Childhood Wounds With Your Partner: How Do They Manifest?
It’s Monday and Leticia’s lover tells her that he’s going to go play soccer with his friends on Saturday night. Leticia immediately feels annoyed and doesn’t understand why. He asks her questions about how long he’s going to stay, what are they doing? to do, who is going and the more excited Luis, her lover, is, the more uncomfortable she feels, but she is not aware of it.
Then complaints begin like: “but last time you arrived too late”, “but they are not a good influence”, “you know that we live in a very dangerous area”. And he reacts by claiming that “you never give me my space” “you always have to make trouble when I want to go out” and Monday night and the entire week become dense until Saturday when the fight becomes bigger.
What happens with Leticia and Luis? What I have seen in my more than 12 years of experience as an emotional and couples therapist: Your emotional wounds have been activated and are reflected in your relationship. What does that mean? Each of us has our own emotional demons, our own battles, our own story behind that explains why sometimes we react disproportionately to the situation, each of us has an emotion that we deal with, be it anger, anxiety, sadness, or other.
The same thing happens with the emotional wounds of childhood, each of us had caregivers, whether mother, father, grandfather or another person who gave the best of themselves, they gave us the best from what they had: their cultural level, their socioeconomic level. , your emotional level and more; However, sometimes when we are children we are good observers but bad interpreters, and perhaps our parents (or caregivers) wanted to give us the best but we do not interpret it that way.
For example, they gave us or wanted to give us love and attention and we did not understand the message well, or we misinterpreted their good intentions or perhaps it is true that they did not give it to us, and there was not even the intention. This is how a child comes to feel empty and lives from the need to be satisfied, children have emotional vessels that need (yes, they need to be children) to be filled with love, validation, recognition, attention, security, care, trust. , and when it is not given, that vessel remains empty, the child remains empty and that is where the emotional wound is formed..
We are wounded children, hurt because our emotional needs were not satisfied, we have empty emotional vessels and thus we reach adulthood. The family is our main nucleus for many years, then we grow and live experiences with our friends, but no relationship is as deep as that of our partner.
With our family we have stripped ourselves emotionally, that is why we know each other in our worst versions and they have seen us as so natural that they know us as we are in an existential crisis, in a breakdown of madness, in an attack of anger, which is not It happens with, for example, a boss or colleagues where we maintain our posture and “magically” self-regulate.
After our family, the most intimate relationship we have is with our partner with whom, by increasing the levels of trust as the relationship progresses, we show him all our versions and also all our wounds (without knowing it).. And that is why when I am in a relationship, I don’t understand why I get so angry because if we are fine “I ruin it”, I question “why am I like this”.
Being in a couple, it is no longer just us, it is no longer just my “I” and my world is “our world” the space we share. Who shares it? Two adults who live in consciousness or two wounded and hurt children who need to fill their vessels? In the case presented at the beginning of this article.
Leticia has her emotional vessel empty, she has the emotional wound of abandonment that is activated when she feels that she is being abandoned, which makes her interpret her lover’s departure as “he doesn’t love me enough to have me as a priority” for her that “they abandon her.” ” means they don’t love her, He is afraid of abandonment and at the slightest sign he reacts in defense, because he wants to defend himself from that pain that he already knows hurts and hurts a lot.
We have already suffered with caregivers who did not fill our vessels, that now we want our partners to do it, we have waited so long for them to be filled that now we make it a demand, because our mind tells us that someone outside of us has to do it, they have to come to save us from this pain, someone has to come to fulfill that role, our “shoulds” are activated: “you should be more affectionate”, “you should always be with me” “I should be your priority”, that burden and that work we deposit it in the other
In this case, the person who says he loves us: our partner, because we have learned that loving means “taking care of me” and so now that you are my lover, you have to heal me, you have to heal my emotional wounds, you have to do all the work that I don’t want to do. And that’s why we suffer, because our partner is with his own emotional wounds, he has his own battles and we get frustrated because he doesn’t save us and then the relationship ends, and I go back to being with another person and the same thing happens again.. Why doesn’t anyone save me? Why is no one in charge of repairing what is happening? What do you think is the answer? Exact! Because it’s not about them, it’s about yourself, who is going to give us what they didn’t give us? For ourselves, no one can save us other than ourselves.
That’s why so much toxicity comes from asking your partner to change, to “make us happy”, that is, to give us what we need so much: love, recognition, validation or what is reflected as time, space, and sometimes We do not feel satisfied, and we do not understand why we are important to no one. Or we become hypervigilant so that no one else harms us again, in both cases we are not aware of it.
In my more than 12 years of professional experience accompanying couples in their individual work, when each one works their own thing as a consequence the couple reorganizes themselves, so I invite you to start your own process, it would be a pleasure to be able to accompany you on this path therapeutic called life.
