From the land of desperation
Often, the relationships we share with others are a reflection of our own relationship with ourselves. We all have parts that are damaged, unhealed and needy. Sometimes we seal, block and bury these parts, and in turn let the desperation drive us in finding that love and affection outside of us. The source of that kind of love is inherently internal, but when we start seeking it from a space of desperation we attract the same damaged, unavailable and unhealed people into our lives.
Perfect, but unfamiliar
Love, when a performance and not an idea, needs familiar grounds to express itself. If as a child the language of love for you has only been abuse, distance and foul words, then that’s your zone of familiarity. What I mean to say is, we respond to familiar ideas of love and not to ideal forms of love. If your parents (mostly the parent from the opposite sex) were unavailable, estranged and ‘bad’, that’s the only model of love available to you. Later in life, you may not like to settle down with a guy who is able to provide you the perfect love, and may only like to settle down with a guy who you find familiar to be in love with. Basically, a bad guy.
You think you can change him
This is an extension of the second point. If it’s the parent with negative behaviour that you have managed to find in your partner’s personality, then you may subconsciously want to go on ‘righting’ that ‘wronged’ part of your life. In other words, you feel you can and you need to change him. And when that doesn’t happen, you move on to another bad guy, to complete the process. Related reading: Don’t try to change your partner
Commitment is subconscious
Sometimes commitment means too much work, and too much work may mean tiredness and exhaustion. The truth is, many amongst us live in a state of psychological lethargy. We may just be too scared to invest in a relationship fully and wake up from our slumber. It may mean destroying our own belief systems of how life should be full of struggles, pain and strife! And all of that, contrary to popular belief, is nothing but a lie. But accepting it would need us to take responsibility and for that we would require us to end the lethargy and hence the victimhood.
What about being a Drama Queen?
Some of us cannot survive without drama. We need that pain, those fights, that throwing expletives on each other all the time. Probably we may also enjoy the process of making up and cuddling back to obsessive love. Having a good guy may just take away the drama from our lives. And that may feel unbearably boring. More than love, we crave drama! Related reading: Lessons I learnt from my abusive partner
Do you deserve?
For people stuck in abusive relationships, they may be aware of the fact that it’s toxic and they deserve better. In fact, in nine out of ten cases, their self-confidence and self-respect is crushed to such an extent that they begin to believe that they only deserve to be treated in a bad way. Some may even think that even if their partner abuses them, for those fleeting moment he loves them too, and probably that’s all they are meant to receive. It’s more a question of self worth then, than choosing to settle with a bad guy. Once the self-esteem and self-confidence is worked upon, such men automatically step out of the door.
What fear are you hiding beneath?
This is the commonest and yet the rarest to be uncovered. We live in a time and age where everything is either about instant gratification or about transitory existence. And while there is always surplus and hyper-availability, that doesn’t help cure our existential question of living alone, and perhaps of dying too. In the grip of such an unconscious fear, we never know we may just find ourselves holding onto the wrong person. We know it doesn’t work, and that it never is going to work in the future, yet we hold on. Because we are just too scared to even admit that we are scared of the future.
Where’s the right one?
Probably one out of ten times, it could just be coincidental and you may just not have found the right one. While there is always a psychological reason to such patterns of landing up with the wrong guy, sometimes it could only be a case of seeking and learning. Once the learning is complete and seeking stops, the right guy may appear with as much ease as he’s supposed to. Love inherently is more about ease and perhaps not about the anxiety of falling in it, sometimes albeit facedown!
