'It's not you, it's me'
Understanding how our intimate relationships offer their own kind of Spiritual Practice
It was inevitable my love life would turn out to be a bit of a shit show. The writing was on the wall from the very beginning with my family history. An addicted and abusive father, and a traumatised, emotionally unavailable mother did not bode well for me and any fairytale dreams I was sold of a ‘happy ever after’. Instead my early childhood experiences created numerous core emotional wounds inside of me, including a chronic fear of abandonment and rejection, which dominated my life for decades. Running alongside these wounds were the related limiting (and self protecting) core beliefs of never being good enough (and I’ll prove it to you), hyper-independence (I don’t need anyone), and ultimately being an unloveable person (so do your worst to me, I deserve it anyway).
So, after these rather challenging beginnings to my early life, it was inevitable really that I would later walk (crawl) the well trodden path of self loathing and self destruction, like so many fellow unhealed and traumatised adult children. Blowing up my life one disastrous relationship and ‘choice’ at a time, (which is self abandonment at its very ‘best’ btw).
Dating Daddy
My dating disasters properly began when I was 15 years old and started dating my dad….not literally you understand, but a version of him wrapped up in an 18 year old boy I met on a bus. The intelligence, humour and mischief of this boy’s personality, resonating with my limited experience of the positive aspects of my own father. Over time this boyfriend would become critical, controlling and unreliable, also just like my dad, and so my feelings and beliefs about being not being good enough and unloveable would inevitably get triggered. It all felt so very familiar to me….because it was, and as Bob Hoffman used to say, ‘…it’s warm sitting in your own shit, even if it does stink a bit,” (Sorry!)