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“I don’t want to wait anymore, I don’t want to be patient.“
“So? What are you gonna do? Only you can make you wait. Nobody else can. You need to decide what you want and what you’re willing to give up to get it and then you gotta have to be okay with that or you gotta be okay with waiting.“
“I’m gonna lose him if I push too hard.”
“You really don’t seem to have him now. At least not the way you wanna have him. You won’t get anything unless you ask for it. Then if you ask for it and if you don’t get it, maybe it wasn’t worth having in the first place. Some things are just never meant to be no matter how much we wish they were.”

– Gilmore Girls

I wanted to touch base on something quite prevalent, yet maybe from a different perspective than discussed elsewhere. I am talking about love life and perhaps a misconception around that.

We are attracted by people that resonate with our traumas. It is no surprise we end up dating partners that represent that parent we have the most unfinished business with. Or maybe just happened to be resembling one of them. As a result, adult children of alcoholic parents end up with alcoholic partners, or with codependents that enable them to drink. At times, they embody both, the addict and the enabler. It is not uncommon for people to hold more than one disturbing feature, like, all addicts are selfish, so why not narcissistic? That disturbance is imbalanced enough to justify their need to run away from reality, not to mention the narcissistic wound and stuff. If we act with no plan or awareness of this tendency of ours, we end up with wonderful possibilities for self-imposed therapy through relationships.

But, that’s talking about extremes that are rather easy to spot. There are, however, some things that slip under the radar in high context societies that value appearances of relations between their members over their mental health.

Why can’t we put ourselves first? I don’t mean, everyone. Usually this is about women in their 20’s, but we all know men that are taken advantage of, all the time.

There is this thing in 99% relationships, at the very beginning, that I like to refer to as battle for respect*. After the initial phase of infatuation, one of the partners starts taking the other one for granted, and tests if the other one has self respect. If the other partner (the “loser”) lets the weird behaviour slide, he becomes infinitely unattractive. Then either one of two things happens: they break up, or it unfolds into something toxic, where at least one of them loses precious time.

“Jeżeli musicie dawać sobie przestrzeń to na pewno jebnie.”
“If you have to give each other space, it will certainly blow up.”

In relationships that are kinda healthy and last, a person that got taken for granted has self respect and communicates their standards. Or if they don’t have the will or the skill to communicate properly, they walk away. That’s where all the training from Matthew Hussey comes in handy.

Let’s take a look at the “loser” bit. What do girls (or children of both genders in general) hear most of their life? “You’re overreacting”, “calm down”, “why are you so sensitive?”, “you need to learn to communicate better”, “you should be more tactful”, “you can’t take a joke”, “I guess I have to repeat myself since you can’t remember/understand”, “you’re reading too much into this”, “I’m not arguing; I’m discussing”, “I know what you’re thinking”, “you should have known it’s not a good time to talk”.

This way their trust in their own experience of reality gets disturbed. Which is by the way similar to what you see in people with PTSD (they can’t believe they almost died) or people that got tortured (during the war or otherwise).

There are a few consequences.

1. They look to others to tell them what to think. Like, ask friends and relatives what they think about literally everything.
2. They may have issues with decision-making and may want others to make the decisions for them. (“Hon, what do you want to eat?” “Dunno, pick something.” “No, you pick.” “No, you do.”)
3. They may believe in the illusion they can manage other people’s emotional states. They try to stand one step ahead of everyone else. (Narcissism! To make the whole experience that little bit sweeter.)
4. They get triggered. Human reaction to triggers is usually very difficult to stop, so that is often used against them. See the whole group of Borderline Personality Disordered people.
5. They have the orienting response which their rationalising brain may confuse with attraction. Hence the stalking. Maybe that’s why we are attracted by our unfinished business in the first place?!
6. Their experience of discomfort and emotional stress contributes to elevated levels of prolactin and lowered dopamine, which makes it more difficult to undertake actions directed at experiencing pleasure (or self-care, which leads to comfort and pleasure). That also makes the hormonal situation messy and ugly (see facial hair, mood swings, weight gain and acne) and may make them prone to addictions. I suppose this mechanism is meant to distract us from feeling unbearable things.

The takeaway: if you want to get someone’s 100% attention, do something that triggers them, so that their orienting response makes them focus on you. Also remember: in 99% of the cases love at first sight is bullshit.

“Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” ~Kurt Vonnegut

Learning how to exist is hard. It means opening to feelings and validating them myself. Without looking on the outside. That means whenever I feel discomfort, I have to remember this is important enough to do something about it. Self-care builds a feeling of self-worth. But it’s good to understand that we don’t always fall for people we date, or even like them. Sometimes we just get triggered and need therapy.

Let’s try to own our triggers. See them for what they are, communicate our standards and leave if we don’t know how to do that.

* Credit goes to Zak Powers, my therapist.