Let Go and Be Free Podcast: Episode 11 (The Tricky Thing about Love)
Welcome to the eleventh episode.
On this week's episode, I talk about falling in love and how being in a relationship won't save you.
I discuss the following topics:
Thinking that love will “fix” all our problems.Wanti
Wanting someone to “complete” us.
Getting lost in being in “love.”
Using the adrenaline rush of being in “love” as a means of escape.
I also discuss how I kept repeating the same patterns again and again with each relationship.
And I come clean with myself that I couldn't “fix” or “save” anyone.
When we enter a relationship within those goals in mind, it’s only a matter of time until the relationship falls apart.
Want to learn more? Check out the Let Go and Be Free book series.
I’m not a medical expert. If you need help, please reach out to a medical professional.
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Transcript
Welcome to the let go and be free podcast, A podcast for those who grew up in an alcoholic or dysfunctional family. I'm your host, Ron Vitale, author of The let go and be free series for adult children of alcoholics. On this podcast, we'll talk about everything from dealing with ruminating thoughts, to stopping dysfunctional behaviors that you learned as a child. Together, we'll shine a light to dispel any shame you might feel about your upbringing, and learn practical tips that will help you live a healthier life. If you'd like to learn more, feel free to visit, let go and be free.com.
And welcome to the show. And this week's episode, I want to focus on a topic that's near and dear to my heart. The name of the episode is the tricky thing about love. One of the things that I realized as I started getting older, is that when I look back at the early romantic relationships that I had, I realized that I was trying to kind of solve the problems of what was happening in my early years during my childhood, through my relationships, and none of that was ever working. So the pattern would be an ongoing, kind of like merry go round, where the process typically happens like this, I would find someone that I was attracted to,
I would quickly and very fastly, quote/unquote, fall in love with that person, we'd get together in a relationship, the relationship would have amazing ups in the beginning part of it being adrenaline rush that infatuation period where all you wanted to do was spend all 24 hours a day with that person. And then things would slowly start to change. And the relationship would basically blow apart, and it just would be a mess. And typically, I would be dumped. And I'd be left, you know, upset, wondering what I did wrong, go through a mourning period. And then the process would start again, all over again, you know, maybe months later a year later, or it all dependent, you know, until I met that next person that I had that match with. And it was really difficult in those early years, because all I wanted to do was to find someone, you know that I could love that, you know, we get together and get married and have a family and just be happy together just wanted what I thought very simple things. But what I didn't realize is that I was going about things the wrong way. I didn't have a lot of good role models in my life. There, there were no marriages that I could look at and be like, Oh, this is a healthy relationship. And you know, I want to model you know, my future relationships off of that, in fact, it was the reverse. A lot of the relationships that I saw, you know, in my own family, I would simply say I don't want to do those things. So I was able to see that. But I wasn't able to really get a sense of what was a healthy relationship. I didn't get to see healthy arguing in a relationship, dealing with struggle, dealing with disagreements dealing with financial difficulty or other major challenges of life. Like, I didn't get to see that handled in a way, which was healthy. What I did get to see was lots of unhealthy behaviors that I learned. And so the way my mind worked as a kid, is that I would say well, I see that I don't want to be that way. So I'll do the exact opposite, or I'm just going to do anything else. So I don't basically repeat those same patterns. That that's that was what was in my head.
And to be perfectly honest with you, in some of my extremely early, you know, relationships, you know, I look at those times. And I truly thought that the purpose of being in a relationship is that you would find your soulmate. And when you found your soulmate, that person would be I guess the other half of you that would complete you and in my mind, I remember thinking, Well, you know, we're gonna get married, and then have a long happy life together.
And then you know, when we die, we go to the afterlife, we will be together for all eternity, you know as one. And there was a flaw in my logic, that at that time that I didn't really understand is that I kind of really thought at that time that I needed someone else to complete me that I wasn't complete and whole, on my own, that I wasn't, I guess, separate in the sense that I was my own person, my own being, and that I didn't need anyone else. I kind of started things out from the, I guess a point of weakness, thinking that I needed to find somebody to complete me to make me this whole package. And that didn't really work out.
Well, for me, I think I've mentioned this on the show in the past is that, you know, when I look back and see the movie that was very popular, Jerry Maguire, when the Tom Cruise character says, you know, You complete me, I used to believe that, you know, it was a really wonderful romantic statement. Whereas now that I'm a little bit older, I don't believe that anyone completes me, I complete myself, and I want to be really clear here, I'm not trying to be egotistical, I'm not trying to be like, I, you know, I need no one, you know, I'm my own island, and I can do anything. And that's not what I'm saying is that I now know, from the years of therapy, years of going through adult children of alcoholic meetings, you know, and just, from my experience, my life experiences that when I focused on, you know, finding love as a means of solving a problem that I had, it never worked.
Whereas, if I focused on myself, found the love that I needed within myself, and looked back at my childhood traumas and the struggles and difficulties that I lived through, and found ways to overcome them, I realized that I was complete on my own, and I would find someone to have a life with, but it wasn't that I needed that person to save me, or fix me, or complete me. And on the reverse side of things, I also needed to take a step back and look at the patterns of the, you know, the people that I had relationships with and say, did I fall for those people because I thought that I could save them, or fix them.
You know, or worse, if I'm really honest with myself, if some of the early relationships that I you know, were involved with people was it because they were either physically or emotionally unavailable to me. And so thinking that I could get that person to love me was a, an unhealthy way of reliving the past in which, you know, my father wasn't there for me and he kind of abandoned us. And that was my way of saying, We'll see, I could get someone that's not available for me or emotionally available to me and I can get them to love me.
And I you know, I'm shining a light on this on purpose. This is something that it took me a long time to realize that's how I was you know, in relationships along with a whole other laundry list of issues you know, that I that I had in those early relationships, I look back and I I kind of cringe it just how I was I just didn't know any better and I just modeled the behavior of you know, what I had seen or worse things I had seen in movies, trying to just make my way in and go about so when I say this episode is about the tricky thing about love. The the love I guess I want to put in quotes is that is it really love if what you're trying to do is fix someone you know, is it really love if you're looking at someone and you're trying to get them and control them in some way. You know, you're trying to get them to complete you or you're trying to get them to, you know, somehow fill this need that you had when you were young kid, and you were abandoned by either one or both of your parents. And there was alcohol or, or some other type of addiction or dysfunctional behaviors within that family? are you repeating those same patterns in the relationships that you're having today? You know, and is it really love, if it's really codependency, or enmeshment.
And I look back at, you know, you know, one of the first early relationships that I had, and I think of that enmeshment of being so involved with someone, that you're, your thoughts get kind of entangled in their thoughts, that their problems become your problems in the sense that you feel responsible for those problems, that the line is blurred between the boundary of what you are responsible for, and what they are responsible for. And that's a difficult thing, one to admit to yourself, it's a difficult thing to say, I have this problem.
And it's also challenging and difficult to find ways out of those behavior patterns. Because, you know, it's really easy to say, oh, infatuation, and falling in love, and being in love with being in love, is, you know, not good for me. Whereas, when you're on that roller coaster ride those beginning, let's say, a couple months of early relationship, when you're getting to know somebody, and everything's all exciting, and new, and you know, you're going out on dates, and you're talking long on the phone, or texting or whatever you're doing, you know, those times are amazing. But they don't last, because you have no foundation to stand on. As soon as a bump in the road comes in the relationship with a problem, if you don't have the skill set of how to solve those problems. And if the person, let's say, Isn't emotionally available, and if you're not, in a healthy position yourself, you're on a roller coaster that's just gonna go down, and you're gonna crash, and the relationships gonna fall apart.
So the question is,what do you do? And I guess the, you know, the first step is you just have to do a, you know, self reflection and first admit, are you doing these kinds of things, you know, are you in a relationship that is, you know, codependent and in, you know, you're in meshed with someone, and that you're, you're kind of living through somebody else's life, and you're getting all, you know, when they have a problem, you feel responsible, and, you know, you want to help them and you talk to them for hours, where sometimes you need to kind of put that boundary up and be like, Well, I'm responsible for myself, I need to take care of myself. Again, I'm not saying this in a selfish way. But I'm saying this in a healthy boundary way of who are you? What are you responsible for? What is the boundary line between who you are, who they are, and what they're responsible for, you know, I'm remembering a, an example. First relationship that I was in, think I was 17 at the time.
And the person that I was with, she didn't feel well, or, you know, or something, and she was gonna be late for work, and I started feeling, you know, guilty. And so, you know, I'm sitting there, and I'm, like, I don't know what to do. And then like, I wound up calling this person's, you know, work, it was like, a part time job thing. It wasn't like it was, you know, thing, and I was friendly with the manager, and I was telling the manager that, you know, she was sick, and, you know, my girlfriend couldn't come in and, and she, she was okay, but it was like, wait a minute, why am I taking responsibility for another person's job, like, if they're going to call of work, they call themselves out of work. If they don't feel well, they're responsible to call that person up in their manager and say, I can't make it today.
And if they don't, then they accept the responsibilities of what that means. Maybe they get, you know, fired or they have a talk with their supervisor or whatever. Why did I step in and feel that it was my role to solve that problem, whereas it wasn't my problem to solve. But with, you know, growing up in an alcoholic and dysfunctional family, often there are blurred lines in let's say, if you know, one person is a heavy drinker, and they're not able to keep a job or loses many jobs and, you know, the other person takes on the responsibility of being the responsible one, the one that, you know, needs to hold everything together. That doesn't last.
Because you, you can't live another person's life. I mean, you can try, but you're not going to be able to live your life and their life, and then have a separate, healthy boundary between the two, you're gonna get pulled into everything, all their problems, and they're going to become, you know, kind of dependent on you. And that's where that codependency kind of goes where you're, you're so tied up in the other person, that you're you're not able to, you know, live your own life, because you're living somebody else's life. And they might be six, you know, seceding, their responsibility on their own life to you and kind of get off free, like, well, I guess I'll do whatever I want, because this other person is leading the way. That's not a healthy way, you know, to live.
And, yes, it took a lot for me to realize these mistakes, you know, that I was making. And it's not that I had tons of relationships, you know, I'd say, three or four times I went through these longish relationships, you know, things would last, you know, a year, think two years, a year or a couple months, and then the relationships would fall apart.
And then there was be stretches of time where I wasn't with anyone. And when I was not with anyone, I just remember feeling lonely, and sad.
And always, you know, praying, and wanting to be in love to find that one person that was going to make it all right for me to find that one person, my soulmate that I would be with forever. And we'd have this like, sacred relationship that would solve all my problems, and everything would just be, you know, amazing. Well, what I didn't realize is, the early stages of my life, when I first started dating, is that after breakups, that was a really wonderful time for me to focus on myself, and to do you know, self parenting, work, do therapy. And I started doing that in my early 20s, where I realized, you know, just moping around after a breakup and being Oh, woe is me.
And then just, you know, kind of hoping and praying that I would find somebody was not healthy. What was healthy was going to therapy and working through some of the childhood issues, you know, that I had still within me and finding healthier behaviors and dealing with stress and problems and going to adult children of alcoholic meetings and learning that what I was living through was not so unusual that there were so many other people that were going through the same thing. And they had found ways to solve their problems by, you know, the 12 steps by going to therapy themselves, self help books, modeling healthy behavior, learning what that was practicing those healthy behaviors and relationships and just doing the work.
I do remember that, you know, there's this one period of time, there was a bad breakup. And I just was really kind of depressed for good amount of time. And friends started saying, hey, come out, come out. And initially, I just didn't want to, but then I found other friends, and started going out this friends and really starting to enjoy life again, and realizing that I could find happiness on my own, and doing things on my own that I like to do. And then when I would find someone to date, unfortunately, in those early early relationships, I would abandon my friends. And I would focus only on my, you know, my new relationship, because I was kind of like addicted to that. Love being in love thing that rush, that adrenaline rush of meeting someone new, was very intoxicating. You know, it was a great feeling of knowing that somebody else cared about me. Somebody else would help me or you know, I could call somebody and they would listen. Excuse me to when I have a problem. That was amazing. It's a wonderful feeling.
But to abandon your friends, or abandon the work that I needed to do was not there were not healthy decisions that I was making back then. So when I look back and see, you know, my life, I realized that it wasn't, you know, I was never going to find the happiness that I wanted in a relationship, if the only thing I was trying to do was to fall in love, you know, and think that that was going to solve everything. I'm a big romantic, I really believe in you know, romance and the importance of, you know, opening your heart and talking with people and being vulnerable with people and sharing time with people. I am totally all into that, that big jesters. And, you know, I love all that. But at the end of the day, I realized that if I didn't do the work on myself, I would never be ready for a good and healthy relationship.
I realized that a relationship would come to me when I was ready. And he explained that for a moment, that, you know, the tricky thing about love is sure, you can meet someone, and you get that adrenaline rush and the intoxicating, you know, first month or two of being with someone, and that's a lovely time.
But it does putter out what I've realized is if I worked on myself, and I practice the 12 steps, and the new skills that I was learning on how to take care of myself and self parent myself, that I would become more attractive to people who were also ready to have a relationship. And I want to want to focus on that for a second, when I mean, attractive, I mean, other people would look at me, and say, Hey, looks like he's like a decent guy.
And he's got, you know, his stuff together. Let's, let's try to get together, let's go out on dates, instead of, you know, me, finding someone, that whatever, they weren't emotionally available, and we had attraction, and it was kind of like, two broken halves to try to come together into one hole. That never worked. It just never worked. And I would wonder, like, Why did I, you know, meet this person, and, you know, they've got these problems, and I got these problems, but we will, we will overcome those problems together. I mean, I just had no clue what I was doing. I mean, just no clue.
Whereas someone that was taking care of themselves might look and say, You know what, I really liked this person, but maybe this isn't the right time for me to start dating this person that looks like I have some work to do on myself and looks like, honestly, they might have some work to do on their own as well. You know, let's be friends. And, you know, in the future, if something happens, that'd be great. I just, I didn't even understand that that was even a possibility. So when I look back at those, you know, early times, I realized that what I thought was love really wasn't.
It was just infatuation, strong infatuation. And it was for me, you know, to feel better about myself, by living my life, you know, through these other people with the problems that they had, and trying to fix them or control them to, to make the relationship, do what I needed it to do to help fix a problem that I had in the past. And when I say it out loud, I'm like, Ooh, I could do cringe, I'm like, that, that was pretty messed up. You know, how was that ever going to last? How was that ever going to work? How was that ever healthy? No, it wasn't.
You know, and, and having those frank discussions with yourself, where you can look back and say, you know, I made mistakes in these relationships. But that doesn't mean that you have to continue to make those mistakes. You know, especially if you're a point in your life where you're either in between relationships, or you're having embarked in one or you're not sure if you want to be in one, or even if you're you're in one. The The important thing is to ask yourself, are you taking care of yourself each and every day? If you're not, what can you do to help yourself? Therapy, go to adult children of alcoholics meeting? There's plenty of books to do reading out. There's plenty of meditation, mindfulness, there's lots of different things to do.
Throwing yourself into infatuation and getting lost and being in love is probably not going to solve your problems. It might feel great for a little while.
But it's not gonna last for the long term, you can fool yourself and you can pretend that it will, and you can close your eyes and like I did and just went with the flow of things, but it just doesn't last. And then that crushing grief of, you know, the breakup, I just would take things really hard and be like, you know, I'm broken, it's my fault. I'm a failure. Nobody loves me energy, you know, just just was not, it was not healthy, to go into those dark times. Because I would just, you know, kind of collapse and not focus on myself.
And it took a lot of work to separate the thoughts in my mind, because after those breakups, you know, from those intense periods of being with someone, I would have these things of like, the ruminating thoughts of, you know, thinking I can get back together with a person, or if I only did x, you know, then why would have happened, and we'd still be together like things that just were not helping me. And I just would focus, you know, on these, you know, what if scenarios, or if I can only get that person back, or, you know, next time I'll this or that, instead of saying, you know, here's, here's where I made mistakes, this is what I need to do moving forward, to help myself, I need to love myself first.
And then when I'm ready, I'm going to meet someone, it will work itself out, instead of like, you know, oh, I can't find anybody and trying all these different things, and jumping through all these hoops, you know, to find somebody, but not really spending the energy and the time, to making myself available to be unhealthy relationship. And that's the tricky thing about love is like, you got to do the self work first.
You can't say, Well, let me meet somebody, and then we'll hold hands together. And magically, you know, we're just going to work things out and make it up as we go along. If you find a way to do that, and that works for you, wonderful. I can just say, for me, that never worked. And I don't mean to be glib, or, you know, or mean spirited in this. It's just that I found that, that, you know, tricky thing about love, is to ask yourself, why are you really, you know, with that person, in the sense that, are you with the person because you want to control them or save them or fix them or they're completing you?
Or do you just naturally find the person to be a good person, and you want to build a life together, good or bad, or whatever comes the way that you will find a way together to solve problems. Because relationships, you will encounter problems. And you need healthy skills, to solve those problems, communication skills, being able to listen, and to talk, problem resolving and risk mitigation, like things that are not sexy to talk about.
You know, you need to find ways of navigating through finances. And when someone loses a job or gains a job or jealousy, there's a whole laundry list of things that being in a relationship, you know, over time that you need to build on that it's not simply, you know, it's it, you know, love being in love, and you're in that infatuation, period. It's what do you do when you have children and the baby's crying at three in the morning, and you need to get up and you're trying to feed the baby and you don't know what to do? Like, you know, what do you do when you lose, you know, a loved one, you know, someone's passed on and your partner's there to help you and you listen, like relationships are, are complex living things.
Relationships are not meant to be the training ground, that we use another person to solve our past problems. In fact, I, I wish I would have just written that down. Because I don't think I've ever said something like that before. That's a really good way of putting it it when you think about it.
So with that said, I hope that you have found, you know, this episode to be helpful. And I do want to end with a tip. And this is a little bit of a different tip. Where is usually at the end of an episode, it gives some kind of a concrete thing. This is a little bit of a different path. I would recommend that you discover and explore what you like to do on your own doesn't matter if you're in relationship or out of a relationship. Make some time to have a date with yourself. Go to lunch by yourself or go to dinner by yourself or go to a movie by yourself or go to whatever your hobby is. Go takes time.
Do something on your own, or walk or run a bike ride. And just get comfortable with being on your own. I'm not saying 24 hours a day, but it does help. If you have thinking time, you know, grab a book, go out somewhere, to park your car, take a train and sit down and the weather's nice, read a book, whatever the thing is for you make time for yourself for that self discovery, it will help you because then when you go back to either being ready for a relationship or back to your relationship, you're bringing something new back to that relationship, you're not focusing 110% of your time only on the relationship.
You're also taking time to cultivate your own likes, your own interests, your own time, which is essential to having that strong core. And that foundation, that when you do build a life with another person, their strong foundation, and your strong foundation together. That's how you build a home. So I hope that this episode has been helpful. And again, if you want to learn more, if this is the first time you're listening to the podcast, welcome. You can learn more at let go and be free.com you can sign up for the weekly newsletter and there's a free ebook that you get.
That's a little perk that I thought would be helpful to kind of show the kind of writing and stuff that I do. And it's also the let go and be free for volume books. You can search for my name Ron Vitale, on Amazon, all the other major publishing stores. And you can find those books there. Each of them contain 100 daily reflections. So they're meant to be read like one a day. So you have a reflective thought of the day to kind of get you through and through all four brings you out over the course of a year. So again, thank you so much for tuning in this week. I appreciate it and as always be well.