Why is it that long after the love is gone, or the lover has moved on, we cannot seem to let them go. We hold on to our pain and to the loss like it is our last chance for redemption in life. I have spoken to many people who two or five or seven years out still have not let it go.
No one on the surface of things would choose to stay in such a painful place, but why do so many people make the unconscious choice to stay stuck. From my own experience I can say that we don’t wake up to our patterns to know any better. After my last marriage failed, my third, but who’s counting, I decided I was not going to allow myself the luxury to stay stuck in my pain.
What was the pattern to these losses? What was I looking to keep alive so I could feel safe in my world? Coming from an abusive background, denied love from the very person who was supposed to love me, my mother, I unconsciously clung to these men and the pain they caused me, as it most reflected what I grew up with. In trying to heal the pain of that failed relationship with my mother, I put myself into three relationships where I would remain unloved and ultimately left by these men.
So its’ time to look at your patterns. Where are you operating in an unconscious state? Are you on your second, third, or forth relationship with the same person? I don’t literally mean the same person, but the same type of person, broken in the same way as the others you have been with. I promise you, if you take a good hard look, you will find a pattern to your choice in partners.
It may seem like they are different on the surface, but look harder and you will see they are not. One may have been painfully introverted, while the other a person never met a stranger. But both are out of balance if their personality traits are to the extremes. Take some time to make a list of all the people you loved and were hurt by, and I promise you there will be a pattern.
Once you can see the pattern, take a look at what wound you are trying to heal from your past with these relationships. Was Dad emotionally unavailable so now you fall for men who are emotionally closed off? Mom over critical and now you are drawn to people you can never please? It’s in waking up to our life and recognizing our own pattern that we can start to change the way we look at love and to find love.
For me, when I would meet a man who will take everything he can get from me, and provide nothing in return, I would latch on to him for dear life. Now I would run as far and fast as I can. And if by chance I start to slip and fall, I have alerted my friends to my dilemma and they would pull me away and wake me up.
By loving me in the way I always wanted to be loved, it is my hope that a charmer like that would not be of interest to me anymore. It’s not easy work to take a hard look at why we do what we do, but it’s the only true path the real and honest love; and the only real way to avoid, meeting the “same jackass, but with a different face” over and over again.