In an effort to keep ourselves defended from emotional pain, we give up living life entirely.

“Most are not strong enough to live fully in the face of dying, and so we slowly commit suicide, causing inevitable hurt to the people who care about us and love us.” — Robert W. Firestone in The Fantasy Bond : Structure of Psychological Defenses

Being shuffled around multiple different schools throughout my childhood as a shy and neurotic kid made me fear forming close attachments. After multiple unfulfilled promises of being “BFFs” and keeping in touch, I decided the only way to stop the chronic feelings of disappointment and loss was to stop making close friends in the first place.

Now, I didn’t become a loner per se. I always had a friend group whichever school I moved to. But I made sure to keep my attachments superficial. I never let myself get too close, and would withdraw whenever I started to feel too attached.

Why develop deep attachments to people when I know I’d loose them soon enough and have nothing left of the friendship but feelings of loss and FOMO?

Little did I know that this defense mechanism I built up in my childhood would become the very reason for my perpetual dissatisfaction in my present-day interpersonal relationships and life in general.

The fear of genuine attachment to other people is a universal experience. Hikikomori men withdraw from society and confine themselves to video-games and internet-surfing after social trauma. Young Women prefer relationships with 2D Characters in Visual Novels instead of real men in the real world. Many love songs talk about the fear of falling in love with someone (e.g I love you by Billie Eilish)

In an effort to avoid negative emotions — whether that be anxiety over a crush’s feelings, loss from the passing of a loved one, or hurt from a close friend’s betrayal — we settle for a non-feeling, pseudo life and create a self-nourishing system maintained by fantasy and distortion to avoid dependence and attachment to others.

Traumatised by past experiences wherein we depended on others and were consequently disappointed by their failures to respond and fulfil our emotional needs, we maintain an illusion of self-sufficiency, desperately trying to convince ourselves that we don’t need other people to be happy.

We effectively prevent ourselves from cultivating the types of genuine relationships which make us value life, because those relationships remind us of our vulnerability and the elusive nature of happiness along with life itself.

By distorting our view of the world and other people with cynicism, we are able to justify and maintain our isolated lifestyle.

After having many of my friendships broken by my repeated moves, I became extremely judgemental of other people in high school. I would nitpick the smallest things and come up with elaborate reasons as to why these people were not worthy to be my friends. In actuality, this wasn’t fuelled by an inflated ego, but rather a fear of the inevitable loss of the relationship. By convincing myself that my peers were intolerable, I justified my aloofness and passivity.

However, I realised that when I adopted a more open and non-judgemental attitude towards new friends, I realised that my first-impression evaluations of them were completely misguided.

In a similar way, Incels justify their woman-hating and self-isolating behavior by creating various self-victimising narratives of an unjust world wherein they are forever doomed to be rejected by women because they lost the genetic lottery.

A former incel told of how after he started to go out in the real world again after a traumatising break-up with a lover which prompted him becoming an incel in the first place, he actually had positive experiences with women and consequently stopped subscribing to the incel worldview.

Evidently, our cynical perceptions becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and an insidious self-reinforcing cycle, by preventing us from gaining experiences which prove us wrong.

By seeking gratification in fantasy, we limit our chances of actually finding gratification in reality; that is, finding joy from our interpersonal relationships and in our daily life.

We rely on self-nourishing behaviors like reading, playing video games, and watching netflix as a form of escapism. Through these means we are able to maintain an illusion of self-sufficiency wherein we can, independent of others, fulfill our own emotional needs.

We settle for a fantasy relationship with a fictional character rather than a real relationship with a real human being.

In short, by trying to avoid fear of death we avoid living altogether.

Why go out to that party and risk awkward conversations with strangers when you can stay home, read a book or watch netflix, and still feel pretty good?

“In the attempt to elude death, people effectively give up their lives; they ration their aliveness and spontaneity, carefully doling out and restricting pleasant or enriching experiences.” — Robert W. Firestone in The Fantasy Bond : Structure of Psychological Defenses

It’s a costly trade-off. You cant numb yourself to negative emotions without numbing yourself to the whole range of human emotionality- including the positive emotions like joy and spontaneity that make life worth living in the first place.

It’s anxiety provoking.

Although it’s tempting for me to flake on get-togethers with friends or not reply to text messages, justifying to myself that staying home to catch-up on work or to read an interesting book is a more productive use of my time, I realise now that these are merely rationalisations to maintain my defenses.

And I don’t want to live life reactively or passively.

At the end of the day, it takes a whole lot of courage to step out of ourselves and reach out for genuine connection.

Letting go of our defenses and living life genuinely and spontaneously puts us in a vulnerable position. Sadly, there is no quick fix or one-size-fits-all solution and it’s a slow and painful process.

But awareness is the first step towards progress and growth.

It is through gaining consciousness of the unconscious forces which drive our behavior that give us the opportunity to exert greater agency over our lives.

Note: This post is basically my takeaway and my reflection on the book The Fantasy Bond: Structure of Psychological Defenses by Robert W. Firestone which I recently finished reading. So, the concepts (illusion of self sufficiency, maintenance of illusion through distortion and fantasy, self-nourishment) used in this post are based on his ideas. Definitely check the book out if you want to learn more about it!