#335- Journey of Attachment: Do You Love ‘em And Leave ‘em?
Have you ever gotten to the point in a relationship where you can’t stand things anymore? Maybe it’s a past relationship—or something you’re going through right now. No matter what you do or how much effort you put in, nothing changes, yet you hope your situation will improve or your partner will suddenly wake up. When you’re in an attached relationship you often have unrealistic expectations of what a relationship is supposed to be, so eventually you decide you’re done. It’s an intellectual decision because you think the problem lies with your partner, yet you still have an emotional attachment. You’re done, but you’re not DONE.
When you end a relationship prematurely, you continue to suffer. You think ending it will solve everything and things will be different when you’re apart. The next relationship will be better… only it isn’t because you are still the same person. You find yourself in another unhappy relationship that you end up leaving because you never worked through your issues.
When you start taking responsibility for yourself and how you show up in a relationship, you can see it isn’t all about what your partner did “wrong” or why they were the “bad guy.” And when you acknowledge your feelings instead of avoiding them, you’re able to work through what’s going on inside so you can show up differently in your next relationship. If not, you’ll end up repeating old patterns.
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What if the other person is an alcoholic or addict? Do any of your podcasts address this complication?
Hi Maggie,
Thanks for writing. I have stayed away from directly going for addictions and personality disorders (unless they are labels that we have diagnosed others with). The reason has been in this work, we often look to the other person as the problem (and my first marriage was to an alcoholic–so I understand what it’s like) instead of being able to take responsibility ourselves. And that is because it is all about self-empowerment, no matter what the other person is or does. One thing I found was I spent years blaming my ex–feeling justified in my leaving the marriage, he was bad, I was good (or some variation of it) when it wasn’t the truth in my case. In my case, I was as emotionally unavailable as he was–I just did not see it at the time. Through uncovering me beneath all this conditioning, I was able to take responsibility for how I chose what I did then and now. Anyways, I am not sure where you are at or what your situation is, I can only speak to mine and what I did to grow myself. 🙂 Many of my podcasts do address staying or going in one way or another.