Do you feel sad when you think about your love life?
Are you constantly seeking a healthy relationship, yet always missing the mark?
Do you often end up in “bad relationships” however hard you try to make them work?
Do you feel like you’re always attracted to the “wrong” people and don’t understand why?
By “wrong” I mean any man or woman who sets conditions on what you have to do to earn their love. The wrong partner is someone who doesn’t fully support who you are, who judges and condemns aspects of your personality, and invalidates your wants and needs.
This also refers to a woman or man who is unavailable or afraid of commitment.
These kinds of “bad” relationships can really affect your health, wellbeing and the success of your life overall. They can drain your energy and cause problems in other areas of your life, especially if you don’t even realize that you’re in one!
YET it’s really important to realize that these kinds of toxic or so-called “bad” relationships can often be our greatest teachers. There are reasons you attract certain people to you, and they reveal aspects of ourselves that need healing. If you’re in a bad relationship right now, and feel this is the case, you are on the right path to fix the problem.
READ THIS POST: 10 UNMISTAKABLE SIGNS YOU’RE IN A KARMIC RELATIONSHIP
Is Your Childhood To Blame?
If you’ve been having the recurring experience of getting involved in relationships with people who aren’t right for you, there are several reasons why you could be choosing them. But the main one comes from something that happened to you, and hurt you as a child.
When you were a little child, some aspect of who you were was rejected by the people who were supposed to love you unconditionally.
Maybe you were expressing a strong emotion that you were feeling, and that emotion wasn’t welcome. Or maybe your behavior was deemed inappropriate. You may have been told that “we don’t use that tone of voice in this house,” or “you’re being ridiculous!” The message may have been subtle or direct, but the implication was that some part of you wasn’t okay.
Rejection is very scary for a child, because children know intuitively that if they are cast out from the tribe, they can’t take care of themselves and will die. That fear of rejection (and death) gets carried into your adult relationships, and you might develop strategies for avoiding intimacy.
What is Real Intimacy?
Real intimacy is not just emotional openness, but the willingness to be seen. Yet if you experienced belittling, ridicule or even threatening behavior as a child, on some level, you are probably afraid of being seen and rejected again.
So what happens?
Either you are attracted to unavailable people (who can’t see you clearly, and therefore are kept safe), or you attract a person you have to jump through hoops to get it right for — just like when you were a kid. Your inner child will do anything to get the approval she never got growing up, and sometimes that means pursuing relationships in which she has to work very hard to earn someone’s love.
What’s The Solution?
How can you fix this? The first step is by developing a new, loving relationship with yourself.
Many men and women have learned to reject themselves after their family members, and perhaps close friends rejected them. Stop rejecting yourself, start having compassion for yourself, and you’ll begin attracting people that love you the way you love yourself.
It’s not easy to change unconscious, deeply seated patterns from childhood, but you can do this! I’ve done it, and my clients have done it.
You can release all the self-judgments that hold you back from creating and being drawn to the relationship of your dreams.
Start seeing yourself as the innocent, divine being you are and always have been. You’re worthy of love just as you are. Right now.
