Are You Wanting Love or Chaos?

In her book Conquering Shame and Codependency, Darlene Lancer says we codependents “may be drawn to drama-filled relationships to enliven us. We tend to consider stable people boring and are instead drawn to drug addicts, unavailable partners, dysfunctional work environments, excitement, abuse or conflict.” How true.

Over the years I’ve hated having chaos in my life and yet, truth is, I couldn’t live without it. I always fell in love with totally unavailable people. It was my means of ensuring emotional turmoil, which guaranteed me two things: 1) It would prove that I really wasn’t good enough and 2) it would ensure I’d continue to be miserable, which I suppose was better than feeling numb.

I could people-please, caretake and walk on air for any unavailable person. I would become emotionally attached, obsess over them day and night, fantasize about the great love-life we were going to eventually have, think up all sorts of ways to be near them—and then drown myself in the misery and pain of facing the fact that all of my (sick) dreams were never going to materialize. How can they materialize with a totally unavailable partner?

Looking back, I remember a friend of mine who was dating an incredible man. Most women would have given their right arm to marry this man. He was incredibly handsome, sexy, smart, personable, honest, fun, hardworking, successful and rich. He showered her with diamonds, furs and love, but she dumped him. Why? Because, in her own words, "he was boring.” In other words, he was healthy. He wasn’t an addict and so she felt dead around him.

After dumping Prince Charming, she eventually met and married her father. She married a man who was her father in every sense of his personality. She married a functional alcoholic who was as emotionally unavailable as her father and who loved to drown his self-loathing in bottle after bottle of beer. Marrying this man provided her with the drama and the chaos that she had known since early childhood.

Now, when we are attracted to certain people, I think it’s important to ask ourselves “What’s the attraction?” Am I attracted to this person because of his/her dysfunction? Is it an addictive attraction? Is this person a source of chaos or drama that I’m feeding off of? Am I thinking I can please or fix this person into being OK? Or am I attracted to this person because we actually have things in common and we can have healthy conversation and emotional-exchanges that are meaningful and life-giving?

If we want to escape from making the same old relationship mistakes, we have to understand why we are attracted to certain people. We need to cut the chaos from our lives by realizing that it may provide some excitement, but it’s always a dead-end street that leads to misery.

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