“Why not go for a guy who has no baggage?” my best friend said when I told her I was dating a male version of me – a responsible person with a complicated past.
“Normal and easy is an option too.”
She meant well but I took offense. I’m not normal or easy.
“Everyone has baggage,” I said which meant I can deal as long as
the bags are packed, inventoried and the one with shit all over the floor sees it and cleans it up.
Alcoholic? Sure, if he’s in recovery.
Post-traumatically stressed out? Fine as long as he can calm himself and has feelings.
Crazy doesn’t have to be a deal breaker if he knows his particular size and brand and what to do when the colors bleed.
I’m not afraid of someone who gets it. Why would I be when we could get it together?
Me and Mr. Just Like Me could be a pair of twin phoenix birds rising from the ashes using our wings to write “Happily Ever After” across the sky.
The heightened gratitude of people who could choke back the fuzzy green and blue parts of moldy bread was what I wanted. Imagine our how we’d enjoy the freshness of even day old bread?
I didn’t want someone who felt entitled to warm, buttered and out of the oven.
That’s what I thought.
A man like me would know how blissful boring is and to keep drama in the theater.
He’d marvel in the unlikely triumph of the miracle of normalcy.
But in reality, me and from the same shared history couldn’t make it work.
Even though we both loved art, radio, poetry, pets and owned our own homes. Even though we shared bits of fruit on an island in the sun when our kayaks had been camped. Even though we both felt the same violin music plucking us.
Both of us were stunningly brave. We confessed our old patterns, excuses and default operating systems.
“Always have a get-away plan.”
“Trust no way.”
“All the way in except a toe out.”
“Hold a tiny bit back so it won’t hurt so bad if it doesn’t work…”
“Want a person but don’t need them.”
“Be ready to escape quickly.”
Face to face and heart to heart we owned the times we had moving too quickly on the way in or the way out. We admitted trying to hedge our bets and protect ourselves but this time was going to be different.
We would be different together and with one another.
We’d equip each other with maps and compasses. We’d warn each other of the dangerous passages hard to cross when fear shut down the road.
“Touch not words is the way to warm me when I get icy,” I said. “Stroke my hair, breathe on my face, hold me tight until the fear is gone and you can feel me. Don’t use words. Words never work. I’ll just argue.”
You said you would need space, time to repair alone and that ripping into you like a package would alienate you. But, if I could circle the perimeter and wait to be signaled you’d eventually call for me I just had to be patient.
Except you withdrew and I demanded contact.
Intentions are no match for defense mechanisms. Defenses move in as fast flood waters and wash away emergency plans. Floods soak the engines of the car supposed to drive us to safety.
We thrashed in open water.
Neither one of us had a life jacket.
We stayed alive but when the water receded love was gone.
In other words we went back to our old ways.
You lied when you said you understood my need for honesty.
I lied when I said I’d give you space.
We didn’t even make it to the third round before the past kicked our asses and knocked us flat. There was no epic struggle for love. We were both naked, bloodied and with swollen eyes and lips. The best we could do is crawl back to our corners.
I expected more of you
Of me
Of us.
I’m still staggering, spinning, dizzy and blurry-eyed. Are you? I don’t have all the answers but I know you are not my enemy.
I know my battle is with fear and the collateral damage of living so long afraid of people.
Or, what others call attachment issues.
I’ve learned that there are three main attachment styles.
- Anxious
- Avoidant
- Secure
The styles are formed in childhood. Security breeds secure attachments. Adversity breeds anxiety and avoidance.
You were avoidant and I was anxious. We went together like two mediocre swimmers over their heads who got tired. We drowned us trying to stay afloat.
Why didn’t we wait for a lifeguard or stay walking in the shallow waters of dating and friendship where our heads could stay above water?
I plead inside but the truth is – we were doomed – which is why I don’t call you up even when I miss you.
It didn’t take a book to know this. I sensed it after our first fight. Remember how even after it was over and we made up I couldn’t relax and settle?
“We’re fine now,” you said but I wasn’t.
“If we are both hurting – who will be the one who comes out and fights to save the relationship?”
We had both shut down fast, gone so long and deep into our caves.
And the fight was minor.
What would happen I wondered when it was serious and we weren’t madly in love? Who would collect that debris left after the storm?
“You worry too much,” you said.
I did.
I can’t help it. I’m anxious. Only reassurance helps me.
After our second fight, when I caught you in a lie, I told you I needed three things: an explanation that made sense, time to see if my trust could return and a self you knew fairly well that I wouldn’t have to uncover for you.
“It shouldn’t be this hard you said,” and ended with “Godspeed.” I’ve not seen you since.
You couldn’t come clean or move in closer. I returned your belongings and told myself, I’m better off then – relieved – whew… I dodged a bullet. Better to know now before in too deep, good thing I didn’t have him spend much time with my daughter so she won’t miss him….
All true.
But also, but I think I understand something else – you couldn’t help it either. You’re avoidant. That’s your attachment style.
And we are left with what we started with.
Ourselves.
Anxiety.
Avoidance.
Maybe that’s what my friend was trying to say to me when she told me to find a guy with strong family relationships, good friends and maybe a dead first wife that he loved.
To make a future different than the past I have to find someone who doesn’t need to get it together. I need to find someone who knows how to stay together and has.
I need a person who got something in childhood what I did not and who is willing to teach me how to receive it and give it back.
That wasn’t you for me.
Or me for you.
There’s good news though.
Securely attached people are like super heroes. What they have is contagious and overrides fear. Secure people can help even an anxious type like me to create and enjoy secure love.
We couldn’t do that together.
We are both the color blue. Together, the most we could do is transform shade or hue.
Secure types are the reds and orange of life who when they blend with us become more vibrant.
I forgive myself.
I forgive you.
I didn’t want to be forever blue.
I want more for me.
I want more for you.
You Matter Mantras
- Trauma sucks. You don't.
- Write to express not to impress.
- It's not trauma informed if it's not informed by trauma survivors.
- Breathing isn't optional.
You Are Invited Too & To:
- Heal Write Now on Facebook
- Parenting with ACEs at the ACEsConectionNetwork
- The #FacesOfPTSD campaign.
- When I'm not post-traumatically pissed or stressed I try to Twitter, Instagram & Pinterest.
Rather than mate hunt, I’m investing my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor in an attempt to grow into earned secure attachment: http://attachmentdisorderhealing.com/adult-attachment-interview-aai-mary-main/
My plan is to “be the change you seek,” as Ghandi or Mandela said — then a good-hearted mate will find me. Either way, I’ll find deep peace in my soul.
Look, Ma, no hunting or begging – for once in my life! I’ve been begging since birth for a scrap of love like Oliver with his begging bowl, and I’m done. Dating website emails go right to my spam folder now.
I know it’s possible to earn secure attachment, even for ACEers like me who’ve had developmental trauma “since the sperm hit the egg” and thus the world’s worst case of anxious attachment. I know, because as I force myself to share my most gut-wrenching fears and most body-wracking tears, in person, face-to-face, with entirely platonic “Safe People,” I’ve felt a deep movement of architectonic plates down in my body and soul.
I’ve felt a tiny, new, fragile, and yes vulnerable part of myself growing slowly but surely for the last few years. And yes there is no magic bullet; it takes time; months and years. But hey, what else have we got to do if not finally feel some mental health? “For everything else, there’s MasterCard.”
Romance would wreck this process because a romantic partner “wants” something from us that we can’t do right now. “Safe People” (there’s a book by that title by John Townsend and Henry Cloud) do not want anything from us period. They’re just humans like me: my grief partner, my girl friend, my Al Anon sponsor, my therapist — anyone who’ll simply sit with me for 30-60 minutes once or twice a week and do compassionate listening. Like Hello Kitty; she has no mouth; only big eyes that listen deeply.
And as they watch me share myself, they start to feel safe with me, because if I model it for them that emotions are a good thing to share, their mammalian brains pick up the vibe — and then they start to share their fears and tears as well. That’s how attachment works: deep eye contact and emotional sharing; google “Limbic Resonance.” The goal is to make these eye-to-eye meetings a two-way street, not a “charity date.” That’s why the Grief Recovery Handbook works; http://attachmentdisorderhealing.com/featured-topics/grief-recovery/
Whereas deep eye contact with a prospective date will lead us nowhere but the bedroom, which never cured anyone’s broken heart.
Kathy,
Thanks for writing and for all of the great thoughts and resources and sharing. I had a friend in college big into peer counseling and it was peers, face to face, sharing tears, yawns, shaking or laughing. I may be forgetting one but there was something genius about it. It was back and forth, give and take, and just understood that human sharing back and forth was the connection and the cure. And free. The older I get the more I like that model and concept because it’s not about fixing or brainy answers – just being with emotions, reality and complexity.
As for romance, I believe secure is possible but I’m not sure when that means it will be possible with and for me. We shall see. But no desperation either. It feels good to be able to open (and close) the heart and sit with all that happens in that process. Without diving into the carbs too too much.
Now I must check out some of those resources you shared.
Thank you!
Cissy
Hi Cissy
I made a technical goof: Dr. Dan Siegel does say that earned secure attachment can grow out of a compassionate relationship, not only with a friend or therapist, but also with a “romantic partner.” But usually that’s a committed marriage entered into young where two people grow together, not the on-off not-committed stuff we get dating, especially over 30.
Casual dating would wreck my attachment process because a date “wants” something from us that we can’t do right now: attachment, and often sex, as if we didn’t have a severe attachment wound. But we do.
Source: Siegel, Daniel J., MD, “The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain interact to shape who we are,” Guilford Press, 1999, defines “earned secure/autonomous attachment” as a pattern noticed by therapists during the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI): These are “individuals whose experiences of childhood would have been likely to produce insecure attachment (avoidant, ambivalent, or disorganized),” but their AAI interview responses show “a fluidity in their narratives and a flexibility in their reflective capacity, such that their present state of mind with respect to attachment is rated as secure/autonomous. These individuals often appear… to have had a significant emotional relationship with a close friend, romantic partner, or therapist, which has allowed them to develop out of an insecure status and into a secure/autonomous AAI status.”
Thanks for the correction Kathy. I do know that can happen in intimate relationships that are solid, built on friendship, etc. I’m reading a book about dating, relationships and attachment right now. It’s very light on attachment theory though some of the basics are there. But it boils it down into avoidant, secure and anxious and how all types show up in relationship.
It’s been interesting to read. It’s called Attached. But I’m with you in believing that the solid attachment works has to be done IN the self and with safe others and that process is amazing, rewarding and satisfying. I eventually want a serious relationship too but that’s not entirely in my hands. And I can be happy no matter what. Yay.
Thanks again for the note. Cissy