The invisible thread

How Childhood trauma can make us feel unsafe in our relationships

Lets be honest, it is so much easier to play the victim in our relationships. Blame can be cast like little bombs during the death of a relationship. But I knew I was unhappy long before my ex every ever clued in, I would find myself weeping during love scenes or looking, eyes filled with envy at couples who still held hands and didn’t argue the moment the doors closed.

But I had a complicated relationship with love and how it was expressed due to my upbringing.

My family was chaos at best and my parents relationship made love look like a punishment. If what my mother was experiencing was love I wanted nothing to do with it.

Things in our household were never peaceful. Although I didn’t understand until much later why we were always having sleepovers at relatives homes or why my dad was always absent. My father became like a mirage that never quite came into focus. Obsessed with other women, there was constant upheaval in my early childhood rooted in his addiction to random women who always came before family or marriage vows. “Would you ask daddy to love me?” Is one of the earliest memories I have that involve my father, and he wasn’t even physically present.

My young impressionable brain soon became wired for flight or fight mode as a result of the early childhood drama. I have always been ready to run at a moments notice. Always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

To make matters worse neither of my parents were good communicators, I only knew my mother had a traumatic miscarriage because she showed up from the hospital without my unborn brother, there was never another mention of him until 7 years later my baby sister came along.

By the time of my sisters birth my fathers eye sight had deteriorated to a point where he had to depend on my mother for everything, making him angry and resentful of her. My mother became an enigma to me, I simply couldn’t understand her relationship with my father and because of their twisted and co-dependent relationship, I shaped very carefully a distinctly different relationship with every male who entered my life.

I vowed not to base my life decisions on some man who would eventually come to resent me. Control slowly became the noose that I would tie around my own neck, strangling the urge to seek out love.

Enter my ex.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

What I find interesting now looking back, is that it was the chaos that followed him that made him feel familiar, even safe.

And although the things that attracted me to him were valid in my mind, I would come to realize years later that the missing component in both my mothers relationship with my father and my relationship with my ex husband was respect.

You see my father never respected my mothers contribution even as she became the sole bread winner of the family. He never applauded her achievements even as she climbed the corporate ladder and became director of the travel agency she had worked at since she was 25.

Because I had never experienced a healthy, respectful mutually beneficial relationship I didn’t know how to function or even desire one. So how could I blame my ex husband? He had come from a different sort of chaos but his parents radiated the stability and security that I had always craved, there wasn’t any drama to speak of and their relationship was steady. I wanted desperately to recreate this in my own relationship but because I am a self saboteur I couldn’t function in a way that was healthy and our relationship would eventually end as it had began in total and utter chaos

The Way Things Are

Song by Fiona Apple

“I wouldn’t know what to do with another chance
If you gave it to me
I couldn’t take the embrace of a real romance
It’d race right through me

I’m much better off
The way things are
Much, much better off
Better by far
By far

I wouldn’t know what to say to a gentle voice
It’d roll right past me
And if you chalk it up you’ll see I don’t really have a choice
So don’t even ask me

I’m much better off
The way things are
Much, much better off
Better by far
By far

So keep on calling me names, keep on, keep on
And I’ll keep kicking the crap ’til it’s gone
If you keep on killing
You could get me to settle
And as soon as I settle
I bet I’ll be able to move on

How could I fight
When we’re on the same side
How could I fight
Beside you”

Therapy time…

In the wake of my failed marriage as I stared into the eyes of my two young girls, I had to be honest with myself, it was me and only me who was standing in the way of my journey to both self love and loving someone else. Even through walls of protection and control I had built so carefully I could still hear the whispers of self doubt that told me I was not worthy of love or respect. I couldn’t let these seeds sow themselves into the way my children saw me or themselves.

I needed to model something that was rooted in security, honesty and authentic connection.

When I met my second husband I had done a lot of healing but still couldn’t process how a healthy relationship worked. My mind always suspicious, my heart always guarded and control a leash I had a firm grip on. But by doing the work and committing to total honesty we grew and continue to grow together. It is his ability to meet me in the vulnerable soft spots that still feel raw that make me want to stay, heart trembling and chip away at protective barriers.

For someone who has lived in the lands of uncertainty for as long as they can remember, a life without chaos become disorienting and uncomfortable.

ultimately it is my children and their love that grounds me in hope. Their innocent and watchful eyes keep me honest and rooted in my commitment to live a life that is joyful and peaceful.

Still it is a strange, twisted revelation to realize that chaos can feel like home and that inner peace can feel like war. For now I am still climbing out of the rubble of my childhood and making amends for those who I left in the wake of my upbringing.

But mostly I am working on a new narrative for myself and for my children on what love looks like while clumsily shaping a new version of what it means to be in relationship with myself without the whispers of my childhood strangling the good in my life.

Wish me luck.