Emotional Distance

Why do we seem to require so much emotional distance? Between ourselves and most others. Of course there’s a lot of surface activity that gives the appearance of a special familiarity, but it’s not real intimacy now, is it? Do we actually prefer aloneness? Is it that any eagerness for closeness unmasks a loneliness we don’t want others to know about? This is a problem with those we barely know, but often, and especially, with those we love. So many blockades erected to avoid and protect. Just why is that?