by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
Your partner – or future partner – isn’t a substitute for your mummy and daddy.
It’s natural for our experience of ‘love’ to have been formulated in childhood by whatever our parents decided to pass down to us but ma and pa(ternal) love isn’t the same as romantic love.
Your partner is there to accept you at wherever you’re at and to grow REAL with you as they also grow into themselves and through whatever ‘stuff’ they have.
They don’t exist to be a substitute for mummy and daddy and to fix all of our childhood wounds or to fill whatever void you might have picked up (though they can definitely support you as you work to heal yourself in the container of the relationship as a whole).
As a human being, there are two general kinds of parents you can grow up under the ‘guidance’ of:
-Good Ones: Who will do their bests to love you UNCONDITIONALLY without letting their own ‘stuff’ get in the way of your growth.
-Bad Ones: Who will love you CONDITIONALLY because their own ‘stuff’ gets in the way and they want to mould you according to expectations formed because of their own unresolved and trapped emotions.
Of course, it’s not that black and white but it always ends up falling on some point along that basic continuum.
In both cases, healthy ADULT relationships don’t and CAN’T follow the patterns that you picked up in childhood:
In the case of unconditional love:
-Your partner can of course love you unconditionally but it won’t be the same as the love you got from your mother…
They probably won’t idolise you all the time, they might not wanna do your laundry and cook for you, or think that you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread 24/7 (the closest you can get to that – bar the laundry and cooking – is to get a DOG).
In the case of the conditional stuff:
-Most adult relationships have some conditions: you normally have to have at least some of your shit together, you probably shouldn’t cheat, if you’re an ASSHOLE you can get dumped etc.
As an adult though you don’t have to accept conditions you don’t like, though. You have the power to WALK AWAY.
In short, adult love is about stepping away from ROLES and being both FREE and SECURE at the same time.
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