When we left Amy, played by Amy Schumer in the highly successful movie Trainwreck, she had met her love interest, Aaron, played by Bill Hader. Until that point in the movie, Amy had been living a trainwreck of a life: lots of beer, lots of sex, resulting in lots of issues in relationships and in her professional life. Beer and sex are not in and of themselves “evil.” But when used to cover pain, the consequences are often more pain.

Amy had been doing the back-and-forth love dance before meeting Aaron: connect with someone, have sex, disconnect; meet someone new, connect, have sex, and so on. One key step not yet mentioned in the dance–fear. Let’s look a bit closer at this fear, and how it might express itself in the mind of the dancer.

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Consider the red hot fire of falling in love: you can’t sleep, your love interest is always on your mind, concentration is compromised, sex is other-worldly. If the fire of love is hot enough, you gotta watch for the backdraft. The backdraft comes in two basic forms: believing that you cannot be loved that much by someone; believing that if you stay in the heat, you will be consumed.

If you scroll down to a previous segment of this Trainwreck series, you’ll find these two basic forms of backdraft referred to as the fear of abandonment and the fear of engulfment.

In the movie, Amy actually pendulates between both fears. BTW, this is usually how it goes. As much as we fear being abandoned, we fear being engulfed to the same degree. Not only that, we typically choose partners with levels of both fears that match our own. However, we are usually lost in our own fears. So we miss the fact that our partner is equally fearful, but the fear is expressing itself on the opposite side of the pendulum.  In other words, usually it’s not the case that both people in a couple are feeling engulfed. Nor is it typical that both people are feeling abandoned at the same time.  More typical: one is feeling equally as engulfed as the other is feeling abandoned. And if you watch closely, though, as soon as one person starts to feel less of one fear, the partner takes up that fear.

For example, let’s say if I’m feeling overwhelmed by my lover whose engulfing behavior is a response to her abandonment fear. If she picks up on my engulfment fear, and backs away far enough, I might start feeling some abandonment fear.

So, here’s how these fears played out in the movie with Amy and her partner, Aaron.

When Amy meets Aaron, it’s all business.  She shows up with her usual crustiness, kinda like her dad. This, FYI, is a good way to keep all people at arm’s length.  It worked for her dad, and his fear, and does the same for Amy when she meets the doctor, Aaron.

But before long, Amy is having feelings for Aaron. Hmmm. You can imagine the voices in Amy’s head saying, “Now what?” Well, Amy’s initial solution is to do what she’s always done: more sex, more beer, more men. Even though Aaron is giving Amy clues that he’s interested in her, Amy can’t accept that message. At this point in the movie, we might imagine the voices in Amy’s head saying, “Right. You wanna get involved with Aaron. Really. Go for it. You know where this leads. Remember dad’s motto–monogamy is unrealistic.” These voices represent the abandonment fear=if I get close, I get hurt, rejected, left.

In response to these voices of fear, Amy does what she’s always done: she gets laid. She introduces sex into the professional relationship with Aaron in the same way she has with many others. That is, she closes her heart to her own feelings for Aaron, the abandonment fear wins out, and she just “has sex” with him. Romance, she hopes to convince herself, is out of the question. Romance is too risky.

But because of Aaron’s persistence, and her own feelings, this relationship begins to separate itself from all the one-night-stands of Amy’s past. It’s at this point that Amy’s fears of abandonment hit the fan. As soon as Amy admits that she really does have feelings for Aaron, she has a bit of a melt down.

It happens walking through the park with her sister. This is when the unconscious fear of abandonment that sponsored all her drinking and casual sex becomes conscious. And  the intensity of Amy’s reaction demonstrates exactly why she’s numbed herself to these feelings.

All the sudden, she can’t breathe; can’t talk. Topic of conversation? “He might like me.” Now you can sort of hear Amy’s mind saying things like, “Are you crazy girl?! You’re gonna believe that Dr. Aaron is really gonna stay with you. Really?! I don’t think so! Quit while you can! Danger! Danger!” Once again the voices of abandonment fear.

But Aaron does stay with Amy. He even supports her at her father’s funeral. So guess what happens next? Too much connection. Can’t tolerate the emotional intimacy. So now Amy’s feelings swing to the engulfment side of the fear pendulum. Here’s what her mind might be saying now: “You know, this romance stuff is ok, but I kinda miss the one-nighters and the beer. Maybe we should check back.”

And that she does. She misses an important moment of public recognition for Aaron, and then embarrasses Aaron with her drunken behavior. Works like a charm. Aaron pulls back, and now she can breathe again, and returns to her trainwreck life.

In the end, the voices in Amy’s head must have spoken some serious wisdom.  She dumped the trainwreck life, got a healthier connection to herself, and then brought that healthier self back to Aaron in a romantic, fun and loving way: dancing for Aaron to his favorite song in a basketball arena, side by side with the very cheerleaders she had earlier jeered.  Nice closure.