How many of us have done the back-and-forth love dance? No, not that dance.  The love dance where you fall in love, get powerfully connected, then one of you emotionally pulls back a bit, so then the other pursues a bit, then the one backing away backs away even more, and then the pursuer pursues even more…you know the rest. Usually doesn’t end pretty.

In the highly successful movie, Trainwreck, Amy, played by Amy Schumer, does a masterful version of the back-and-forth dance with her love interest, Aaron, played by Bill Hader.

What’s this dance made of? Well…fear.

Fundamentally, we all have two needs: the need to be connected and the need to be separate. We are born connected, and then we are disconnected when the chord is cut.

One of the biggest tasks in life is to learn to balance the need to be connected with the need to be separate. In finding this balance, we usually bump into our fear of being too connected and our fear of being too separate.  Clinically these fears are referred to as the fear of engulfment and the fear of abandonment.

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Throughout the movie, Trainwreck, Amy works to perfect her back-and-forth dance moves.  Ok. Yes, she works on those moves, too. But again, I’m talking about the back-and-forth of connecting emotionally to others, then disconnecting somehow.

It’s a fact that sexual contact is one of the most powerful and wonderful ways to connect deeply with someone.  As a matter of fact, for some, sexuality is a way to connect to something beyond. Sex becomes a spiritual act: so powerful and healing. Carlos Santana shares a really interesting idea. Loosely represented, the idea is that sex is like a peppermint stick: when you lick it, you get both the human and the divine connections—the red and white stripes.

In Trainwreck, Amy uses sex to feel some connection to others. Sex gives us this way to satisfy the need for emotional contact. But we all also need to be separate. The act of sex can be so connecting, that it can stir primitive fears of being too close. Consequently, people create ways to keep some distance.

At the beginning of the movie, Amy’s father teaches her and her sister what he does to meet the need for connection while simultaneously meeting the need to be separate: multiple affairs.

So Amy goes forth in life with a similar approach.

As a psychotherapist, I tend to trust the process of our lives. By repeatedly having sexual experiences that leave Amy unsatisfied at the deeper levels, she eventually gravitates away from the multiple-sex-partner life style. In other words, her life was her teacher.

But then Amy meets Aaron, and another version of the back-and-forth dance ensues. In Part 2 of this blog, we’ll look more closely at Amy’s reactions to getting close to Aaron, the voices of fear that show up, and how she backs away. But then the whole thing culminates joyfully in Trainwreck with a dance, literally.