Unlike the kind of partnership and dependency that many of us seek to supplement our lives, the love and romance addict looks to someone outside of himself to provide the emotional stability he lacks within. Working to escape their own emptiness, they can find troubled or emotionally challenged partners to focus on, thus giving others what they most want for themselves.
“I didn’t know marriage would be so difficult.” — To the client
Entering into a long-term intimate relationship at first seems alive, secure, and grounded. However, as each person grows and deepens, communications between couples become more challenging, full of conflict. What happens? As a child, you witness and absorb your parents’ relationship, you experienced how the family expressed their feelings and beliefs, which informed your beliefs about intimacy. One client told me that her husband believed that they did not have to work on her marriage. That they might just slide, let the conflict go. You don’t have to argue, change or grow. It just is what it is. However, doing nothing, not choosing, not communicating, leads to numb, dead, empty relationships. Look around. Read the statistics. One in three couples is divorced.
Romantic love, true love, and happy endings come as the last part of a long-term relationship’s journey. However, it comes after many trials and tribulations of learning the wisdom of life. We enter relationships with different DNA, genes, family patterns of origin, wounds, beliefs, values, and attitudes than our partners. At the beginning we say, this person will complete my life, fill in the gaps. Two years pass until all the shadows disappear: the deepest feelings/beliefs of the core wounds, the unresolved childhood memories, come to the surface. These behaviors and emotions begin to manifest in the relationship through unconscious patterns and defenses that prevent love from growing. Your husband becomes your father. Your wife becomes your mother. Emotionally, you act out childhood wounds that never healed. We are blinded, denying who we marry or commit to. We see fantasies, delusions, and true love stories that fail us in adulthood.
I believe that we are brought into our relationships through destiny. We are attracted to another at first by various physical characteristics and values. For the most part, we are not aware of what is hidden below the surface. Your conscious mind represents the “idea” of love and relationship, but it is your subconscious learned beliefs that eventually begin to control the dynamics of the relationship. You are surprised when you realize that your partner is addicted, cold, distant, unforgiving, reserved, needy, authoritarian, or, or, or… The signs, the doubts and the fears push you away. about the other, everything that feels restless, nameless and uncomfortable, you ignore. You believe that everything you care about about your partner will change, disappear, or disappear once you are united in marriage. Yes, at first, you see the heart and soul of the person. The goodness of who this person really is.
But, you are here to solve the human dilemma that each person has. You are the mirror of the strengths and weaknesses that your partner brings to the relationship. Intimate relationship is a journey. It is a spiritual path to awaken all that is hidden and uncomfortable. It forces us to get out of the box, open our hearts deeply, heal and grow. The triggers that your partner will activate in you require the knowledge of intimate communication for the relationship to thrive; the language of expressing feelings, needs and desires.
To understand what it takes to grow, change, and keep the sparks alive in a marriage or committed relationship, it begins with understanding deep wounds.
Central wounds: the center
A central wound begins in childhood. It is any hurtful, neglected, neglected, or abusive behavior that has caused some kind of damage to self-esteem. We all carry core wounds. Once a central wound is activated, the original place, memory, event, or series of events is lit. A couple may have a certain tone of voice, body language, or values about money, and the time they spend together decreases: sexuality and affection decrease. Suddenly you feel that you are trapped, you feel emotionally repressed or numb. It’s a domino effect, everything within you that has been hurt and neglected rises up, and what was in denial comes to light. That other no longer seems to be the answer to your dreams. That is when the real work of true love begins in a long-term relationship. When each person has to face the realities of the hurts, needs and feelings of others. Judgments, blame and resentments accumulate. This is the time to find the deepest and most important aspect of commitment; to uncover core wound healing and family patterns of origin. Become allies on a healing/spiritual journey of true love.
Center wound: There are layers of trauma, memories and experiences that form a central wound. There are feelings, thoughts, behaviors and patterns that defend and protect the central wound because it is too painful and too big for the child to feel. The child, when first hurt, cannot bear the amount of emotional pain, so the child finds coping skills, behaviors, and defenses to overcome these hurt emotions. Usually the child will act out what she learned from the family pattern; some families hold back, some get angry, some manipulate, some blame, some care, some are superior and in control, the patterns are endless. Unless the original feeling, belief, experience, and memory are released, the core wound transforms into unconscious, defended, and destructive beliefs, actions, and feelings.
Core wounds are deep, cellular emotional scars and experiences that have shaped beliefs and feelings that become patterns. It is layered to reach a core wound (memory/experience), to release it emotionally, energetically, psychologically, and physically. To change negative thoughts and feelings about oneself, a person must be willing to go back and recapture the original self, the authentic self from before the trauma occurred. Vigilance and determination are needed to uncover core wounds. It is not a comfortable process. That’s because it took many years, energy and protection to survive the central wound.
Wounded Core Beliefs: I am not kind. I am worth, I do not deserve. I’m bad, I’m wrong, everyone hates me, I’ll never get what I want, I’m stupid. I have to be good to be loved. Those are core beliefs. These beliefs are sometimes conscious, sometimes not. Tara Brach, PHD calls it “the trance of unworthiness.” Sometimes she may be aware of a core wound and where it started, and still not be able to change it. Consciousness does not necessarily change beliefs. This is where the risk comes in. Releasing the central wound, you have to go deeper into the muscle of the fascia, the cellular energy of your family pattern and learn to feel, express and receive. You have to tell the truth. This requires courage and a willingness to receive and take responsibility for the consequences of your expression. Core wounds are specific to each individual, to personal history (about money, relationships, creative potential, intelligence, and body image) to the specific beliefs that families teach their children, directly or indirectly by what they say, how they treat you, how they reflect on you: they validate or invalidate you.
Unexpressed hurt emotions: The feelings that accompany the central wounds; self-hatred, grievance, rage, pain, fear, terror. These are the feelings that are mostly kept numb, so the person doesn’t feel the negative belief or feel the memory or experience that traumatized them. The child cannot retain these feelings or express them; they freeze, flee or attack and fall asleep in order to survive. Start covering the wound…
Hurt Behaviors: Then there are the behaviors; control, power, manipulation, isolation, reaction, defense, paranoia, guilt, non-follow-through, hypervigilance, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, meltdown, attack, fast talk, no talk, habits, idiosyncrasies, denial, delusion, lying. Rejecting or clinging behaviors, exaggeration to one or the other extreme. A type of thought and behavior of one or the other. Lack of vulnerability, forgiveness and acceptance. Judgment controls every thought and feeling.
Injured family patterns: Then there are the patterns; victim/victimizer, special/worthless, retainer, addict, martyr, pleaser, savior, abuser, seducer. These are mostly unconscious behaviors and should be conscious. These patterns are known as codependents. Most do not see these behaviors in themselves. They see it in others but are blinded to their own participation and action by them. These are deep patterns of defense. They are energetic, long-term and generational. They must be changed, layer by layer, one step at a time, with each situation, relationship, and event that occurs.
The memories, for example: your memory of the beating, the verbal criticism, the emotional judgments, all the abusive rejection, the details of how you felt hurt and abandoned are unique to you. These memories hold feelings and beliefs that shape your self-esteem and image. Each builds the central wound. It solidifies it each time, triggers it when something similar reminds you of that experience or memory, then you react. There is a saying: “When you are bitten by a snake, you are afraid of a rope.” This is how a damaged central memory works. You may not even know why you’re afraid of a rope until you unfreeze the original memory of being bitten by the snake. Of course, there are layers to this for each person. It is not just an event, and at the same time an awakened one, the memory of the feeling body can open many; It has a domino effect. That’s why it’s important to take one step at a time. The pain of the original abuse or injury can be overwhelming. The knowledge, the feeling, the reality that one has been abused can be known in the mind, but once it hits the body it can be very explosive and shocking. Compassion, patience, and opening up to oneself takes a lot of energy. At the same time, repressing all these wounds takes a lot of energy, which can cause exhaustion, physical symptoms, depression, anxiety, addiction, etc.
For the most part, these complex behaviors and feelings are created to protect, defend, and keep the injured child safe. This is how he/she learned to cope, survive and remain numb to trauma. Most of it is unconscious. The person doesn’t even know that he is feeling or acting destructively. They may know that they are unhappy and not getting what they want, and they know that they have been abused, but they cannot identify, place, or feel any of the above. The process consists in bringing to the conscious what is unconscious. It takes courage and risk.
In an intimate relationship, you are bringing all of this to the table. Unless you are willing to go on this healing journey together, with your partner as an ally and guru helping you to see yourself through all the veils of defense in a subtle way, the relationship will remain frozen and die. Intimacy is a constant awakening. It is for those who have the courage to feel uncomfortable, vulnerable and find the strength to open their hearts to all that is painful and joyful.
To truly love deeply you need to feel your heart broken. This heart softens, awakens and allows the most fiery, intense and passionate emotions to exist in the relationship. Intimacy is messy, exciting, and terrifying. It is the most exciting journey of life.
