Category: Relationships

Spaghetti and Hurt Feelings

I am a pretty clumsy person. Like a keep-an-eye-on-me-around-closed-sliding-glass-doors, probably-should-never-eat-spaghetti-without-a-full-apron-on kind of person. Suffice it to say, my childhood nickname lauded my propensity to accumulate minor bumps and scrapes through incredible feats of un-coordination. I won’t tell you how old I was when I nearly broke my glasses walking into the corner of a doorway instead of through the doorway - although, to be perfectly clear, it was part of the transparent wall of a racquetball court…and that was the problem: it was perfectly clear.

Anyway, as my luck would have it, I’m also a pretty relationally-clumsy person. At times I completely miss that I have caused emotional discomfort or harm. I put my foot in my mouth routinely enough that I< ...

The two biggest factors that influence your present day relationship patterns are: 

1. How you experienced conflict in your family of origin.
2. How/if you received comfort in your family of origin.

Let me illustrate with two versions of the same story, with different endings: 

Version 1: 

Imagine that you’re 5 years old, find a mental picture of yourself at that age. What did your hair look like, what was a favorite outfit that you may have been wearing? Once you have that image, imagine yourself at that age coming back from a family vacation in another state. Your family has already driven 3 hours away from the vacation spot toward home and are getting back in the vehicle after a rest stop. Your parents are trying to help you into the family car when you realize that you left your favorite teddy bear back at your vacation spot. Your comfo ...

Somewhere along the way on my journey of life, I developed a belief that I was supposed to do life alone.  I absorbed a belief system from the movies I watched, the television I consumed, and the people who were closest to me, that the strong person was the one who was a rugged individualist and needed no one.  This kind of life protected me from hurt and loss because it kept people at arm’s length and made it impossible for anyone or anything to hurt me.  You see, I believed the worst thing that could happen to me was to be hurt, and I wanted to avoid that at all costs.  Since people will inevitably hurt you, I chose to let very few people in.

My approach to life worked into my mid-thirties, until it stopped working, and I entered a very dark period of my life where I realized that I had very few friends, I was emotionally drained, and most of the people in my life had become projects.  I believe w ...