What is it about rejection that makes it feel so devastating?
If we were at the level of emotional health where we want to be, when someone doesn't want to be with us, it would be the end of it.
But since we’re not there, since we all have our own emotional triggers, for most of us it’s not only not the end, it’s just the beginning.
It’s a behavior for us that tends to trigger our deepest fears, our deepest insecurities, our deepest feelings of unworthiness and worthlessness.
Why else would we try so hard to get him back, why else would we subject ourselves to our own worst behaviors as we beat ourselves up, punish ourselves, berate ourselves, mistreat ourselves, for what is, for all intents and purposes, simply being human?
Instead of recognizing it as two people who are on different pages, instead of seeing it for this reality.
Instead of seeing this in the light of true emotional health where we recognize that this isn't about us, it’s not to be taken personally, that we don’t ever want to be with someone who doesn't want to be with us and it would end any of the emotional drama there, we see it quite the opposite.
The opposite is also why we do what we do.
If we were emotionally there, we would see someone like the guy in the last post and we would see what we have with him for what it is – a relationship that is everything we really want in a relationship if we're truly looking for someone to love us, to commit to us, to spend the rest of our lives together with.
But we don’t see it like this and we refuse it because of that same lack of emotional health that has us holding out for that almighty spark which isn't really true love at all. In most cases it’s based on a feeling, a trigger, a very personal emotional feeling that feels so powerful, so all-encompassing because it’s based on our own emotional baggage that triggers us in such personal ways.
Many times what we call a spark is not really a spark at all, but it’s the feeling elicited in us by being with someone who reminds us of our earliest relationships with a father or mother or other caregiver who couldn't love us the way we wanted to be loved.
It’s the familiar feeling of someone who gives us another chance to prove our worth to them, to show them just how lovable and worthy we are, to change our history by making this person want to be with us, to love us, even as he isn't capable of this in the first place. Often that’s why we’re so drawn to his type of “spark”.
And that's also why when we’re with someone who we don’t have to make love us, who we don’t have to do anything to or prove anything to, we feel bored or uninterested and don’t believe this can be that love of our lives that we’re looking for because it’s too easy.
The irony is it’s not too easy – that’s the way true love should feel like!
But we don’t recognize it because we've never known this kind of real love. It doesn't feel like the love of our unhealthy childhoods, and, as further confirmation, it doesn't resemble the kind of love we’re so programmed to believe is true love from the fairy tales, the movies, the television shows, the romantic novels we've all been brought up with in our culture to believe are the real thing, when all they really are is representative of our dysfunctional culture that keeps perpetuating these beliefs to ever successive generations.
It’s not your fault. It's a result of our culture, of the media, of our families, of people everywhere who continue to perpetuate the idea of love like this so that we miss, over and over again, what real love is by refusing to settle for anything less than that elusive spark.
Only you know what that looks like for you, but if everything else is there except this feeling that something’s missing because there isn't a type of fireworks that you've come to equate with being in love, ask yourself what happened in those past relationships. Take a look at how they turned out.
Can you recognize these sparks as real love in action, and not the high intensity level of a roller coaster ride filled with the highs of feeling like you've gotten him to fall for you that trigger your deepest childhood needs being fulfilled, versus the accompanying lows of him pulling away because it’s all too much for him, and you’re triggered again because of those deep abandonment fears surfacing again?
Only you know for sure, but what I’m saying is to be aware of what most of this push and pull relationship cycle is really all about. Only you know if this is about him, or about you, and most of us don’t even realize this is what’s going on under the surface.
It takes a shift in our thinking, in our being, in our feeling. It takes a new level of awareness that flies in the face of our strong belief systems and programming.
Don’t be surprised if you find yourself fighting it or questioning it.
Most of us need some help to break free of this trap we've bought into for so long to that keeps us from being loved and being with someone who’s truly capable of giving us what we so deserve.
But it doesn't have to be this way unless you want it to. You don’t have to keep living in this subconscious cycle that you don’t quite understand.
It’s not you. It’s not personal.
But the choice you make to change this is always left up to you.
Dear Jane,
I hear it so often.
The type of women we are, the loving, giving, caring, understanding, women we are, we'll do almost anything for love.
Dear Jane.
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