“If you carry the bricks from your past relationships to the new one, you will build the same house.” ~Unknown
Past relationships include familial ones and romantic ones. We are like sponges, and if we let ourselves, we are learning all the time. This is especially true of children. If you didn’t have a healthy model of what a loving relationship looks like, it’s a bit difficult to have a frame of reference once you get out there in the world yourself. That doesn’t mean you can’t learn and grow and heal your way into a state of love, because you most certainly can. It just means if you don’t do the work of healing, you are probably going to play out your history.
None of us would choose to drag our past into our present, yet most of us have done it to some degree or another. If you haven’t healed your “original wounds”, that’s the stuff that will probably show up as you enter your first few relationships. It’s the subconscious at play. Something in here is hurting and wants relief. Let’s see if we can rewrite history to make this go away. Sadly, when you have deep unacknowledged pain, you are probably just going to repeat history, not rewrite it, thereby strengthening your hypothesis.
And the more we play this stuff out and re-open those old wounds, the more concrete our ideas become. If you have an outlook that says, “Everybody leaves” you are likely to pick people who are prone to leaving. That way you can be “right” and blame your pain on someone else’s actions. Our pain is ours to examine. Anywhere you have unhealed wounds, it’s like a marker, a beacon of light that will draw you to it saying, “Here, look. You are still carrying this around, and it’s so heavy.”
If you avoid those beacons because it’s just too exhausting to be with your pain, do not expect to heal or grow. Plan on stumbling over many things behind you. Otherwise, quiet your mind and open your heart and embrace your pain. Sit with it, lean into it. That’s how you release the heat of it. Thats how you open to a new way of being. Ignoring or repressing it gives it strength. It has to come back twice as hard to get your attention.
The work of healing is easier than you think, because mostly, it involves realizing what you already know. Stripping away those layers of armor that have hardened around your heart, like fear and guilt and rage and shame, so that you can let all your love out without having to go into battle with yourself. Then the only thing you’ll be tripping over is your own laughter. Rage and resentment weigh us down and make us sick. Love is our natural state. And love doesn’t trip. Get some and give some. I love you, Ally