When We Are “The Ones Who Love More”

Have you noticed how, the moment we start loving, really, really loving, the “needy” in us is born? We start needing the other’s love and attention, we hang on to their words, we wait for their touch, we feel a sting in our heart when they disapprove of us.

We become dependent on them.

A little bit. 

And sometimes a little bit more.

We become “the ones who love more”. 

The painful thing is that, once that happens, often the other starts pulling away.

Us loving more almost guarantees that less and less love will be coming back.

It’s a twisted reality of love and relationships which can make us either give up the idea of love altogether OR settle in the role of “the one who loves less”, so that we can keep the control. 

Me, I tried everything: I was the one who loved more, the one who loved less and for a while I was also the one who said “screw this, I’m better off without it”. So I know there’s dissatisfaction, disconnect, emptiness down all these roads.

But deep inside I am also one who always believed that deep connection, love, intimacy, vibrancy are possible, so one question kept burning inside me: 

“how can you love, truly love, and still be loved?” ... 

And eventually, the truth found me. Since then it became more and more clear that this is a big key to true, deeply connected, deeply intimate relationship.

So I’d love to share it with you...

When we get close to someone and start loving, an old hurt we all carry inside opens up: 

the abandonment wound

As children, we all need love.

We need to be welcome into the family.

We need to be held in loving embraces and looked at with warm, tender eyes.

We need to be spoken to in gentle words.

We need a calm, safe environment. 

We need the adults around us to be loving with us and with each other.

We need them to understand us when we feel afraid, sad or angry.

More than this, we need them to feel us, to be in tune with us and know what we need, even if we cannot name it. 

We need to be encouraged, supported, helped. 

But no matter how much our parents might have wanted to give that to us, they didn’t always manage. And sometimes failed at it every day. 

That lack is easy to recognise when a divorce was involved, or there was discord in the family, or one parent was addicted to some substance. 

It is much more difficult to see (but it is still there) when our parents were physically present but… they were affected by economical or social problems, under the influence of some traditional, stoic “parenting style” or not in tune with their own emotions or needs. Then the lack of love we perceive as children runs deep and it is hard to grasp.

My parents were by my side throughout my childhood and they both had the best intentions at heart. But my mother was very young and still recovering from the loss of her own mother when she had me. She herself would have needed love and understanding at a time when she was supposed to give to her baby (me) - as any newborn, in need of her total emotional presence. 

I also used to be sent out to the country side to be with my grandmother over summers – it was great in terms of freedom, but missing my parents, not having proper communication with them (no phones in the country side back then) and not knowing when (or if ) I will be taken back made me deeply insecure about their love. 

These events made me feel unloved, abandoned, even rejected. It is how we, as children, sensitive as we are, perceive the lack of attention, of in-tune-ness, of sensitive touch, of encouragement, of support. 

It is a painful experience we all go through, in different degrees. And because as children we don’t have the capacity to feel such deep pain, we bury it deep inside and we carry it without knowing into our adulthood. 

If we don’t get too close to people, or we get into relationships in a protected, guarded way, then this wound can stay undisturbed deep inside for a long time. 

But when we truly love someone and we take steps towards becoming intimate, this old pain is awakened. The lack of love, the insecurities about it lasting, the need for another – they all flare up.

Things we FEEL and DO under the influence of the abandonment wound

As we come close to another, old pain and fears resurface. 

We feel sometimes that we cannot survive without the other.

We feel that we’ll suffocate if they don’t call us or respond to us.

We feel panic when they give a little sign that they disapprove of us.

We start second guessing our steps. 

We feel we don’t deserve the other’s love and that we need to do things to win it. 

If we tune into it, we can sense it is really a little child’s pain, fear and panic that we feel. It’s all awake.

One thing that comes with that is that we disconnect from our needs (we don’t even consider them anymore), we lose ourselves in the other and we start compromising (boundaries fly out the window) as we see this as the only way to keep us together. 

And yes, you are right to assume that exactly the opposite happens: this is actually pushing the other away. 

They feel pressured, depended upon (and that’s quite a burden), responsible for our happiness (that’s not something easy to carry).
 

So how do we deal with it?

It’s quite a Catch-22 kind of situation, no?

So you either hold back, guard yourself when you come close to someone, stay in control. But then you will always have a lukewarm connection and not really know love.

Or you allow yourself to fall in love, but then the abandonment wound resurfaces and makes you feel and act needy, which pushes the other away. The recipe for suffering.

It looks like we cannot win. 

But we can... 

What it takes is turning towards this wound and opening to the idea that emotional wounds, like physical wounds, can heal. 

And since I know that the word “heal” can sound big and even off-putting, as we associate it with taking time off, isolating ourselves until we get better, I will say from the beginning that that is not necessary. We don’t need to take time off from our relationships for this – we can do it (and actually it is advisable to do it) while dating or going on with the relationship we are in. 

What it is needed though is this:
 

1) spending some time to look at our history (especially at our childhood) and unearth the story of our abandonment – the situations where we felt unloved, unrecognised as unique, not accepted, not heard, not seen.

These can be big moments in our life (as it was for me being 2 weeks all alone in a hospital at the age of five) or small, everyday moments (like when we were constantly compared with our brother or sister, or our parents were too busy with their jobs to give us the time we needed).
 

2) making a review of all the things we DO in the present to deserve love – this is the main way this wound manifests.

For example:

* we may be taking on the task of finding the time and place for our dates all the time,

* or dressing and talking in ways which are welcome by the other,

* or filling the silence gaps and entertaining the other with stories; 

* when in a relationship, we may be taking much more than our fair share of tasks,

* we may be minimising our needs for rest or space or for simply doing the things that we love,

* we may be trying to guess and fulfill the other’s instead.

And so on…

Once we get a good idea of all these, it’s easier (and important) to catch ourselves when we do it. It is essential then to make a conscious effort to stop and realise that we are (again) under the influence of the abandonment wound.

3) learning to tolerate the discomfort when we feel abandoned in our present life.

When we love, truly love, and the other is not calling (when we date) or is spending more time in front of the computer than with us (when in a relationship)… we will feel abandoned. 

There are hundreds of situations like these.

When this happens, it’s when our pain comes to the surface. 

We are easily tempted to (again) do, do, do and give, give, give to get the connection reestablished. It’s also tempting to complain to our friends or sedate ourselves with sweets or alcohol. 

But what would be really healing is to take the time to sit with ourselves and care for ourselves as we experience sadness, panic or anger. 

Knowing that this is the time when finally our wound has really come to the surface helps. Anything else other than being with the pain is like covering a bleeding wound with dirty leaves.

Making room for the feelings, as uncomfortable as they are, is like us tending to the wound: cleaning it, letting it breath and treating it with healing ointment.

Why bother with all of this?

Unearthing the past, looking at ourselves with honesty and sitting with uncomfortable feelings may sound arduous, time consuming… and straightout painful. 

So the question arises – why go through all of this?

And is it really worth it?

All I can say from my experience (in my own life and working with people) is this: once we get engaged in it, the predominant feeling is not that of hardship, but rather of a sweetness.

This wound has been inside us for many, many years… and even though we haven’t noticed it, it has been asking for our attention. Staying away from it has not only disconnected us from it, but it actually disconnected us from ourselves. 

Once we bring light to it, we bring light to ourselves and it can feel like quite a homecoming.

But more than this, here is a hidden gem: as we heal our abandonment wound, we feel more and more complete in ourselves, enough for ourselves, whole. The need for the other dims, we start doing less to be loved, putting less pressure on the other, giving more space to the other. 

And the paradox of all of this is, that the more we feel complete in ourselves, the more the other feels pulled to give to us, to come close to us, to connect. 

Love,

Radha