Some women and men bemoan their relationship status.
They experience constant hurt, pain, and heartbreak. A lot of these situations stem from how men and women view love.
If you think of love in these forms, you may have fallen for the wrong person and keep falling for this type.
The practice will continue until you acknowledge your trauma. And take strong (painful) steps to correct how you view love and relationships.
Here are the traumas that lead people into the arms of the wrong person.
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#1. The love life is like English weather
Some women love hot and cold signals. When they meet a healthy partner, they will push him away. If he stays away, their desire for the guy grows.
This view of love began in the woman’s childhood. A parental figure was inconsistent with emotional and physical care. The woman sees irregular affection as love and stays in the relationship.
They had to work to earn their parents’ love and attention. In relationships, she needs to prove her worth to gain attention. What if she receives love without effort? The female doesn’t feel deserving or attracted to the person.
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#2. The love life resembles food leftovers.
Breadcrumbing. Bare minimum. Quiet quitting.
All those terms refer to staying in a relationship where minimal effort is the norm. The woman doesn’t want to leave the union, and the man has emotionally extracted himself.
For many, the accepted excuse is avoiding financial ruin. The others are homelessness prevention or delaying traumatizing the kids with divorce. But the actual reason is emotional.
The woman faced rejection or abandonment in the past and has not come to terms with the trauma. Staying in this union is further avoidance of feeling alone again.
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#3. The love life is like Cat and Dog.
Long ago. There was a carton with a cat and dog attached by the hip. This relationship resembles those characters’ union. The woman needs constant reassurance, and the partner enjoys control.
The woman has an anxious attachment style. Rather than think about what she needs from a partner and express it, the female copes by being clingy.
If a partner does not provide consolation when needed, abandonment wounds reopen. She will display trust issues (like wanting to check the guy’s phone) but stays in the partnership.
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#4. The love life resembles a sad movie.
Everyone looking on tells the woman; she is too good for the man dating her. But she cannot leave because her anxiety about loneliness is painful. A year later, she could still think about the guy.
But it is not the guy, per se. But an abandonment wound from her past manifests because he will leave or has left. How can she overcome this partner and others like him? It will mean addressing her feelings about what happened in the past.
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#5. The love life is like an emergency service.
The woman upends her life to be available to meet the guy’s schedule.
It is more than sitting by the phone waiting for his call. Instead, the female pushes friends away and ditches her hobbies. She loses her sense of self and looks to the man for her identity.
She fears who she will be if they are not together anymore. The woman needs external validation. This type of self-worth seeking can shift if she becomes a mother, career woman, or best friend. It is critical for her to value her self-worth and personal opinions.
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Thoughts
These scenarios apply to men with similar traumas.
People opposed to therapy and opening up to others can self-examine their past. Learn if their childhood or first relationship shaped how they view love from new partners.
When you realize your trauma, you can read up on it and do the suggested exercises to heal.
Healing is a work in progress. When highly opposed to separation, re-access the wound, fear, or anxiety to manage your emotional response to breakups. The recovery after a relationship ends isn’t only about getting over your ex-partner. It is also about bandaging old trauma wounds.
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Thank you for reading this post.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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Photo credit: Peyman Farmani on Unsplash