a dark and frightening way to predict what might happen in your relationship with a new person is to ask them what happened to them in their childhood often we stand to hear a sad and somber Tale in which our partner was cast in the role of a victim as children typically are for example at a young age their parents turned against your partner and diverted their attention to a younger sibling they became deaf to their call for attention and treated them unreliably and then denied that they had done so scrambling the poor child's sense of
reality or their parents didn't give them warmth and care and left them feeling that there was something wrong with them for wanting love or their parents humiliated them for not being good enough perhaps not sufficiently cultured or sporty sociable or tidy in the early days of a relationship we are liable to be extremely sympathetic to these stories our heart reaches out to the younger ver of our companion whom we would have wanted to hug tightly and reassure however it can be a long time as many as 3 to 4 years before something more alarming comes
into view which we very often aren't able to analyze or interpret let alone prevent our partner May unconsciously start to enact in our relationship the very same dynamic as they experienced in their childhood but with one key difference this time they are in in the role of the perpetrator and we unwittingly are cast in the role of their victim so for example a partner May mysteriously cool on us and begin to get highly attached to a friend or a colleague When We complain and ask for their love back they pretend that we are imagining that
they're being distant or unreliable leaving us puzzled as to what might be unfolding or our partner May withdraw from us emotionally and sexually leaving us knocking at the castle door hoping to be let back in or our partner may start to become sned and mocking about our apparent insufficiencies calling us uncreative or uncultured which had never appeared to bother them before what on Earth is going on the explanation may run like this in the Deep minds of our partner it appears that there really are only two positions that one can adopt in a relationship either
one is the perpetrator or one is the victim that is after all exactly what their childhood taught them and in the choice between between these two rather naturally our partner has decided to adopt the exclusively safe stance that their parents once enjoyed the perpetrator role and then cast us as their victim we must suffer in the way they did for only then can they feel in the recesses of their psyches that they are not going to be tormented all over again their behavior is letting us know what they had to go through and are dementedly
Keen never to have to endure again the way out of this horrific possibility is to become hugely aware of it to bring it into circulation in the couple and to search for evidence of it in oneself and the other more profoundly the task is to start to see that unlike what childhood may have taught there is in fact very much one Central and redeeming alternative available to being a victim or a perpetrator there is a role that tragically no one showed a child as their mind was forming but there is the true goal of all
genuine loving relationships that of being the nurturer the one who heals who offers who comforts and who cares the one we are all craving to have and in our healthier moments are all Longing To Be
