“Tell me how you were loved, and I will show you how you love” – Esther Parel
Relationships, love and everything in between can often become a confusing maze for many. Humans have been falling in love and procreating since time begin and yet have not discovered the ideal way or “formula” for relationships. The variables of socio-cultural context, family background, personality traits etc. interplay to form unique circumstances and outcomes. Fortunately several behavioral scientists along with family psychologists have diligently studied human dynamics to identify common themes and patterns that take place in human connection to provide a guideline on how to navigate relationships.
It is fascinating to note that our relational tendencies as adults is often linked to how we often experienced and received love in our earliest years of life. As infants we are 100% dependent on our parents for every need – food, shelter, clothing and love. Humans are neuro-biologically designed to be loved. As children we expect our parents to meet our every need – emotionally and physically.
Yet, since we live in an imperfect world, at some point the love we received from a young age is less than ideal. However, this can vary from each household; in most cases, even in the absence of abuse, neglect and abandonment, parents can still fall short in providing the unconditional love toward their child. Although less than ideal experiences are not intentional (E.g. being picked up late from sports practice several times; favoring one child over the other; being over protective and preventing the child to engage freely with the outside world; labelling the child based on intellectual or physical traits).
In extreme cases when a parent or both parents are battling their own demons of addictions, chronic infidelity, abusive tendencies etc. the child’s sense of safety and security in the household can be placed in the backburner leading to a deep sense of shame and inadequacy. (E.g. Verbally abusive parents name calls and threatens children) Young children may not register the fact that they live in a less than perfect world where parents make mistakes too. They are unable to identify that their parents poor choice of words or actions may not reflect entirely on the truth of who they are. This bursts their “perfect world” bubble and often certain conditional messages are imprinted in their minds from a young age that they carry on into adulthood. Messages such as, “Maybe If I am good enough, they will love me unconditionally; something must be wrong with me for them to talk/behave towards me this way; it’s my fault and I need to change”;
Even in certain cases of abuse, abandonment and neglect (e.g. being touched inappropriately, parent leaving home without notice, verbal harassment etc.) the messages that the child’s brain registers is, “I am not wanted; I am less than; I am shameful; I am broken; I am powerless; the world is scary; if I act a certain way I will be enough; love is conditional.” These messages often shape the way they interact with others as adults and especially shows up in their romantic and intimate relations.
In order for a person to feel whole, complete and enough in themselves, they need to experience love that is unconditional. Yet, when the opposite takes place, they begin operating from a sense of inadequacy, a feeling of emptiness and disturbed emotions that they would try to escape. As adults, Relationships (e.g. serial dating, casual sex, promiscuous clothing and other attention seeking behavior) or usage of substances (e.g. drugs, cigarettes, alcohol etc.) are escape routes to avoid the feeling of “incompleteness” or unhappiness in and of themselves.
Their sense of value is often attached to external circumstances, statuses, belongings and relationships. In many cases, this is the trigger point for where addictive behaviors begin. Childhood narratives persists, “I feel really confident/important/loved /wanted when I do this or when someone loves me”. This inhibits healthy and secure relationships from developing among those whose sense of worth is attached to someone or something outside themselves. Unhealthy relationship begins when a person looks to another person to complete them instead of complement them. These are often known as “insecure attachment styles”, which causes significant stress between two people. The two dominant forms of insecure attachment styles are avoidant and anxious attachment style.
When a child grows up in a home usually where one parent is unavailable or unsupportive of the other due to various reasons including a sickness, divorce, abuse, addiction, or work etc. Which leads to the lonely or rejected parent seeking out to fulfil their emotional needs in their child. Since children are hardwired to please their parents they naturally serve the needs of their hurting parent. As time progresses the child becomes an expert at fulfilling their parents needs however, their own desires are suppressed. They fall into a pattern of placing their parents needs above their own drive for exploring the world and becoming their own person.
Although the child feels important and special in the “enmeshed relationship”, it eventually conditions them to learn that love is an obligatory actions that “must” be done out of duty rather than willingness. Their basic need of finding who they truly are has been sidelined as the “savior complex” sets in. As children who have been acting as an emotional surrogate for their parent grow older, they automatically draw partners who behave similarly to the “needy parent”. Yet, this time, as an adult they enjoy being in a relationship until they start to feel suffocated. Their desire to avoid the neediness of their partner at all costs as they have developed a fear of intimacy. This is simply a result of their inner wounded child which was never given a chance to discover his/her true identity. This is known as the avoidant attachment style.
Continue to read “The Building Blocks of Love - Part 2” to learn about the anxious attachment style.
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