How to Break the Cycle of Painful, Dramatic Relationships – Tiny Buddha

“No matter how far we go, our parents are always within us.” ~Brad Meltzer

If you had asked me five years ago, before my journey to healing and personal growth began, if my upbringing and childhood wounds shaped the choices I made in relationships, I would have scoffed at you and said, “No way. Are you joking?”

Somehow I had normalized the dysfunction I grew up in: the absent father, the mentally ill mother, the lack of stability and security, the enmeshment and codependency, the attachment wounds that left me searching for a lifetime someone or something to fill the void.

Somehow I had overlooked the fact that I had chosen a partner who reflected what I had been familiar with in the past: the power struggles, the imbalances, the passivity and emotional disconnection, the unhealthy conflict resolution, the gaslighting and the volatility .

This isn’t to say my former partner was all bad, because he wasn’t. Nobody is. It’s just that we became toxic and dysfunctional together, inadvertently recreating the patterns we both witnessed growing up.

We were so caught up in our patterns and unconscious behavior that we didn’t see how it all turned out. I wrote off our unhealthy relationship dynamics as “normal,” something all marriages experience, because I hadn’t yet spent time delving into the wounds of my childhood to know better. I wasn’t aware of what a healthy partnership looked like because I had never done that before known a healthy relationship – not with my mother, not with my father, nor in observation of anyone in my extended family.

Dysfunction in my family (and that of my ex-partner) turned out to be the norm. So I convinced myself that what I was experiencing was normal. Little did I know that I would ultimately be the one to break the pattern, to become the reasonable and sane person in a sea of ​​madness.

This is how I woke up:

1. The level of dissatisfaction and dysfunction in my marriage reached a breaking point that inadvertently led to me falling in love with another man.

2. This set me on a long path of healing, introspection, psychological work and therapy.

3. Therapy taught me that my partner mirrored the characteristics of both my mother and father to me.

4. My relationship patterns were brought into my consciousness.

5. Knowing where my patterns and behaviors came from allowed me to make the changes needed to heal.

I remember the exact moment the light came on. It was as if the heavens parted and a bolt of lightning descended from the sky, illuminating what had previously been hidden in darkness. I was walking out of my therapist’s office one afternoon when I stopped abruptly in the middle of the parking lot and said out loud to myself, “Oh my God, April! You married your mother and fell in love with your father. How on earth did this happen?”

During that session she had pointed out, or rather showed me, how my partner’s anger issues and harsh disciplinary measures were similar to those I had seen in my mother, while his passivity and lack of responsibility resembled traits of my father.

Unbeknownst to me, I had entered into that relationship with a kind of unconscious recognition of both my parents, even though some of these traits only emerged later in our relationship. This realization in itself was enough to make me aware of the reality I was living in and decide that it was time to end the marriage.

The know is what helped me break the cycle. The know is what set me free.

Through the painful and bitter process of disconnection, I was finally able to free myself from the unhealthy and dysfunctional patterns that my childhood relationship reflected. In a strange way, I was grateful for the unhappiness and dysfunction the partnership had caused because it provided me with the stark contrast I needed to experience to know what a healthy relationship is NOT.

Looking back, I couldn’t have seen it coming sooner. I couldn’t have known what I didn’t know, even though I beat myself up for months after the divorce because I thought it was all my fault. Even though my ex-partner tried to do the same thing…blame, shame, and avoid any responsibility for his part in the toxicity and dysfunction. Besides the fact that he was the other factor in the equation.

Then I realized, ‘You know what? No. It takes two to tango.’ Both sides need to clean up their side of the street, unpack their youth and take responsibility for their own wounds. Relationships are never a one-way street.

For anyone who has suffered through these types of unhealthy romantic relationships (the ones full of pain, drama, and conflict), let what I learned save you some time and a little heartbreak. I’ll cut straight to the chase.

1. We all desire.

Deep down, we all have the desire to be loved deeply and with all our hearts. We long for someone to help us feel seen and adored and wrap us in a soft, comfortable blanket of protection. We long for the parents we never had, for the love we wish we had, and for the chance to be loved just once in the most breathtaking, unimaginable way. Sometimes we are lucky enough to experience this. And sometimes we think we’ve found it, only to realize later that it was just a memento of the past that came to visit us.

2. We unconsciously choose partners who remind us of our parents, usually the parent of the opposite sex.

This does not have to be tied to gender, but to whoever embodies the masculine/feminine energy in the relationship.

As much as we’d like to say that things with our partner “just didn’t work out” or that the problem was all their fault, we have to learn to admit to ourselves how our upbringing affects our romantic lives. Often, the partners we choose have some obvious and some not so obvious things in common with our parents of the opposite sex.

For example, if your father was a workaholic and was rarely present with you as a child, you may (unconsciously) tend to seek out male partners who are also career-driven and perhaps distant or aloof. If you are a man and grew up with a mother who was meek, submissive and rarely stood up for herself, you may encounter female partners who are the same.

3. We unconsciously seek partners who we think will give us what our parents could not.

On another level, we may unconsciously try to recreate childhood scenarios that did not meet our needs. We are drawn to people who show us what it might feel like to have the parent we wish we had.

For example, we can look for a partner who is kind and caring, because we did not receive care as a child. Or maybe we are in love with a partner who makes us feel safe and protected, because we didn’t feel safe and protected as a child.

If you go back to your childhood and think about what you were missing, and then look closely at your last few relationships, or even situations, you may find that the person you were dating had certain qualities that filled a gap filled up inside. What attracted you to them is that they filled a hole in your heart left by one of your parents.

Keep in mind that these dynamics usually play out at a subconscious level. You are often unaware of your choices because you haven’t done the work to reveal what drives your behavior and causes you to make these relationship choices.

That’s why it’s so crucial to get to know yourself and dive deep into your past, your injuries, your patterns and behaviors. Until the underlying nuances are brought into your consciousness, you will continue to repeat the same patterns and choose similar types of partners that appear in different suits.

If we really want to free ourselves from the relationship patterns we inherit from our caretakers, we must start by turning our attention inward. Instead of looking for love outside of ourselves, or looking to another to mend our wounds or mend our broken hearts, we must give ourselves the love we seek. This means healing the wounds and traumas of our childhood, re-educating ourselves and our inner child, and cultivating a deeply compassionate self-concept.

Some of the reparenting methods that have helped me the most are:

• Inner child healing and reprogramming exercises
• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
• Brainspotting
• Journalize
• Visualization

Be patient with yourself through this process of healing, uncovering and repairing. It can be difficult to come to new insights about your past and the ways in which you didn’t get what you needed as a child. It can bring up feelings of sadness, anger, or grief, so you need to keep yourself calm and do the inner work when you feel ready and when you have the necessary support to guide you through it.

Realizing that we have made bad choices in relationships can cause enough shame. We don’t need to compound the blow by beating ourselves up even further for something we weren’t aware of at the time. However, being in a healthy relationship means that we are willing to own our side of the street, take responsibility for our choices, and make the necessary changes to show up better next time. As the saying goes, “When you know better, do better.”

Our parents did the best they could with the resources and awareness they had at the time, just like we did. But now it’s time to pave a new path. you be the one to rewrite the script. you become the person in your family who, despite being surrounded by dysfunction and unhealthy relationship models, breaks the cycle for good. you Go prove to yourself, and one day to your future children, that just as dysfunction can be passed down through your lineage, so can healing.

You… yes, you.

The one who holds your heart will be infinitely blessed because of your courage. Love you. ♥