my flawed search for love
I have had it all backwards.
My whole life I have believed that the bad luck of my childhood was a measure of my worth. I believed it was a mark of shame that I needed to hide, something I would be judged for. I believed it was a destiny. If my parents didn’t love me, then I wasn’t worthy of love and anyone who I let close to me would eventually see this.
This led me to adapt a series of coping mechanisms or maladaptive survival techniques.
-don’t be yourself
-don’t be vulnerable
-get approval from people you admire
Don’t be yourself
-I mustn't let anyone get close enough to me to see ‘the thing.’ I wasn’t sure what it was, but this is what my parents saw that had them, at the crossroads of love and not love, choose not. And if my parents, the people in this world supposed to love me didn’t, then how could anyone else?
-I mustn’t be myself. If my parents didn’t love me, then who I was inherently bad and wrong. I wasn’t sure what part of me, so it was best to be safe and keep more hidden than not. The deeper and more vulnerable it was, the more imperative it was to keep it hidden. What was down there could be ‘the thing’ that would make someone walk away, repulsed, or worse, make them as viciously hateful as my mother was.
Don’t be vulnerable
-Being vulnerable would mean that I was out of control, that I couldn’t maintain my carefully crafted facade, the commitment to the person I wanted to be, who I thought that I was, my mask. I tried to live this mask in relationship, but it cracked under the strain of trying to maintain it over time.
Get approval
-My friendships and romantic relationships were all geared towards getting approval from people who had the power to deem me as lovable and thus anoint me as truly transformed into my mask. I gravitated towards people who were likable, confident, cool, commanding. I wanted to be close to the person everyone wanted to be close to. I wanted to win them like a prize. This wasn’t a conscious choice, but my trauma taking the wheel as it sought earnestly to find healing.
My mother was larger than life, she was a force of nature, albeit a tornado. In order to be restored, I needed someone with the clout and confidence in the world as an adult that my mother had for me as a child.
Friends or lovers, these people were good looking, fun, funny. I felt special being around them and I wanted to be close to them, to be the most special to most special of the special people. This pursuit was double damage. I wasn’t being my authentic self. The goal wasn’t to be me, but to be liked, to endear myself to them in a way that would earn me a spot in their inner circle. The trouble would come once I got there because all of the intimacy we had built made it almost impossible to keep my guard up. When I felt it slipping I knew 'that thing’ might be seen. Instead of waiting for that to happen, I would feel exposed and pull away or act out, becoming guarded and critical as a response to the intense fear and vulnerability I felt.
The second part of the damage was that my prize, this person whose approval I needed to be okay, to earn my worth in this world, weren’t truly invited to be a complex and unique human being, either. When they were, it broke character, it didn’t align with the purpose of my mission. I needed them to be a larger than life figure, royalty whose love could prove to me that I was worthy of love. In truth, we are all royalty, but we are all also wounded children.
Just as my mask slipped the more intimate the relationship became, my glorified worth-granter was never as they appeared. Behind the charm and mistique, they were another flawed human, not someone above me who could give me the validation I craved. I sought the mother or father god, but found person after person. Not only that, but the people I was choosing, with their outward confidence and intense charm, were maintaining a facade themselves. They were not authentic, likely nursing their own childhood wound. While my beacon targeted earning the love of one to validate me, theirs targeted earning the love of many and I had been drawn in by their light.
The plan was flawed from the start
The irony here is that I am lovable. These people would love me every time. When I would find someone who resonated with this pattern and design to get close to them, I always would. And it wasn’t all a lie, it was mostly authentic. They loved my love, my infatuation with their mask. They accepted, even enjoyed, my quirks. My honesty, while abrasive in moments, had a comforting quality, a gravity that was refreshing and seductive. Honesty is a double edged sword and not safety.
As the intimacy between us grew, I would become prickly, beginning to act out the self fulfilling prophecy of being deemed as unloveable.
Because I was scared of being seen I would pull away or show a protective and unattractive side of myself.
Because I needed my validator to be larger than life, I resented the mounting evidence of their humanity and would press on their deepest wounds because I resented their humanity.
In order for the wound to be healed, I needed someone super human to prove they loved me, so I would demand my validator to do the thing they could not do, whatever it may be, locking us both in failure.
I would ask the liar to be honest
The narcissist to stop seeking others' approval
The aloof to show up and communicate
The polyamorist to commit
The selfish to be considerate
The manipulator to be honest and self sacrificing
Of course, they couldn’t. These were their own wounds or shadows, parts that were intrinsic to who they were at the moment. They couldn’t simply evolve in the snap of a finger out of love for me, but that was the bar. I didn’t know how love worked because I didn’t know how imperfection worked, myself not having been loved in that state. Far from love and intimate with dysfunction, my child self invented an idealized picture of perfect love and that was my pursuit.
I didn’t have a model for true humanity, so I operated in a world of ideals. What got me through my childhood was a deep sense that what was happening was wrong. While my neglectful and abusive parents endlessly contended that their behavior was okay, that my protest of it, that who I was, was the only thing wrong in our house, I had a sense that wasn’t so. That sense relied on logic.
If I was in my room or out of my room I would get yelled at
If I washed the dishes or didn’t wash the dishes I would get yelled at
If I was on the computer or not on the computer I would get yelled at
If I talked to her or didn’t talk to her I would get yelled at.
This wasn’t about me. This couldn’t be about what I was doing or not doing because it was unavoidable. My life became a science experiment and the constant was my mother’s fury, always directed at me, ever present. There was no relief. There was no position I could contort myself to or combination of factors I could arrange that would abate or preclude it.
My parents wanted an idealized child, one who was delicate, submissive, constantly asking permission or walking on eggshells, one who was endlessly doting on them and reliant on them for her sense of self, so reliant she would do or be anything they wanted to get that love. This wasn’t me. I was defiant, logical, not inclined to give anyone respect, especially when it was not earned.
Instead of reflecting their magnanimousness, I reflected their defects. They did not enjoy this. By punishing me they could finally get one over on a punishing world. In the small realm of our house they had power. Technically, they had dominion over a tiny and defiant goddess who would spend 18 years picking her battles and plotting her escape.