I Married my Trauma

I was planning on writing about something completely different today but, as I sat down and noted the date, I realized that this is the anniversary of my marriage.  

Eighteen years ago today I married my trauma.

And while I didn’t understand how my trauma drew me to the relationship (at the time), I most certainly knew that I shouldn’t marry this man. That I was setting my life up for all the pain I’d vowed to escape. 

See I was marrying a man who would help me repeat the patterns of my childhood. 

And why would I do such a crazy thing?!

Because I was looking for a corrective experience. 

I was transferring my attachment from my parents to my romantic partner and hoping that he would finally give me what I couldn’t seem to get growing up. 

Believe it or not, most of us do this. 

We pick a partner who helps us play out similar patterns to the ones we experienced in childhood.  

The crazy thing is that this person won’t seem like our parents in most ways. But the patterns will be the same. 

For example, my now ex-husband was a complete opposite of my father in terms of physical attributes and career. But he was just like him in his tendencies towards functional addiction and punishing anger. 

The message I had always been seeking from my father was that I am worth it: worth the effort for him to get better, to correct unfair behaviors, to be consistent, etc.  

So I found a man who would also need healing and changing, and who would find my requests for change to be intolerable to his ego. 

I invite you to take a moment and think about your patterns in dating.  

Get something to write with and start listing the qualities and patterns of your previous romantic attachments.  

Without a doubt, this exercise always shows patterns when I do this with clients. 

You may notice that it's not so much about what these people did, it may be more about how they made you feel.

• Do your exes tend to be emotionally unavailable workaholics?

• Do they tend to have dissociative habits like gaming, drinking, or smoking?

• Do you pick men you have to mother?

• Do you notice that the effort they put in drops off at some point? That there's a period of them being addicted to you? 

Be honest with yourself because, I promise you, there will be a pattern. 

And that pattern will link directly back to your caretakers growing up.

And here’s the super exciting part…that wound is something you can heal! 

And once you heal it, you won’t find these people attractive anymore.  

Simply put, they have nothing to offer you anymore, now that you’re not seeking a corrective experience through them. 

Would you like to heal this wound once and for all? Set up a free consultation for individual coaching, or check out our many resources here.

You’ve got this one life. It’s time to experience the love and connection you’ve always craved!

P.S. My partner now shows me that I'm worth it every single day. In fact, without me ever telling him my wound, he started instinctively tell me that I'm worth it. Crazy, right?! Nope, it's the magic of healing.