Published Articles
By Dr. William R. Morrow

“Fear of Intimacy”

In the debate over the ethics of cloning, some wiseguy has made his contribution to the mass of ideas and speculations with an intriguing hypothetical question: "If a man clones his wife, should that be considered bigamy?" If you think about this too hard, it could give you a migraine headache, because, obviously if the new woman is exactly the same as the old one, there is no crime. On the other hand, two women are now in the picture. Or are they? How do they figure this? Assume the madman-of-science can make this happen in a few weeks, and has two identical women. The imagination boggles. Is he now enjoying himself, or have his old marital problems now doubled. Would a guy want TWO women upset at him? Blessing or curse? Will they get family therapy at a two-for-one rate?

As I see it, the reason this specter rises up from the unconscious realms of weird science is because men are afraid of emotional intimacy with women. OK, so we men spend a lot of time and energy strutting around to attract the right women, driven as we are by fantasies of great passion. But once the courtship is over, and the relationship of commitment and responsibility settles in, it becomes harder to sustain the emotional energies required to hang in there. Then a man's feelings are at stake, and he is in dangerous waters. Women have intimacy problems too, but they are more ambivalent and less scientific about the emotional closeness. Sometimes, they like it better than sex. Men, on the other hand, sense they are in trouble, and then look for ingenious ways to fix the problem.

Go see the movie, "The Stepford Wives", if you want to get a graphic example of the male psyche trying desperately to overcome its existential fear. Stepford men know how to deal with robotic women of their own making, but not real live women. True, robotic women will give their man sex every night, but that kind of sex was never about emotional intimacy anyway: Sex every night is either honeymoon mania or stress management. The Stepford Wife solution is just another case of how to creatively avoid intimacy. Cloning is another. The clever, if unconscious, motive of cloning is to split the volume of anxiety-ridden intensity of the intimacy between two wives, thus toning it down to something supposedly more manageable.

As a relationship problem, fear of intimacy between two real spouses, usually shows up symptomatically as marital fighting. Look at fighting with this positive spin! It accomplishes something the two partners may need for their own security. Distance. Fighting grants the needed reprieve from intimacy. Well, of course fighting could go too far and become destructive, but a good fight establishes the boundaries of protection, at least until the next time.

Intimacy issues typically show up at strange times in the course of a marriage. Like when all the kids have left home and the dog dies. Longer-term marriage and/or illness of one spouse seem to produce an interdependence that couples feel as too much intimacy.
There must be a better way to overcome the fear than cloning, robotics, or fighting. It is to work out intimacy issues with one woman/ one man at a time. Face your fears, and understand the emotional need for psychic space between partners, even between soul-mates. Given the proper boundaries, men will find that they can safely show their feelings without their knees buckling or imploding. Women can pursue their own self-fulfillment and discover a secure and separate identity within the marriage.

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