“Wired together, fired together.” We have an unkillable natural love for our parents — even abusive parents — and so whatever they paired with that love becomes what we recognize as love. If they were critical, we know love to be critical. If they were abusive, we know love to be abusive. If they were anxiously hovering, we know love to be engulfing.
“Whatever your parents did then that’s what you associate with love. If they were critical then you know love to be critical. If they were abusive, then you know love to be abusive.”
This is why love without the familiar grit feels foreign and unsafe — it doesn’t match the identity we have of ourselves or of what love is. Joe notes that people who can’t find romantic love late in life are often not failing to find the right person; they’re avoiding the guilt, criticism, or control they’ve wired to love. Once they separate love from the thing married to it, they’re frequently in a relationship within three months. The work is to break the wire apart — to discover that love can come clean.
Related Concepts
- Criticism turns family relationships into obligation
- Negative self-talk reveals how love was wired in childhood
- Attention becomes a surrogate for love, and the surrogate repels real love
- Draw a boundary to get love without the thing it was married to
- We’re attracted to what we learned as love
- Love conditioning is somatic, not just intellectual
- Healing requires untangling what was wired together with love in childhood