The hardest truth I have come to terms with in relationships is that all the problems I experience in relationships were and are created by me. Period. Hi, Me.
My ego HATES this truth.
Honestly, if I let it, my ego would never, ever admit this. My ego would have me continue on as normal, always pushing love away.
While this can be true in many of my relationships, be it friendship or family, this is especially true in romantic relationships.
My ego loves to hold moral superiority. Like really, really loves it. It feeds off of it. My ego wants to be right and wants to blame. My ego loves to tell partners that they need to be stronger in their masculine energies (think steady and stable) so that they can create a safe space for me when I’m feeling hurt and emotional.
*I’m sure you can imagine how it goes when I tell a man that they have wounded/disempowered masculine energy. And, even if I’m right, what really needs to be looked at is how my own masculine energy has either been toxic/controlling or disempowered, meaning I went from controlling my emotions to not being able to hold my emotions in a safe container for myself when feeling big emotions.
**I should clarify that we all have masculine and feminine energies, which I won’t go into detail about here, but they go much further beyond what we associate with male and female.
When the guy I’m crushing on all of a sudden heads to another country or into the mountains and out of cell service for three days without telling me (his last message, a question), I want to be mad. My ego tells me that he is rude and disrespectful…that he doesn’t actually care about me. That I should protect myself from him. (The thought of other women agreeing with me here makes my ego happy, too.)
When my next partner texts me “live and let live” after I provide what I think is valuable information, my ego tells me that he would have taken the information seriously if it came from a man. My feminine wound of not being taken seriously is triggered. I shut down, thinking that he should be the one to reach out, hold space, and try to understand ME.
I deny myself the connection that I really want.
The truth is, I made these situations about me. And I pushed love* away.
*Whenever I say “love”, I’m usually referring to unconditional love rather than our normal, conditional and fear-based love.
If I felt secure in myself, these wouldn’t have been problems. Problems that I made into bigger problems by reacting rather than responding from a calm, centered place. If I felt secure in myself, I would have led with love rather than fear.
Because honestly… I knew that in the first example, he was innocent. While my ego likes to believe most people in conversation would let the other person know that they’re about to leave the land of technology, I knew the guy had acted from a place of child-like innocence. In fact, one of the qualities I found endearing about him was his periodic aloofness. Yet the emotional pain of separation triggered* old stories in my mind: 1) that I wasn’t cared about and 2) as a strong, independent women, it shouldn’t bother me (I think this guy mentioned that his previous partner didn’t care- again, he said this innocently-which sent me into more self-judgment). This caused my protection mechanisms** to go up: a little bit of fight before freeze.
*The difference between a trigger and an appropriate emotional response is that a trigger elicits an emotion that is out of proportion to the situation.
**If you’re tracking for your own healing journey: emotions, thoughts (story we tell ourselves about the emotion), and protection/defense mechanism
My ego loves to protect me against love, because it fears it.
This is because the (unhealthy) ego was created by fear. Fear is love’s opposite. Love is the only thing that can make fear disappear. We believe that we need fear to survive. This is why we- consciously or unconsciously- fear love.
For me, this fear started early on in life. Part of it was the whole weird Catholic thing on fearing God (literally, fearing Love), but a large imprint was left on me in my parents divorce. I’ve written about this before, but anyone who knows my parents knows that they are not a match and simply a product of getting married too soon because of societal and religious conditioning (and thankfully, because I am here). The problem wasn’t the divorce, the problem was that no one helped me, a highly sensitive kid, understand what was happening. No one helped me process my emotions (which is why I got really good at numbing through food, exercise, and starvation in adolescence). When my dad told me he and my mom were getting a divorce, I literally remember imagining me and my sisters floating away in boxes in the ocean, without land in sight (I was 7 or 8, to be clear). Later, still playing barbies (before denouncing anything girly or “soft” because it wasn’t useful or respected where I grew up), I remember thinking “Love isn’t real. If it was, how could it just go away?” My dad nearly died of a broken heart (heart attack) shortly after the news of the divorce. (How I took on his heart break is a story for another day.) It wasn’t until my older sister’s funeral, when my mom turned to my dad and said “Oh Bob, I didn’t think it would ever come this” that I realized how much love was still between them.
In short, I became the ultimate protector against love.
Mostly unconsciously, I warded it off like we warded off and protected ourselves from Covid in the spring of 2020, wearing a hazmat suit against connection.
This all made it easy for me to confuse fear for love.
A great question you (the reader) might have for me is, “What about the abusers, the narcissists, the immature jerks? Aren’t they the problem?” I’ve been in one of those relationships. I’ve been with the narcissist that came home drunk and used my emotions against me (he would have never have touched me- that would have ruined his game).
And here’s another hard truth… if I loved myself, I wouldn’t have ignored the red flags. I would have had the confidence to leave. Actually, I would have taken the opportunity to leave in the first year, rather than allowing the relationship to carry on for another 2 and half. I would have told my new landlords that I changed my mind… I had been scared when we signed the lease to the apartment in Estes Park and didn’t want to say anything (he had yelled at me the day before and I had spent the first half of the night driving up the canyon with Pacer, searching for shooting stars), but I didn’t want him moving in with me. I wouldn’t have rationalized reasons to stay…that even though I didn’t want to be in the relationship, the rest of my life was good, so it was okay. Who needed romance anyway? Even though we had nowhere to go, I would have left…trusting the universe and loved ones would provide me with everything I needed. Yet I kept my emotions secret. I stayed.
And that was my choice*, unconscious as it may have been, like an addict choosing to have another drink, not being able to see that there is another way.
*When we identify with our thoughts and pain, we actually lack the true ability to choose between our minds and our hearts.
Here, I think it is important to clarify… the problem isn’t Us. It wasn’t Me. It was mE.
The problem was my lower self, my ego*, the part of me that runs off of fear and fear-based identities. Yet I didn’t know any of this until I admitted that I wasn’t happy and could see, at least a tiny bit, that I kept creating out of fear rather than love. All three of the aforementioned guys were my mirrors, helping me see clearly. They led me to choosing the extremely uncomfortable experience and painful process of healing.
*While I won’t go as far as to say “ego is the enemy” as Ryan Holiday does (and titled one of his books), I will say the ego is to be learned from, not to live from.
More truths:
–I cannot unconditionally love a partner if I am expecting him to meet a need for me.
I can ask him for help, but ultimately, I need to be the parent to my inner child, my higher self to my human self.
–When I withhold love from someone else, I am withholding love for myself.
Literally, I am stopping the natural flow of love.
In my last relationship, I finally chose to listen to what my boyfriend was telling me and look within… to admit to myself that my mind was causing the problem. (It was helpful that he had read “The Power of Now” and directly told me “Your thoughts are sabotaging you.”) When he told me, as I had heard from both Obi-wan and the previous guy, “it always feels like you’re half in, half out”, I listened… after using all of my conscious power not to shout “that’s not true!”. I finally looked at the reflection he was offering me: I often protected myself by threatening the relationship, saying things like “maybe this just isn’t going to work”, “I don’t fit in with your friends”, and “I’m just going through too much right now.”
He was right. (I can still feel my ego protesting against this fact, yet I’ve at least managed to take the microphone away…and it’s control). The funny thing is, that when I said those things, I was really hoping for my partners to tell me that I was wrong and offer reassurance. I was pushing them away and yet still expecting them to fight.
In the end, in the unconsciousness of my words and actions, I was proving my ego right… no one really loved me. Love doesn’t exist. I’m not enough.
You may have caught it.
Yes, I did write “in my last relationship”.
Because that one ended. (I actually wrote the first half of this blog weeks ago and then couldn’t finish it…which, I now realize, happens every time the story or my lesson is not finished.)
And, after a few more nights of panic attacks after the initial hurt of the situation that had occurred, it was the most peaceful and calm I have felt after any break-up. I’m of course still a little sad, because this guy was sweet and had a big heart, plus, was looking forward to a few cycling adventures we had talked about. But I wasn’t in pain.
What I realized after this experience is that while it is ultimately up to me to identify the trigger, comfort myself in the pain, and heal the wound (this can be done in a conscious partnership too), I still get to speak my needs and feelings. I still get to let the other person know when I am hurt, what my boundaries are, and expect a safe place to share my emotions. An un-triggered but honest sentence might look like: “I know you care about me and I know you weren’t purposely trying to hurt me, but this situation/or action did make me feel sad. I’m wondering if we can talk about it?” And, if a partner can’t provide a safe place for me to share my feelings, I’m not going to blame them. My best friend and sister both allowed me to be on the other end of this in recent months. It’s not easy (extremely uncomfortable) to acknowledge when we have caused another pain, because most of us will fall back on our own “not good enough” wounding, another lie. We really are all just doing our best.
Holding all of that knowledge: that we are primarily responsible for healing our own wounds, that we get to speak our truth, and that everyone is doing their best, which may or may not mean change… then we can make a choice on if we want to continue the relationship or not. Or…
We can wait and see. Because my last partner was not abusive or even mean in any way, I was taking some advice from a spiritual teacher I admired (I don’t always recommend this) to “allow it to be choiceless”, rather than make a decision I wasn’t sure about. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t reacting from my own wounding and I had learned all that this partner was meant to teach (his last name is pronounced “Kenobe”*, yes, like in Star Wars…so he had to be a great teacher for me.)
*Just to confuse you…Obi-wan and Kenobe are TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE. Young Kenobe was my teacher in one way, wise Obi-wan is my energy and mind-control teacher. Which, if you think about it, is really a crazy synchronicity.
So I waited a few days before sending him a calm and kind text message, wanting to connect. He replied honestly, “I’m burnt out from hurting you.” It was fair.
I knew he was, in part, clinging on to my past behaviors rather than seeing the growth that I had made. Yet, as I’ve stated before, this is how we unconsciously protect ourselves. I get it. So, I chose not to fight or argue back, to “make him see clearly” that this wasn’t about him doing anything wrong, that I just wanted a chance to express myself and reconnect. Instead, I chose to let go. (Okay, okay…my ego did creep up a BIT here and I decided “I can’t let him break up with ME”…so I may have said something like “I see where this is going. I’m okay with being friends.”) I also finally felt that I was ready (rather than just want) to be with someone willing to grow and lean in with me.
This too, letting go, was huge for me. I didn’t shame myself for doing anything wrong. I forgave myself.
With the previous guy, I had anxiously attacked myself in the belief that it was “my fault” for things not working out, that, after wanting to blame him, it was ultimately because I was either not enough or too much that things didn’t work out with this amazing man.
Several truths exist here: He was/is amazing. I was doing the best I could (as was he). I could forgive myself for unconsciously working off of old wounds…and really, there was nothing to forgive: I was a hurt child and, ultimately, the “crack” he made to my shell led to my healing. And finally, I truly believe that anything, or anyone, meant for me will come to me at the right time, especially when I am patient and open to it.
(Patience is the ultimate form of trust.)
Until then, I get to continue working on an even deeper and loving connection with myself…and enjoy all the snuggle time with Pacer.
(If you’re wanting to heal your relationship patterns too, hopefully I offered a little bit of a guide. It’s also extremely helpful to be working with a therapist, or at least talk to an honest friend. On at least two occasions, I walked into Obi-wan’s office and said “Tell me what I’m not seeing.” Between having worked through a disempowered masculine wound himself (a common thread here being he and some of my previous partners had authoritative moms) and being able to track my energy and emotions, he could help me see my situation clearly from a bird’s eye perspective in a way that was loving and kind, yet still allowing me to see my role in the situation.)
A Dog and Her Girl 
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