Relationship Healing

2 People Beach Shadows by mikebaird

“When two codependents enter a relationship, they often overtly or covertly try to manipulate the partner to provide the love and approval needed to fill what John Bradshaw calls the “hole in the soul”. Both partners attach themselves to the other for a sense of completeness, a strategy that stunts personal growth and development. By surrendering responsibility for our happiness to other people, we create power struggles, arguments, and ultimately broken promises, expectations, and hearts. We can break out of the codependent trap….by working through the pain of our unmet childhood needs and by cultivating an inner life.”       Ronald S. Miller

Because I am in the middle of a divorce, I am determined to find my unmet childhood needs in order to grow more completely. One pattern I have seen is that I don’t feel that I deserve affection from a man. My father was very self-absorbed. Being the oldest child of three girls, I must have learned very young that he didn’t have much to give me or anyone. Instead I apparently decided that I needed to parent him. Actually, I guess I became the parent for both of my parents at a very young age.

I know now that my husband and I have paid a high emotional price for each other. It is amazing how clear it is to me now and how I never realized it sooner. Maybe because his leaving was so traumatic, I was able to see my anger for what it was. Instead of trying to work through our trouble with each other, we chose to attack and criticize. We were on a collusion course for disaster. I know that I need to heal and to mourn.

While I’m healing, I am continuing to read Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples. The author, Harville Hendrix , and his wife, Helen Lakelly Hunt, continue to help healing couples. This book was originally written in 1988 and has been updated. I am reading it very slowly and am hoping that I will be learning with my heart and not just with my head.

I am pondering this selection now: From “Becoming a Lover”–”We all have an understandable desire to live life as children. We don’t want to go to the trouble of raising a cow and milking it; we want to sit down at the table and have someone hand us a cool glass of milk….This wishful thinking finds its ultimate expression in relationships. We don’t want to accept responsibility for getting our needs met; we want to “fall in love” with a superhuman mate and live happily ever after. The psychological term for this tendency to put our frustrations and the solutions to our problems outside ourselves is “externalization,” and is the cause of much of the world’s unhappiness.”

So each day I focus on being a happy person. It really is a daily choice I have. To accept what is and to be grateful for it sometimes takes me several start-overs for the day but it is getting easier.