The Unbearable™

In the Fluid Intimacy™ model, we come face-to-face with one of the most difficult truths about human connection: there are moments in every relationship where the pain, fear, or longing we feel becomes unbearable. Not just hard or uncomfortable—but seemingly impossible to experience directly. These are the moments that test the very foundation of our ability to love and be loved.

The Fluid Intimacy Program helps name this threshold space. Drawing from existential and psychodynamic sources, it connects the unbearable to the deep undercurrent of death anxiety . . . that primal awareness of our impermanence and fragility. In the context of intimacy, this anxiety is often not overt. It emerges instead as subtle fears: of abandonment, of insignificance, of being unworthy of love. And so we flinch. We avoid. We lash out. We collapse. Or we blame the person standing in front of us . . . usually the one we love most.

What Is The Unbearable™?

The unbearable is not just emotional pain; it is the profound and often wordless experience of overwhelm that the psyche cannot yet contain. It is what we encounter in moments of raw exposure to fear, abandonment, shame, or annihilation. And crucially, it is what we defend against in order to survive.

In the early life of a child, these unbearable experiences are not abstract; they are bodily, immediate, and often preverbal. A hungry infant left crying too long doesn’t think, “No one cares.” The infant feels the world as void. A child repeatedly met with misattunement doesn't conclude, “My parent is distracted.” The child becomes the one who is too much, too needy, or not worth staying close to.

This is where the unbearable begins . . . not just as pain, but as the psychic impossibility of being with the pain.

To survive this overwhelm, the child constructs an identity around adaptation. The psyche organizes itself around defenses designed to make unbearable experiences bearable—or, more accurately, to keep them out of conscious awareness altogether.

These defenses may take the shape of:

• Becoming the good or invisible child

• Over-functioning to gain love and approval

• Detaching from feelings and needs entirely

• Becoming vigilant, angry, or controlling to avoid helplessness

  
  

Over time, these adaptations become who we think we are. The defended self is not just a strategy—it becomes our personality, our relational blueprint, our sense of safety in the world.

But this defended self carries a cost.

When we enter intimate partnerships, the unbearable doesn’t disappear . . . it simply waits beneath the surface. Our partner, often unknowingly, stirs it. A look, a tone, a moment of inattention can pierce through the old defenses and touch something so ancient, so exiled, that it feels like a threat to our very existence.

That’s when the rupture happens. Not because our partner is cruel or unloving, but because they’ve activated a part of us that still believes, at a deep unconscious level: If I feel this, I won’t survive.

In the Fluid Intimacy™ model, recognizing the unbearable is a pivotal moment. It’s when we begin to realize that the intensity of our emotional reactions often isn’t about now—it’s about then. And that the self we present in relationship may be protecting us from an ancient vulnerability we haven’t yet learned to meet with compassion.

The Projection of Unmet Needs

One of the more insidious aspects of the unbearable is how we unconsciously project it onto our partners. We outsource the unbearable to the other. What we cannot metabolize within ourselves, we hand over . . . wrapped in silent expectations, impossible hopes, or unconscious demands.

This projection often sounds like:

• “You never really see me.”

• “You’re supposed to make me feel safe.”

• “You should know what I need without me having to ask.”

  
  

These aren’t inherently unreasonable desires. But when they are infused with the unbearable—when they carry the weight of every unmet need from childhood or the existential fear of non-being—they become burdens the other cannot possibly carry.

Death Anxiety in Disguise

At the root of the unbearable lies our fear of loss and death . . . not only of the body, but of the self, of the bond, of meaning itself. Death anxiety doesn't always announce itself with fear. Often, it masquerades as control, criticism, neediness, withdrawal, or emotional volatility. We seek to manage the unbearable rather than feel it.

In intimate relationships, this can lead to a subtle (or not-so-subtle) system of mutual regulation based on avoidance:

• One partner becomes the emotional caretaker.

• The other disappears behind a wall of logic or busyness.

• Conflict is managed through silence or escalation, but never truly resolved.

  
  

Meeting the Unbearable™ with 100% Responsibility™

Fluid Intimacy offers a different path. We don’t aim to fix the unbearable. We learn to turn toward it . . . gently, courageously, and with the awareness that our reactions are often rooted not in the now, but in the then.

100% Responsibility™ means we stop asking our partner to hold what we haven’t learned to hold ourselves. This is not about self-blame. It’s about becoming exquisitely aware of what is ours; our history, our fear, our grief, our longing . . . and choosing to relate to it directly rather than through unconscious projection.

We learn to say:

• “This isn’t really about you. I’m touching something old in me.”

• “I see how I’m making you the holder of my fear.”

• “I need to feel this fully before I ask you to meet me in it.”

  
  

This kind of ownership begins to dissolve the unbearable; not by erasing it, but by integrating it.

From Unbearable™ to Intimacy

When we are willing to meet the unbearable in ourselves, we begin to create the possibility of true intimacy. Not the fragile kind based on emotional bargains and unconscious contracts; but the kind that arises when two people can sit together in the mystery of being human.

Fluid Intimacy isn’t about harmony or perfection. It’s about repair. And that repair begins when we acknowledge that the unbearable exists . . . and that it doesn’t have to be projected, denied, or passed on. As Rilke writes, “Love consists in this: that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.”

To meet the unbearable is to greet our solitude with love. To no longer make our partner the enemy of our pain. And to open the door to a connection that is fluid, conscious, and truly alive.