$ Healing In Relationships: How To Have A Secure Attachment

Transforming And Healing In Relationships

Healing In Relationships: How To Have A Secure Attachment

What does healing in relationships mean? Can intimate connections truly help us grow? Let’s find out more about transforming relationships by Darlene Lancer.

Even before we enter the world, our brains and hormones are wired for connection. Our first relationship begins in our motherโ€™s womb, where we recognize her voice and respond to her moods through hormones and stress responses.

Later, her smell and touch become familiar. Affection and responsive communication are necessary for developing our brains and bodies.

Early interactions with our parents shape our self-image and template for love and relationships. Our patterns of relating and reacting, attachment style, are often repeated in adult relationshipsโ€”romantic and otherwise.

A secure attachment in an intimate relationship can empower, enliven, and uplift us. It celebrates our successes and comforts us in defeat and sorrow. However, despite the potential benefits many of us have had painful romantic relationships, and some have never truly known a safe one.

Read More Here: 7 Ways to Improve Your Relationship with Your Partner

Healing In Relationships
are you healing in relationships

Without consistent, unconditional love from both parents, we may confuse love with pain and longing, leading to feelings of being smothered, controlled, or rejected.

Healing In Relationships: How To Do It?

Love can be fickle. Even when we know better, we can be drawn to someone who causes pain. We cannot make someone return our love or make ourselves love the person who might be the best choice! Yet, we do have an option to walk away, as painful as that might be. Often the most difficult relationships serve as our greatest teachers.

How often do we idealize love, believing it will redeem our shame and alleviate our unhappiness? Romantic love feels easy and exhilarating, bringing joy and passion, but itโ€™s temporary and doesnโ€™t equate to true love. When a romance ends, it can be heartbreaking because passions are at their peak and weโ€™re still in the idealization stage.

Breakups bring grief that takes its toll on our vitality and our self-esteem. In codependent relationships, the loss of a partner may illuminate how weโ€™ve lost ourselves, making recovery a vital journey of self-reclamation.

Progressing from romantic infatuation to mature love is no easy task. Rainer Rilke wrote, โ€œFor one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks.โ€

When we no longer try to impress our partner, conflicting needs and differences begin to surface. Love heightens our sensitivities. Separations and small discrepancies become magnified, distressing us.

Eventually, one partner dominates or both engage in power struggles to assert their needs. However, we donโ€™t see our partner clearly. Our mind clouds our perception with idealization and positive or negative filters. Relationships thus provide a mirror to hidden aspects of our personalityโ€”our shadow.

Through projection, we attribute the cause of our unhealed hurt, trauma, and shame to the other person. We unknowingly judge aspects of our partner that we dislike in ourselves or our parents.

Through the lens of our own shame, we also see a negative image of ourselves reflected in our partnerโ€™s eyes. Then we react defensively to what we imagine, fueling destructive cycles that continue the relational trauma from our past.

To endure and grow, healing relationships require maturity, independence, respect, sacrifice, and commitment. We must become skilled in empathy, acceptance, and compromise.

As noted by Erich Fromm, immature love says, โ€œI love you because I need you,โ€ whereas mature love says, โ€œI need you because I love you.โ€ Mature love is based on interdependence, not neediness. Itโ€™s a vulnerable decision to depend on someone who has earned our trust.

Mindful relationships offer a path toward wholeness and increased humanity. Our discomfort with one anotherโ€™s differences presents opportunities for transformation. Yet, we must feel safe enough to communicate openly, lovable enough to receive love, and secure enough to give it freely.

Both giving and receiving love present additional pitfalls. Love challenges us to recognize and lower our defenses to allow for vulnerability and authentic communication. In baring our soul, parts of ourselves are revealed that we may not even recognize.

Each relationship involves at least six people, including two sets of parents, whose behavior and beliefs lurk in the background until we become conscious of them. Intimacy inevitably triggers prior hurts and childhood trauma, heightening our anxiety and fear of rejection.

Our wounds are exposed. Healing them enables us to make informed choices about our values and behavior, improving our relationships and facilitating personal growth and individuation.

Shame is loveโ€™s executioner because it creates insecurity and a lack of self-worth. It can manifest in cycles of disconnection and barriers to intimacy by fostering a fear of rejection that prevents closeness and honesty. When we fail to accept ourselves, we may discount our loved ones.

Self-awareness allows us to place accountability on ourselves. By exploring the seeds of our attitudes and painful reactions, we can listen non-defensively and observe the strengths, limitations, and opinions of others. With greater objectivity, we can โ€œtake back our projections.โ€

Whatever irritates us about our partner and others can lead us to greater self-knowledge. But itโ€™s not only our unpleasant traits we project. In idealizing our partner we may be denying and projecting our untapped strengths, discipline, talent, courage, and creativity.

This process enhances love and empathy for others and ourselves. Through divine alchemy, by revealing our true self and navigating loveโ€™s obstacles, in healing relationships intimacy and acceptance of our partner and ourselves deepen.

Relationships, even brief onesโ€”especially those that open our heartsโ€”leave an imprint on our soul. We remain connected and shaped by shared memories, feelings, and experiences. While life is a deeply subjective journey, our intertwined narratives influence and define us.

Embracing the interplay between ourselves and others helps to release the illusion of objectivity and accept the emotional truth of our connections. Though we may heal from past wounds, we are indelibly touched by our encounters, each one a lesson in love and self-discovery.

ยฉ 2024 Darlene Lancer

Read More Here: 30+ Yung Pueblo Quotes About Relationships, Healing, and Growth


Written by by Darlene Lancer, JD, LMFT
Originally appeared on What Is Codependency
healing relationships
healing relationships, intimate relationship, secure attachment, attachment style

— Share —

,

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Up Next

Complacency: The Silent Killer Of Relationships

How Complacency Can Ruin A Perfect Relationship

Has your relationship slipped into complacency? When comfort leads to blurred boundaries, itโ€™s time to reignite the spark. Learn how to refresh your connection together!

Can being too comfortable in a relationship lead to the end?

Key points

Complacency can happen over time in relationships.

Becoming too comfortable leads to blurred boundaries.

There are ways to refresh a relationship if complacency sets in.

Up Next

The Goldilocks Method for Getting Your Needs Met In A Relationship

The Goldilocks Method For Getting Your Needs Met In A Relationship

Struggling to express your needs effectively? Discover the Goldilocks Method and find the balance between assertiveness and gentleness to communicate what you need confidently and clearly.

Ask for what you need and set limits without being too meek or too forceful.

Key points

Finding the middle ground between asking too forcefully or too meekly can help you get what you need.

Your needs and limits are unique to you.

Writing a script and practicing can maximize your chances of getting what you need.

Up Next

How Playfulness Can Transform Your Love Life

How Playfulness In A Relationship Can Transform Your Love Life

Is your relationship feeling stale or distant? Wondering how to reignite the spark? Discover how bringing playfulness into your love life can create deeper connections and renewed passion.

Looking to revive a dying flame? Try the power of play.

Key points

The four types of relationship playfulness are other-directed, intellectual, whimsical, and lightheartedness.

Other-directed and intellectual are the most highly predictive of relationship satisfaction.

All types of playfulness are related to at least some facet of relationship well-being.

Up Next

7 Types Of Intimacy To Deepen Your Relationship

Types Of Intimacy To Deepen Your Relationship 1

Ever wondered how to deepen your bond with your partner? Learning these 7 different types of intimacy in a relationship that can bring you closer in meaningful ways. Try it out now!

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

Intimacy is important, but how do we cultivate it?

Up Next

Heteropessimism: 5 Ways Your Inner Man-Hater is Wrecking Your Relationships

Signs of A Heteropessimist Inner Man Hater and how it Wrecks Relationships 1

What if I told you that behind the laughter at a casual gathering, there lies a subtle undercurrent of discontentment, a shared sentiment that many can relate to but few openly acknowledge? Have you ever wondered why jokes about marriage being a life sentence draw chuckles instead of gasps? Or why no one is surprised when a friend introduces their partner as โ€œmy current husbandโ€ rather than simply โ€œmy husbandโ€? These seemingly innocuous moments reveal a phenomenon deeply ingrained in our societal fabric, one that writer Asa Seresin termed โ€œheteropessimismโ€ in a 2019 article for The New Inquiry.

<

Up Next

4 Types of Emotional Attachments: Recognize the Right Bond You Are Cultivating

Types of Emotional Attachment Which One Are You In 1

In a world where emotional attachments are being tagged as overrated nowadays, soft-hearted souls still yearn to find perfect emotional bonds.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

Emotions, alongside trust and resilience, are foundational pillars of a thriving relationship. As our post-modern society undergoes significant shifts in how we connect with others, understanding em

Up Next

5 Relationship Blind Spots: Are You Missing These Warning Signs?

Relationship Blind Spots Are You Missing These Warning Signs 1

Do you know what a โ€œblind spotโ€ in driving is? It occurs when your vision gets blocked, and that can cause accidents. Similarly, relationship blind spots, cloud our judgment and influence how we interact with people or make decisions.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

Blind spots can be damaging to relationships and can destroy your peace of mind, so learn to