As adults we have multiple relationships with people around us-friendships, relationships at work,those with clients and bosses, family and of course romantic relationships.Each relationship encompasses a particular dynamic and one realizes as one looks at these that they all follow a pattern.When it comes to romantic relationships, most people’s relationships follow a pattern-duration,choice of mate, reasons for breakup and so on.One might then wonder why is it that these patterns arise and are constantly repeated.At times these patterns are also hurtful as one chooses toxic mates .
The answer lies in relationship dynamic that parents had and what the child treated as a takeaway from that.Let us understand this with the help of two examples.
Judy is a 26 year old female who works as a receptionist at a dentist’s office.She had an alcoholic father who raged and a subservient mother who over-gave to prevent his rages.She became quiet and needless.All her life judy felt unloved and abandoned by her parents and wanted a man,a lover,to rescue her from the pain she experienced.After she started dating, she vowed to find a good man but the men she attracted were abusive, rage filled and she suffered from co-dependence,love-addiction and lack of boundaries and over gave just to hold onto these relationships so that she is not abandoned.
Let us analyze Judy’s pattern.She modeled her mother’s behavior,adapted to her father’s behavior by becoming needless and reacted by vowing to never be with someone horrible (even though it didn’t quite play out as decided )
Thus her childhood patterns will keep getting repeated in all her relationships till she heals her core wounds
Let us take another example of carl who is a 32 year old clerk at an accounting firm.He has dated and loved many good women in the past but has always run away as the relationship has gotten close to commitment.He feels lonely and wants to be with someone but is unable to sustain a love relationship.
He starts to feel trapped as a woman makes emotional demands on him and runs away.He had a grandiose,controlling,narcissistic mother who flew into rages and a passive, subservient father who maintained peace in the house by complying to all his wife’s demands and being walled off emotionally for most part.As Carl grew up, his mother burdened him with her emotional needs and often told him that he understood her better than his father.Thus,as a boy and then a teen ,he had to play the role of a man which he was not ready for and felt overwhelmed.Futhermore, he learnt to adapt to his mothers moods so as not to trigger her and always second guessed, pleased and complied to her wishes .Deep down he resented it and vowed to himself that he will never be controlled in his life.
Thus, when any woman got too close, his defense of shutting down and running away got triggered within moments and he ran away.He did not wait to think whether he actually wanted the love.He reacted on autopilot via kneejerk reaction .Losing love was okay for him but not being controlled.Not being controlled became his god.
As a child, the only relationship dynamic his subconscious had witnessed was that wherein men are passive and avoidant and women are controlling and demanding and the only way to feel loved is to comply and be subservient and drown yourself in the woman’s emotional needs and assume responsibility for her feelings which he resented.He was not loved unconditionally but his mother’s love was contingent upon him behaving in a certain manner/fulfilling certain demands/obeying her.
He modeled his father, adapted by complying and obeying and reacted by shutting down and refusing to be controlled .
So as an adult he ended up giving too much in the early parts of the relationship to make sure that the woman likes him/is not angry with him due to his underlying subconscious fear of rejection ( by not loving him unconditionally and burdening him with demands his mother had rejected him repeatedly).However, after he overgave, he began to feel resentful and trapped and ran from the relationship but missed having love in life later.
In order to heal, he will have to develop a healthy adult self with strong boundaries which puts his own needs first and is willing to lose the partner but not himself in a relationship.He will also have to learn how to react to a woman’s emotional needs in a manner in which he does not lose himself which will happen when his newly formed healthy adult self gives from a place of fearlessness without worrying about rejection .He will have to stop taking responsibility of a woman’s feelings and just do his 50% in the relationship without worrying about her reactions-if she gets offended, angry,pissed off or mad when he has done nothing wrong his new healthy adult self will be able to stand upto her and say so.
The process of developing this healthy adult self will enable him to stay in a relationship.
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