Some relationships feel like our inner child holding on tight to the inner child of the other person. Both perceive themselves as stuck in the dark, unable to find their way out. This creates a dependency like no tomorrow.
And let’s face it, no one would want to be in the darkness alone.
Falling in love is beautiful. Falling in chaos is the messier distorted version. Chances are, you and your partner come from a background of narcissistic abuse. And, naturally, when we meet someone that feels like home, we grab onto them for dear life and call it love.
No matter how good they feel, these relationships are nothing more than an addiction.
This is especially true if we had to be the parents of our parents growing up. It’s a very lonely place to be in so, finding a partner that understands us feels terrific. Until we start to worry about them. We start to almost attach to them like they were our children, and everything starts to get very messy.
On top of all this, we start feeling that the only way our partner makes it through life is because of us. This adds layers of obligation and guilt as well.
Hyper-responsibility is not caring. It is a symptom of being forced to grow up too fast. It is an attempt to control our environment to avoid someone else’s emotional outbursts.
Or we experience the other side of the coin. We feel like our partner is everything to us, without them, we would die. Another coping mechanism that causes us immense pain.
These are symptoms of problems with attachment. We were never taught to attach in a healthy way.
Our relationship now mirrors what we need to heal the most. At the same time, we hold on tighter to avoid the pain underneath.
I want to highlight that this is anything but an easy situation.
Being emotionally dependent on someone is very difficult. It’s even harder to leave, especially if we have been with our partners for so long. The guilt that comes with these relationships is not to take lightly. Guilt can convince us that we owe someone something, yet no matter how much we give it’s never enough.
So what to do?
Make a decision. Making a decision puts us in a different perspective. It makes us take our power back, and from that point, we can move on to the next step.
After the initial decision, we need to commit. Commit to continuing on this new path of awareness of our dysfunctional relationship. From this point, it is time to investigate how we got so bonded in the first place. What is the trauma that is binding us together?
The decision has to be to heal the dysfunctional beliefs and long-held patterns of relationships. It is time to take a trip down the sub-conscious lane. In this process, our partners may follow and somewhere down the line we form a healthy bond instead. Or they don’t, that is their decision to make.
It is not one of those patterns that we heal over a week. It might take a lifetime. A big part of healing is forming healthy relationships.
This feels like a hard task because we project our fears into similar situations. I want to say that losing the will to love again is a normal response but also one where we keep ourselves trapped. And when I say relationships, I mean all of them.
We need to create a reference for a symbiotic relationship. If we are unable to do it with our current connections, we can start with ourselves.
This is the time to be to re-parent ourselves. Firmly, yet kindly push ourselves toward what we want. In that process, we teach ourselves that, we can resolve conflicts and depend on ourselves, and be there for others when needed.
We are so used to being enmeshed with another person that it feels like our boundaries are not allowed. Again, normal but not accurate. Some of us struggle with boundaries. Others struggle with people having boundaries in the first place. It makes them feel distant from them.
Deep down majority of us want a companion. Someone to understand and validate us. Of course, life is tough as it is… This doesn’t mean we have to settle for something that feels off. Sure, we all do the best we can with what we got, but let’s also make room for accountability and growth.
Being alone does not always mean being lonely. We can feel lonely in a room full of people too.
If we feel lonely in a relationship, we must ask ourselves if these bonds are based on love or fear.
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
***
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 |
 |
—
Photo credit: Bruno Figueiredo on Unsplash
