When we learn a false version of love in childhood—love as criticism, love as caretaking someone’s emotions, love as managing another’s anger—we carry those conditions into adult relationships. We then do whatever we think is necessary to maintain love: accepting jealousy, suppressing our truth, managing the other person’s emotional state.
Every one of these accommodations erodes our power. The attraction dies. The sex disappears. The relationship becomes a management process rather than a genuine connection. As Joe puts it: “Everything that we do to get the love, which is a false sense of love, to maintain the love, which is a false sense of Love, erodes our power and reduces the attraction in the relationship.”
The resentment that builds from self-abandonment eventually becomes aggression or passive aggression, creating the very fights the accommodation was meant to prevent. The meta-process in those fights is trying to minimize the other person’s anger rather than being fully present—and so the cycle deepens.
“Here’s something you’ve never heard: ‘Oh my gosh I just met the most beautiful person, I’m totally in love with them, I’m just awestruck by them because they’re gonna need a lot of my management.’ Like you never hear that. You do subconsciously.”
Related Concepts
- We attract what we learned as love
- Codependence comes from not owning wants
- avoider dynamic in relationships
- Closing your heart to protect yourself traps you
- Maintaining false love erodes power and attraction in relationships
- Fixing your partner’s emotions is manipulation, not love
- Surrender into love prevents self-betrayal
- Walking on eggshells guarantees resentment
- Caretaking is a strategy to feel love through managing others’ happiness