Stop Waiting For Love To Consume You
Why Turning To Romance When You Need a Distraction Is a Bad Idea
Secure relationships depend on a delicate balancing act of maintaining a sense of independence while building a life with someone else.
Some relationships will even end as one or both parties realise they can no longer support each other’s endeavours. They’ve become different people, which isn’t a bad thing. Letting someone go when you know you can’t give them what they need can be a loving act, despite the pain.
That said, many of us don’t go into relationships with this balance in mind.
We might not even have a sense of independence to begin with.
We will gladly, willingly, and unconsciously hope to find someone who can become our world and take over our minds.
If you’re someone who struggles with low self-worth and has patterns of insecure attachment (particularly the disorganised or anxious attachment ones), you must recognise this need early on.
Are you waiting for love to consume you?
You’ll find yourself in all sorts of problems if you are.
A Need To Be Needed: When Love Turns To Distraction
I’m writing this after a thought I had in the gym the other week. I wasn’t feeling great, and my mind drifted to how I used to lose myself chasing after people when I was in the dark depths of romantic self-abandonment.
Stressed, confused, and frustrated with my personal problems, I caught myself thinking how great it would be if I could just lose myself in someone again. I wouldn’t have to worry about my own stupid problems, then.
They could be my problem.
Unfortunately, this is the mindset many of us approach love from (unconsciously, of course).
We may just think it’d be nice to have a relationship, but what if we looked a little deeper?
Why do we really want one?
We all have a desire to be needed. It’s a part of the human condition. The problem is that when we’re unhappy, confused, and unfulfilled with our personal life, love can seem like an attractive prospect for a distraction.
Like a bag of sweets you munch on to soothe yourself, the idea of a new, spicy attraction can become a painfully delicious thing to sink your mind into.
It’ll last longer than a pack of sweets, too, and the dopamine hits will be stronger.
I used to spend months, years, even, with my mind stuck on someone.
This was time I could have spent on myself, learning how to manage my problems and not relying on others to make me feel good.
The Most Distracting Relationship Dynamics Are Often The Most Unhealthy
If a part of you doesn’t want to look at your problems, why choose someone who wants to support you? You won’t.
On one end, you’ll chase after someone who feeds you breadcrumbs or keeps you on the side without any real commitment, and on the other, you’ll fall into relationships with people who are reliant on your dependence, like attention-hungry narcissists, for example.
Whilst we can attribute part of the responsibility to these people for reeling us in, it’s essential that we ask ourselves what role they might unconsciously be serving for us.
In my case, so long as I was trying to win their approval, commitment, and affection, I didn’t have to think about myself.
To read more on the addictive potential of these dynamics, you should check out one of my most popular articles on the science of unhealthy relationships. It ties in nicely here:
When Is the Right Time to Date?
I’m not saying that you should wait until you’ve solved all your problems before you look for a relationship. A perfect and stress-free personal life doesn’t exist.
It’s also perfectly fine to desire love. Two things can be true at once: We can genuinely want a relationship, and be looking for a distraction.
I propose we try to eliminate the latter.
What’s important here is to be aware of when you might be seeking love as a distraction from your problems.
From personal experience, approaching love from this space is a recipe for self-abandonment and messy dynamics.
At a certain point, I had to take a hard look at my life after a string of unhealthy dynamics and realise I needed to actually like my life (and myself) to choose better and have healthier relationships.
When I started to build a life I loved, I then had more to bring to my relationships. I began respecting my partner’s interests and wasn’t expecting them to save me, either. When we approach love from a place of lack, we put too much weight on our partners to make us feel OK, because we don’t know how to feel OK on our own.
I still have my moments — like that bad day in the gym — but I know that when my desire for a relationship is supported by a period of personal dissatisfaction, the answer isn’t to find someone else to lose myself in.
It means I need to help myself.
Thank you for reading this post!
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