By Alison Pilling
Do you look back and see how the same themes of your life emerge through different relationships; different partners yet familiar feelings? Many of us have stayed too long in unhappy or difficult relationships, developing a habit of feeling grateful for what’s offered that contains a little of what we want. Yet it’s not enough and we don’t exactly know why, as our capacity for confusion is great. The familiar wounds of abandonment, betrayal, powerlessness, injustice or rejection run deep enough to be too natural to notice.
We all have one or two of these ‘core wounds’ from early childhood, so inadvertently we’re playing them out in much of our lives. In saying no to these relationships, we don’t even have the little we had that we knew wasn’t good for us. Yet we hoped things could be different each time.
Erotic and relationship habits are hard to break. First you have to see them, then you can do something about them.
Getting to see our contribution, conscious or unconscious, to any particular situation is key, saying no to repeating patterns forces us to aim for more, but how do we change what we’re unknowingly wired for? False moralising or taking the high ground may make us feel good for a while but it’s not that helpful, when, if all we’re doing is running an unconscious trip, repeating old patterns we imbibed as children. Those unconscious messages - compelling yet untrue beliefs - about how the world works, form habits that energetically render us open to the familiar from our earlier flawed model of love.
Seeing life through the lens of those unconscious messages, we’re swimming around in circles, in a little goldfish bowl, with a skewed idea of how the world is and how relationships work; our habits tripping us up every time we pick the wrong person, blindsided by unconscious patterns.
Great - you begin to see the deal. Now you can do something about it. The bad news is it might not be them, it’s often us. The good news is we’re not alone and that we can do something once we acknowledge how early experiences and beliefs might have wired us to keep making the same mistakes until we solve them. Therapy could help, the Enneagram of Personality is good or there’s always a few more mistakes which will eventually lead us to the startling realisation we’re in trouble.
Yet we always have choices. One of them is how we choose to respond to situations. We could blame the lovers who did us wrong, abandoned us, made us feel small, left us or dominated our lives, leaving us reeling or helpless. Or we could blame ourselves, maybe it was you who cheated or ran, who took all the power, rejected love and lovers, played unfair. A precept I’ve found helpful (who knows if it’s true), is that on some level our soul is looking for wholeness, a sense of completion. So we pick humans on our journey who will show us our misperceptions. And while they may hurt us, they’re holding a mirror up to our unconscious beliefs and assumptions, in order for us to see ourselves.
Seeing our patterns is key. Then we can do something about them.
Sadly and wonderfully, as mere humans, it’s easy to confuse a lesson for a soulmate. When there's no big relationship rule book in the sky, we might all be doing the best we can with what we’ve got. One of the things we can do is to give ourselves distance and kindness around our habits and so-called mistakes, adopting new perspectives, aside from blaming ourselves or others for our particular karmic predicament.
One of many ideas I found helpful to clamber slowly out of the goldfish bowl, was to change the way I viewed my particular core wound of betrayal. Using The Erotic Mind by Jack Morin, identifying my peak erotic experiences to understand my core erotic theme, I slowly pieced together my pattern of avoidance of commitment. Seeing my long pattern of picking unavailable men, occasionally cheating myself, being betrayed, keeping an emotional distance, not knowing how to be vulnerable in a relationship.
Seeing my patterns, my focus shifted. I saw that I was the unavailable one and what’s more, I'd picked the partners who couldn't trap me, while simultaneously berating them for being noncommittal, boring or badly behaved. Not surprisingly when piecing together my early childhood messages, recognising growing up in my parents’ unhappy marriage had shown me marriage was boring, uncommunicative, uncreative and dull; that happiness was outside marriage not within, and that endurance was part of the deal. So I’d run as far away from entrapment as I could - emotionally, geographically and psychologically. Hello, Dismissive Avoidant attachment style, goodbye healthy love.
Having my heart broken helped me wake up to this goldfish bowl of personal tragedy. Finally, I saw it and could do something about it. Learning new ways of relating took courage and risk, I’m still working on it. Let’s face it, it’s actually pretty difficult to change our personalities and habits but with kindness and intention, we can raise our awareness, change our behaviours and choices, spot the red flags of trauma bondings that feel like love. Let’s not beat ourselves or others up for our shared predicaments. Life asks us to meet these people who hold the mirrors for us to learn and grow. They help us on our journey to completion and wholeness. I know it sucks when we’re in the messiness but so many things might help; therapy, a willingness to learn new habits, exploring ways of relating to ourselves and communicating who we are to others. In understanding our own and others’ needs, we heal our wounds with gentleness, leaving our old lenses behind, and trying on a brave new worldview that’s so much bigger and ultimately more enjoyable.