Are Your Wounds Steering Your Relationships?

I didn't really know what stepping into my wholeness truly meant until I went through my breakup with Kylie almost 5 years ago. When we split I felt a vacancy in myself I had not allowed myself to feel before. I dove deep into what felt like an abyss of suffering…

The reality was that a lot of the grief I felt was old grief. Grief I had never allowed myself to feel before. I had spent years running from the pains of my heartbreaks, sadness and anger. I ran by filling those spaces with the numbing effects of alcohol when I was single, or a partner who completed me when I was in a relationship.

When we don’t confront our pain we unconsciously relate from it… what I mean by that is that if you don’t attend to your wounds, your wounds will find a way to surface so that you must attend to them. And just like it says in the quote at the beginning — whatever “completes” you must leave you to remind you that you’re already complete.

It seems like a strange lesson from loss, doesn’t it? I had so many breakups when I was younger that did rock me… and/or that I avoided feeling by using whatever numbing opportunity was available. But because I didn’t have the tools or the guidance to dive deeper into my pain, and thereby was avoiding it, my unresolved pain was actually steering my relationships.

What do I mean by that?

Well, let’s say I was betrayed. If I never explore that betrayal then I will possibly choose relationships that are not truly vulnerable and deeply connective (or won’t allow myself to connect) because I won’t want to risk my heart. My partner selection ensures that I’ll never be betrayed again. I’ll stay in what I have unconsciously deemed tolerable potential suffering.

OR, I’ll date people who could never possibly meet me in the depths, are unavailable, not kind, and maybe even betray me constantly — WHY? Because the wisdom that would allow me to choose differently lives in what I’m not willing to attend to. I’m being asked by the Universe to learn… and so until I do, I will end up in the depths of my wound.

To become whole means to orient to your pains with curiosity… each painful moment from your past was unfortunately constructed for you to learn how to become the most loving, expanded, and powerful human possible… with big fucking boundaries.

We often think that to “love all out” is the mission… Sure, it can be that. But love is not the absence of boundaries and discernment, it is relating with those things. Love is not about making everybody feel great all the time… it’s about liberating ourselves from our inherited and learned patterns so we can stop with the dysfunctional behaviours that are trying to protect us, and learn more healthy behaviours so we can open up more fully… to people we can trust to open up alongside us.

This is the mission.

To see what outcomes in relationships you’re avoiding, which are likely driving your dating/relating patterns, finish the sentence:

When I love people they ________.

And

When I love people I _________.

Until I dove deeper into my upper limits in love, which is what the completion of those sentences tells you, the way I answered those sentences was:

When I love people they betray me. Lie to me. Don’t fully choose me.

When I love people I lose myself. Don’t stand up for myself.

What are your answers?

Big hugs.

Mark