Love hurts.
Or so they say.
It doesn’t have to, but for many of us, it does. Why?
Why do we gravitate like electromagnets to people who aren’t good for us — those who require rescuing, fixing, or need to play the savior? What’s wrong with the content, confident, consistent, and happy people? How about those that are thriving?
I’m about to lay out the top five ingredients in baking a toxic relationship, so let’s preheat the oven.
5. Your Attachment Style
I’m sure you’ve heard of this one, and perhaps you know what yours is. Maybe you know the difference between Anxious, Avoidant, Fearful-Avoidant/Ambivalent, and Secure. Or perhaps you have no idea, so I’ve found this site to be the most comprehensive if you want to take a test.
In short, your attachment style, according to Attachment Theory, is developed in your pre-verbal years when you communicate visually and experientially with your caretakers. You could read facial expressions and sense energy even as a baby, and your young brain understood that attention was a matter of life and death.
If your mother was absent, inattentive, or anxious, you picked up on it and stored that information in your primitive brain concerned with survival. As you grew up, you continued to absorb the energy of the family system and became adept at reading your parents’ moods, creating a map of human interaction.
If one or both parents smothered you, you learned to push people away. Maybe you could never tell what mood the dominant parent would be in, so you became anxious or ambivalent. Or, if you’re fortunate, you were raised in a non-chaotic, nurturing environment where your needs were met in healthy ways. Thus, you became secure.
4. The Family System
Think back to your childhood, starting around six years old. How did you view yourself? What were some dominant thoughts and feelings? How did you behave around Mom and Dad?
Did you feel like you played a role that had an objective? Were you always thinking about what behaviors would please your parents vs. those that would garner punishment?
Were you expected to achieve more than your siblings and give the family a good name, or were you the black sheep, always being criticized for doing the wrong thing until you embodied that persona?
Written above are examples of roles children are put into to balance a dysfunctional family system, which unfortunately demands a detachment from the true Self. This role-playing pattern to get our needs met and feel part of the inner circle (or rejected from it!) carries on into adulthood and dramatically affects our relationships.
I talk a lot about Nice Guys and their people-pleasing inauthenticity, but this behavior also exists in women. People who grew up in a pleasing, peace-keeping, or caretaking role inevitably become detached from their emotions, particularly anger.
Of course, this anger doesn’t stay hidden for long, leading to the label “exploding doormat.” This behavior is responsible for many confusing dynamics when the Nice Person suddenly erupts over something minor and unrelated.
3. Your Inner Child
Think back to the last time you fell in love. Do you remember how it felt? Do you remember daydreaming about them, imagining who they were and all you would do together? Did you feel your body light up like a Christmas tree at the thought of talking to them?
After the third or fourth date (or the first!), did you think about what you’d name your kids or what kind of house you’d live in? How did that match up with reality later on?
When we come from dysfunctional backgrounds wrought with dysfunctional family roles and insecure attachment styles, we become “stuck” at a young age emotionally. Our needs were not met in healthy ways (or not at all), so we grew up feeling a deep sense of lack in those areas.
Psychologically, there are two sides to the inner child:
a) The Wonder Child
b) The Wounded Child
Carl Jung popularized the concept of the Wonder Child in Western society and described it as the part of us that’s free, curious, fun-loving, and a representation of our true Self. On the other hand, the Wounded Child carries anger, shame, guilt, resentment, and unmet dependency needs into adulthood, where other adults become surrogate parents.
These “parents” resemble the punishing one or the loving, doting parent. The Wounded Child will construct fantasies around people to rewrite the past through romantic relationships.
If one partner had to constantly “rescue” a parent growing up, they would seek out people they could rescue. If the partner is the masochistic type, they’ll seek out partners with similar traits as the punishing parent and relive that state of victimhood.
This dynamic creates a potent fantasy in which they can rewrite or relive the past through another person.
2. Codependency
Because the dysfunctional family demands its members to play specific roles, these members grow up with a set of negative messages.
The three most common are:
a) I’m not ok as I am
b) My job is to make Mom and Dad happy
c) I’ve failed to do so; therefore, I must be a failure
When children believe these messages (starting around the age of six), they carry them into adulthood, where they operate behind the scenes of every relationship. These beliefs set people up for dysfunctional relationships because they feel incomplete or lack something significant internally.
The result is the seeking of partners not because they’re compatible but because they believe that without another person, they are worthless. That feeling of worthlessness without another person is the essence of codependency.
Another component of codependency is a disconnection with the true Self. Because of this, codependent people need constant reassurance that their facade or false Self is “working,” so they attach themselves to people who give them that validation.
The two primary forms of codependency are the enmesher and the abandoner, also known as the codependent/counterdependent. In other words, one person in the relationship wants to be like or do what the other is doing, and the other partner is trying to get away from their partner’s enmeshing tendencies.
You might think, “So why doesn’t the abandoner simply leave?” Because the abandoner ties their identity with someone who wants to enmesh. Without the enmesher, the abandoner feels worthless.
When people talk about narcissists (more accurately, deep narcissists), they’re referring to people who suffer from a significant separation from the true Self and feel an almost unbearable pain if they were to face this disconnection.
Therefore their identity becomes entangled with getting people to validate them through attention, accolades, admiration, or servitude.
1. Denial
The number one thing that keeps people stuck in bad relationships is denial, and here’s how I came to that conclusion.
Underneath the attachment issues, family role, wounded inner child, and codependency is a lack of acceptance of reality and an inclination toward fantasy. Some people even identify as addicted to fantasy because its effects are that powerful.
Through a lack of acceptance about ourselves, our underlying issues, and the people we form relationships with, we can easily wind up in addictive cycles that usually burn out spectacularly, only to reignite with someone new. It’s also common to project qualities onto others — qualities we wish our parents had — then wind up disappointed that they failed to live up to our hopes and expectations.
Denial is a human coping mechanism and, in the face of a confusing, uncertain, or abusive childhood, did more to protect us from pain than cause it. Unfortunately, if left unchecked, denial will hurt us long after we’ve left the family system where it was useful. Therefore, escaping the grips of denial requires accepting that it’s there in the first place.
Leaving a state of denial about yourself, your partner, and the roles you play in the relationship requires a deep dive into what you’ve been hiding from. This process is usually painful because the truth often reveals that neither you nor your partner is an emotionally-mature adult.
An entire 12 Step program centers around the Adult Child of an Alcoholic yet can apply to almost any dysfunctional family. The first step of any recovery process is uncovering the reality of the situation and accepting it.
From acceptance comes change, or as the book suggests, move From Survival to Recovery.
Living in denial is the main hindrance for anyone wanting to break free, but you never will because you don’t see a problem. — Amanda Hope, Toxic Relationships
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This post was previously published on Medium.
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Photo credit: Jakob Owens on Unsplash
