What I Thought Was Love… Was Survival

October 9, 2019

“The ultimate goal of healing is to become so self-sufficient and resilient that we don’t need to rely on someone or anyone outside of ourself to feel better. But we can choose to get some support or to be less alone. The pivotal shift is from NEED to CHOICE.”

~ Dr Nicole Lepera

My husband and I needed each other. We were fused. We were one. We completed each other. We suffered when we were apart. We felt responsible for each other’s happiness and need fulfilment. There were no boundaries. I did not know where he ended and I began.
Today I know that each of these is a sign of a wounded inner child and co-dependency dynamics in a trauma bond.

And yet we were the perfect couple.

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All of entertainment - songs, music, films - promote dysfunctional and co-dependent love. Self-betrayal are themes implicit in our conditioned search to be saved and completed, to find happiness in another.

Most relationships are re-enactments: repeats of what we all seek - the familiar from childhood.

My husband is very different from my father - physically. But the emotional experience I’ve co-created in my adult relationship brought me right back to where I always was: shape-shifting to be loved. Just like with my parents, so with my husband, with my family-in-law, in society - I was playing prescribed and required roles. This was my unconscious maladaptive behavior from childhood. This is how I learned to survive.

As a child I was silenced, criticized, and invalidated. I was taught to hide, lie, and keep secrets rather than direct and honest communication - both in my family and in the society at large. Part of my cultural baggage are stories of people being imprisoned or killed for speaking/writing the truth or creating their “inflammatory” art. This was my normal. We unconsciously seek situations to experience more of our childhood “normal.” .

Today I know that the true purpose of relationship is a safe space to evolve. That love means freedom, safety and reliability. Happiness is our own responsibility. Instead of fantasizing that someone else can or will save us, we heal our inner child. Instead of self-betrayal in search for love, we learn to speak difficult truths.

More to come.

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