What is love for you? : reflections on love, trauma and realtionships.

Like many of us I think a lot about love. I know now the many ways my heart was broken by those who did not really show we true love but never the less always blamed me in the end. I never ended many relationships, it usually was the other way round and I can understand when I was in active addiction it was hard for me to be completely loving and present. I had way too much attachment trauma at that stage. That said I was not shown much empathy for that at all. In fact one friend called me at work of all places and threatened to ‘drop’ me if I didn’t get my addiction under control or seek counselling and at that stage I abandoned it due to the trigger of abandonment trauma over my father’s death when my male therapist had to go into hospital for a major op. I was truly doing the very very best I could at that stage and the way she handled me at that time actually made my addiction and fear worse.

I now know too, that we don’t get love until we realise we are worthwhile and deserve to be loved. In my astrology chart many stressful ties up to the planet Neptune in the third house show that I have very low self esteem and often give myself away in order to be loved making sacrifices (Neptune) to stay connected. I think too all of us who suffer from a collapse response to Complex Trauma learned we had to surrender or ‘give in’ to the parent in order to be attached. It is something Gaber Mate addressed in a recent You Tube lecture on the immune system and cancer that I shared recently. I did this a lot in my last relationship while trying to have my silent rebellion and acting out in rage when I was not treated well. I did not yet know how to articulate my deep distress or emotional needs in a cleaner more assertive way.

Its interesting that this issue repeated this week with Scott. I collapsed again when I sensed he was angry I hadn’t done something that suited him and inconvenienced me. I reasserted my boundary yesterday and it makes sense with transiting Mars at 14 degrees Leo, this week it passed the waxing square to natal Neptune and is now opposing my Sun Mercury Venus and Jupiter in Aquarius in the seventh house of relationships. I often see Scott as my twin or mirror though, there are just too many powerful synchroncities in our lives and charts not to see we are each others current ‘transits’. He with strong Uranus is the harbinger of issues raising during the transit of this planet in square to my Moon and Sun configurations. I with my strong Saturn am the harbinger of issues of his current Saturn transit in opposition to his Saturn and square to his Venus.

I guess this new relationship has been given to me to understand what love is and how in a love relationship we can be both connected and separate at the same time, capable of honouring our souls without giving them away. And learning to understand if it is actually a healthy love.

I know enough by now to know that love means allowing the other person to have flaws and make mistakes. It does not involve ceaselessly harping on about the other person’s flaws and it does require saying an ‘ouch that really hurt me’ when necessary and respecting it when the other person does this too. It means being open to the other’s perceptions and experiences. It also involves knowing what our triggers are and when we may be projecting old trauma/hurt/fear onto a partner who does not necessarily deserve this.

It was interesting to read Tian Dayton’s book Heartwounds on trauma and relationships again this week. The areas which those of us who carry attachment or relational trauma struggle due to unresolved grief and fear are these :

. excessive anger when triggers are activated.

. extreme guilt as a result of ambivalent or insecure attachments and attachment wounds.

. depression, due to anger that is internalised from past pain and traumas, or due to unresolved sadness from earlier losses that is unrecognised and may bother our partner.

. emotional numbness = shutting down to feeling, dulling our ability to engage, respond or be spontaneous and as a defence against strong feelings activated in new relationships due to triggering of old wounds.

. self mutilation. pain that can not be felt tends to remain inside traumatised people may inflict that upon themselves when they are upset and unable to express it in a healthier way.

Trauma also affect our ability to be honest and intimate and open, it can bring fear of commitment or being hurt or trapped, it affects our ability to communicate, and gives us problems with boundary setting, modulating emotions and emotional responses, difficulties with trust and accepting love and support, it also (as mentioned before) affects our ability to be spontaneous.

It seems to me that in reading this list over attachment trauma makes it hard for us just to live and love in the present moment. We may always be waiting for the shoe to drop or expecting things to end up badly. The work of healing requires we recognise our level of wounding and grieve for what we lost, it also requires that we get to know who we are and what we truly needed that we never got as youngsters, rather than the denial of all of this and retreat into self protective strategies which actually block off love. If we were not allowed to have boundaries though self protection may be one of our most important lessons. It also requires us to understand when we attract partners who are just like our parents in many ways and possibly not capable of truly loving or being loved in a healthy way.