this is just a temporary thing. Friends should be understanding, and wait for them to come out of their long honeymoon...

Do you have any experiences on this? What do you think are the common mistakes made by both sides, the couple's side and the friends' side? How do you deal with it?

Originally posted by Dragonfly

Isolation can so easily become an unhealthy situation.... and the negative side of it ... is that horrible things often come from one partner wanting to isolate the other from the world. Control and abuse behaviors often begin to show themselves with the desire to isolate. And once you are isolated ... it is difficult to draw on a support system ... if you should need one. Granted .. this is the extreme side of isolation ... but a reality nonetheless.

Dragonfly, when I clicked on this thread I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach because I thought for sure it was THAT kind of isolation. I have lived through that kind, and it most assuredly is a very unhealthy situation.
I am all for immersing yourself in eachother, and meaning the world to eachother and spending as much time together as possible but when one partner attempts to keep the other hidden away from the world it morphs into something else and its very dark.

I know new relationships can take up 110% of your time and occupy your mind completely and thats LOVE for you.
Thats so wonderful but you really should keep your relationships and connections to others in tact, albeit secondary to your relationship.
Im not talking about spending a 3 day weekend in bed with the phone turned off ;) or making your SO #1 in your life.
Just seconding what Dragonfly points out as the other extreme side of isolation. I hate to think of others in that situation.
:mad:

My daughter and her boyfriend (together for nine months) are going through the isolation thing and it drives me crazy. She is 16, he 17. She used to have friends and spend time with them.

She even said to me that he is her best friend and that he took the place of her best friend. I feel very concerned about this because if the relationship ends, she will be lost. I have talked to her about it several times, to no avail. He has cut off his friends for the most part as well. :(

I have so many friends like this...they get married or in a couples situation and their friends are dump by the wayside, until they're marriage or coupleness crumples and then they're looking for support from anyone to get them through to the next partner. I see this more in women then men. We women are good at losing our identities to other men, the I-can't-live-without-him scene is just plain pathetic. I think alot of it is jealousy and insecurity issues.

yes, at the beginning of the relationship it is all about them, although I've never had that problem, i'm too independent and family oriented to not share in the dynamics of my family and friends to make it about me. It would be kind of selfish. But having said that, I want him also not to make me his only source of entertainment...his family and friends should be important too. And hopefully they will like me enough to see that I may be the older one but the core family comes just as much first as he does.

My alone time will come when I'm home with him, or we go for a drive outside the city or the movies, or a walk in the park. There will be plenty of opportunities to spend time alone, it will be balance out with family and friends, and as the older one, should i die before him, I want him to have a good support network to get him through the pain and sadness as well as continuing to be well loved by everyone. The one left behind deserves nothing less.

Paris

Hi Maria,
I'm sorry to hear about your lost friend; have you ever told him how you feel? Maybe he needs someone to tell him he's missed?

Personally, I find the whole social life thing hard to keep up, but I wish I had more time to give to friends and my wonderful family. Unfortuneately, after full-time work, working out, doing the house-work, shopping, finding time for hobbies, finding time to be alone, and spending time with my partner, I don't have much energy left. I know some ladies do all that AND raise a family, AND find time for a social life. I find that amazing!

Bella, he's just too young, too enthusiastic about his relationship, I don't think he's lost. I have seen many people go through this phase in the beginning and then all of a sudden come out of their caves.

I also think it's not really a decision they took, it's just the lack of desire to be anywhere else or with anyone else. Like infatuated teenagers maybe.

I have another friend, a guy who works in a bank, that is always complaining about the lack of social life and of friends in his couple. We met at one of my friend's home, for a new year reception, he works with her husband. He has tried everything, she will only invite family over and never go to any social event with him. He feels isolated and resents it, but 15 years into the marriage and she grows worse. He loves her, has three wonderful children, is faithful, but you see, that is an example of bad isolation, because they don't agree on it.

I don't think I could live without friends, especially female friends. I need that side of my life and I am sure Jason needs it too, his band partner, his concerts bud, it's a healthy thing to have friends and there are things you talk better to a friend.

I know what you mean, Kelley, and that's much more like the colour I intended to give to the isolation some couples choose.

That's why we decided to give our friend some time. He is living his first love, they got married and got a new house, they are just so into themselves, I really think they will come out of their island as soon as they feel ready.

I understand the island thing, too. I have imagined myself completely isolated in the Highlands of Scotland, or in the deserted beaches of northeastern Brazil and lately, in some forest of NH.

Temporary isolation is something that I don't consider a bad thing, really. :)

because isolating a woman from her base of friends is one of the first things an abusive hubby will do, on his path from loving too soon romantic man, to slapping jacka$$.

Originally posted by MariaLux

I have another friend, a guy who works in a bank, that is always complaining about the lack of social life and of friends in his couple. We met at one of my friend's home, for a new year reception, he works with her husband. He has tried everything, she will only invite family over and never go to any social event with him. He feels isolated and resents it, but 15 years into the marriage and she grows worse. He loves her, has three wonderful children, is faithful, but you see, that is an example of bad isolation, because they don't agree on it.


Man, that sounds like my ex-husband and I. He was Mr. Social Butterfly. I was Ms. Hermit. (I'm exaggerating for the sake of simplicity, but it does sound quite similar.)

I'm usually content being alone and, as a result, I'm somewhat choosy about the people I want to socialize with. (If I'm happier by myself than putting up with someone who irritates or bores me, why would I bother socializing with that person?) My ex, on the other hand, hated being alone and would rather spend time with anyone and everyone rather than be by himself. As a result, many of the people he chose to associate with bored or irritated me.

After awhile, I just stayed home while he chose to associate more and more frequently with people I couldn't stand for more than five minutes at a time. What made it worse was that he never got along with my friends either, because he claimed they made him feel stupid. Pretty soon we were leading two completely different social lives.

It was all a matter of different socialization styles. I preferred to hang out with one or maybe two friends at a time, have a coffee and a good, long discussion of something thought-provoking. My ex wanted to hang out with a zillion people all at once and do some massive crowded activity that was all flash and no substance (i.e. clubbing).

He got bored and embarassed hanging out with my friends, and I was drained and irritated hanging out with his. He was energized by crowds and I was exhausted by them. I recharged by spending time alone while he got restless and depressed.

Bottom line: Some people are extroverts, and some are introverts. And never the twain shall meet.

Isn't this amazing how some people would immediately think abuse while others can almost identify with that kind of isolated couples?

I never think abuse and I should. I have a very close cousin, an intelligent independent 42 year old woman, beautiful and funny, who about three years ago met a guy at work and started dating him. Her mother is my mother's twin sister, that's why we are so close. In the beginning my aunt was very happy, he seemed to be a nice person.

After a while, he started isolating her from her own family. It got to a point that when I was in Brazil about 1 1/2 years ago, she wouldn't even open the door to me, although I had seen her entering it with her car. She had a fight with her mom, ignored her pregnant sister (who is 39 and had a baby at that time with her 21 year old husband ;) ) and only realised she was being abused when he hit her. He hit her because she wanted to visit her newborn nephew...

Nowadays she talks about that as if she had been under some spell. Sexually he was great, but that was about it. He used her car, stayed at her place, she paid for all expenses, and she never noticed the abuse. It's interesting to know that when she got married at the age of 23, her husband had prohibitted her from leaving the house for two weeks. The reason? She was a virgin and it took him two weeks to finally succeed a sexual intercourse. He didn't want her to complain to her mother about the pain, etc. And this is not something common in Brazil, not that I know of!


Her father, together with mine, always abused us. I think this pattern of abuse became so normal for us as teenagers that even as adults we have difficulties sometimes recognizing abuse and putting limits to what people can do to us.

This last February my cousin and I spent one week in São Paulo just having fun, going to the opera, doing shopping, going out with her friends, and remembering when we were teens. I love my cousin; she's such a tender, classy woman.

It's hard for me to imagine me in her situation. Although we faced the same kind of abuse when we were young, the resulting personalities are just too different. I guess I'm not that passive.

*********It's hard for me to imagine me in her situation. Although we faced the same kind of abuse when we were young, the resulting personalities are just too different. I guess I'm not that passive***************

Hi Maria, I just have to pick you up on this one :)

I know that people who have found themselves with abusive partners seem difficult to understand to those who haven't had such poor luck themselves. Something I learned from my years at abuse forums was that theres no pre-determining factor in becoming an abuse victim. You can be firey, passive, rich, poor, old, young, smart, stupid, have a nurturing childhood or an abusive one.......any trusting person with empathy and a capacity for love can fall prey to abuse. This is a disturbing fact to most people; abuse is frightening. Most people want to believe that it could never happen to them, and that it only happens to others who are faulty somehow. This leads to that unfortunate phenonmenon where people will patholgicise the victim, when in fact the abuser is entirely at fault.

they start out small, with small problems that escalate. People often don't see their relationships as abusive. One of the more obnoxious things about abusive men is that they will turn the "you are abusing me" card around on their spouse. So suddenly if you complain about a behavior, it's abuse. AND MANY PEOPLE FALL FOR THAT ONE HOOK LINE AND SINKER! Because we all want to be well loved in our relationships. So we put up with things that we shouldn't, and we are in the relationship and being totally abused before we see it ourselves.
Just my .02 cents.

I hear you both. Yes maybe I could also fall into an abusive relationship, although I find it hard to imagine I would not react.

I have been in relationships where men tried to control me. I have always broken up before. I don't think I would stay in such a relationship and now, having dated a lot and been married three times, I think I can be sure of what I am saying.

It doesn't mean that those who suffer abuse are all passive. I know my mother was and her twin sister was not. Both suffered the same kind of abuse, and both had something more in common: they accepted the abuse thinking it would be better for the children because of how society was then and let's be honest, for financial reasons, too.

I believe though that some personalities are more difficult to abuse, and mine may be one. Or maybe the fact that I was never really in love with someone before, thus not emotionally blind to abuse, helped too. The abuse I saw when I was growing up made me kind of numb, unable to love for a long time. It may have been my protection from guys who were abusive.

The truth is, once I see someone treating me badly, I run like crazy from them. Friends or lovers, I just prefer to be alone than in bad company.

I think you hit the nail on the head, Lynn. I believe I recognize abuse and the signs of an abuser better than most people. My sisters are exactly like me. One of my sisters actually dated one, and she got rid of him very quickly.

My cousins were different. They seem to be more prone to being abused, although one of them finally found someone much nicer (the one who is 18 years older than her husband) and the other is recovering.

Their mother (my mother's twin sister) chose to get a divorce much earlier than my mother did; my mother put up with the abuse for 24 years, 8 more than my aunt, and thus made us put up with it too.

Maybe those 8 years made the whole difference.

Maria, I don't want to scare you into thinking you might end up in an abusive relationship. Its probably pretty rare anyway. And you're in a great relatiuonship now so I doubt you'll be in a position where you'll even need to think about it.

I agree that abusers can be easy to pick sometimes. But there are some truly talented manipulaters out there. The ones that caught me out were `narcisstic Personality disorder' types. They are very common, like a cancer, and usually successful and well-liked. Noone can pick them, sometimes not even psychologists. They are usually charming, highly intelligent, successful, fake, popular, and skilled in slowly inflicting great emotional pain to their lovers and death to their self esteem. Its an amazingly common a PD,. They rarely lift a finger and inflict their abuse legally and with support from their social group, but their victims frequently contemplate suicide, are often smart, perceptive, affluent, successful, assertive and big hearted.

Having fallen prey myself, and suffered unbelievable pain for several years in my life, I find it arrogant and hurtful when people say stuff like `oh, but it must be your fault, it would never happen to me'. i heard a lot of that, mostly from the people who turned their backs on me and continued to support the abuser because he seemed so charming and successful, when I was crippled emotionally and finacially.

I'm a little touchy about this subject. i prey that you never encounter such a person, and never fall for one romantically.

Babes...


I remember one night where he kept punching me, and I kept getting straight back up to my feet..I KNEW if I stayed down he would stop, but to me, that would have been surrendering the only part of myself I had left, I would NOT let him beat me or break me.



Wow, I was just sitting here thinking about this and it brings a tear to my eye...

What a horrible thing to go through and I am really really sorry to hear of your troubles.

The big difference I notice is that there are those who "choose" isolation as they are in the "getting to know you better" phase and those who have their support systems slowly but surely taken away as in the "You won't be seeing your family today, I'd rather spend time with you alone ok?" kind of scenario.

Red Flags all over the place to men or women who use manipulation to get you alone as opposed to say the Hedgehog approach where they are CHOOSING how much activity each would like...

I personally don't go into total isolation but we do wrap ourselves into each other pretty solidly so what was once a full social calendar has quieted a bit. I like it that way for now, as does he.


Maria -- Interesting Discussion! I love reading your thoughts on this subject.
Bella D--- Curious to hear more about the types of abuse you are describing... the "don't leave a mark on the body" types but the mark is surely left on the psyche....

originally posted by babes66

WE WON ladies, the b*stards never killed the people we are inside!


Amen sister!

Hi first love,

I pasted a URL for you below if you're interested...I hope its the kind of information you're interested in. It outlines the nature and mechanisms of emotional abuse, and has some great links.

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/9128/105821