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In order to work out who we choose to marry, who we are attracted to, we can look at the dynamics of early years relationships. It’s a factual analysis with statistics, but I am referring to the emotional connection driven by survival needs.
A discussion of the mind:
How did you organise your psyche? Where did it all start? When Dad left, it felt like he left me. Mom was there physically, but I always seemed to annoy her.
To the mother: Of course we know this is stress and pressure of parenting and balancing work, kids and finances which increases when a partner leaves. As pressure builds and kids’ needs come before yours, you begin creating a hyper vigilant you, ready for anything (fight or flight), you are having a trauma response. Your child experiences a fearful mother. The child needs their mother for survival and their amygdala kicks in.
To the child: The amygdala steps in and says, “threat to life alert, threat to life. Be ready for action.”
What does the child internalise about Dad leaving?
Child: I felt like he left ME and I felt very sad and scared and I didn’t think he was bad. I felt I was bad.
Then I very quickly became angry and that was scary. I did not want to feel that anger.
“He left me because I’m not worth staying for. No one must ever find out who I really am, this worthless wretch. I’ll act so strong, work so hard, be so kind and wonderful. Everyone will love me and I will be safe.”
This belief becomes I’m worthless. That belief is pushed down so far that you never want to see it. You put on a smile to the world, maybe lose weight to appear good enough, do more than everyone else, create the version of you you can face and we will call that ego.
It’s so subtle the games people play. Starts with this example of an unconscious process and often transference of feelings you don’t want to own from childhood.
After bearing this in mind, we can conclude that it is highly likely your partner is a trigger, rather than the source of the problem. He annoys you a lot and you have saved up proofs of resentment over the years and so it must be him.
Well, maybe not. I believe all your evidence and I also know that you attracted a man who you believed would let you down. Your amygdala warned you about the risk, they all let you down, eventually. And when you create enough evidence to relieve your guilt-ridden ego, you have created the financial means that society made so hard for you to have and you are ready to go.
Throughout adult relationships, we aim to resolve our childhood trauma about our parents. In other words, we are still in survival mode, feeling very scared that our dad left and left our mother in a state of stress and anxiety. But we are secretly being nice and pleasant in order to find a match. The match is designed to keep us safe and meet our needs. However, the needs are ego needs. We have attracted each other’s ego, which is a version of us that we each created to survive a threat to life. You are not seeing yourself, nor are you seeing your partner and your partner is not seeing themselves, nor are they seeing you.
Your partner comes to you for the evolution of your consciousness and you for theirs. They might know why you are pissed off with them (in their heads) they know they always let people down but that is their secret. You both carry a secret about who you really believe you are. Neither of you can dare talk about it, or the deepest fear will happen.
The child within you, you hide with all of your very being, to avoid the feelings, the deepest fear:
I will be alone and die.
Your husband knows you are pissed off with them. They hide that very fear, that they will let you down. His mother taught him that men let everyone down.
His father was harsh or absent, one as bad as the other for a child, both tell him he is a waste of time, worthless, a let down by the nature of his very being, with all the emotion of the Child within whose survival felt threatened by his father letting him down or his mother not being there (emotionally or physically).
This collective “letting down” has been a collective response to trauma, from the days of men going to war and women running the country, when they came back they were not needed. The male ego had to find a way to be needed so it became a putting down of women and thus the patriarchal society came into play, to put women in their place.
The male ego fearing women will take over and they will be abandoned, alone and die.
In fact, women unconsciously set a trap for men to fall into to prove they are a let down and not needed as a survival mechanism. Men try to control their wives so that they can maintain their role of leader. The whole idea of marriage in this regard is futile. It devastates both men and women as no one really gets any needs met at all.
The roles are created by survival needs that are not necessary in adulthood and so society created a need for men by taking away women’s rights.
If men and women stop fighting and respect each other’s rights, you can be on the same team. If men and women begin to see their ego, they will out their game and see themselves and each other.
“Once ego is in awareness, it ceases to exist” – Eckhart Tolle.
Ego was never true in the first place. It was only a version of you you created to cope and survive. Once you realise you are not in danger, you no longer need ego and you can let it fall away naturally and just be you.
How? It is all about intention and genuineness.
First you have to trust you are not in danger, if you are not in danger. If you are in danger and you want help, take action. https://www.victimsupport.org.uk/crime-info/types-crime/domestic-abuse/
In counselling, I help you work out when you decided that thought, that your life depended on a decision you made around toddler age. Women who married for safety are always trying to become independent to leave. Men sense this and fear being left alone and that they might die if you leave, (which comes from transferring their need for survival from their mother to their wife). You believe needing your husband is both a means of safety and a threat to life.
Men you didn’t have a hope. And your wife wouldn’t see it because it brought out her rage, which she denied 100% because it felt such a bad feeling, such destructive anger. In fact, she may have decided I need to leave because I’m so terrible, so angry and so destructive. Her needs are not being met and she is in survival mode. She has to hide her true feelings NOT her true self.
From this belief, her sweetest, most caring, gorgeous ego was “born.” She could win an Oscar for this performance.
She needed to live with herself after all. This was her solution. She made this life decision around aged 2 when she saw the resentment in her mother and saw her stay in an abusive relationship where she put on an act. She saw a survival instinct and realised that was the only way to stay alive.
To a woman a man represents safety and danger all at once! Let that sink in.
In adult relationships we don’t talk about our underlying feelings, our shadow side. We met through ego so they wouldn’t like us if they knew the true personality, which we believe is the rageful, angry, real us. It isn’t a personality. It is feelings that we have been taught to suppress to survive.
As a toddler, women split ourselves so that all unacceptable feelings that we are not allowed to feel, that do not go along with societal norms becomes suppressed anger and it is exhausting. That version of a woman has to remain hidden forever. Our life depends on it, (it seems).
Is it true? Yes when you were 2 years old it was true.
Now, you’re keeping yourself alive. Therefore, you can safely have your feelings, accept your rage. It’s your feeling and it’s been ignored since you were 2. That 2 year old needs you and you can safely tend to her/him in counselling.
It’s 100% safe and effective, success guaranteed.
You may not actually need to get divorced. If being authentic means you are not compatible then divorce is not a negative thing, is it?
You’re not a bad person. It’s just an uncomfortable feeling. It is not who you are.
It comes from living as a person we feel we have to be, to be acceptable in a society with rigid rules for women, being passed on through generations and so when we start to be ourselves, living in our true essence, allowing our feelings and our natural intuition, which effectively goes with the flow of life, we are free. At first it feels alien to us. We call this Imposter Syndrome.
To men: We don’t know what we want, what we like or who we are because we have been suppressing our feelings for so long. Existential crisis or mid-life crisis occurs when we realise that we can not live this fake life any more. You might have to feel the wrath of a woman you have been controlling (going along with) to be in the role of wife.
To women: Once ego is outed we feel calm, we can make better decisions and we can work out whether we love the person we’re considering divorcing. But we have to really see him, the person.
He is not your dad!
He has a personality. He has a unique personality and so do you.
Before you can see him, you have to see yourself.
You have needs. Find out what they are. The only need you’ve been tending to is surviving and you did it through the marriage of two egos becoming one.
He was as much in the dark as you were.
The creation of the patriarchal society is a fact that we all have to acknowledge and bring down for the sake of harmony on Earth.
The solution: As long as he is not abusive and is willing to let go of his ego, you can work it all out and then decide if you are going to work as the authentic you, both of you. You may or may not be compatible.
Counselling can help you find out and make the decision that terrifies you, but doesn’t scare your wife as much as living another year as a fake, societal stereotype you’ve both been looking at for years.
PLEASE NOTE: This is not excusing abuse and if you want to know whether you are being abused or not, please visit the Victim Support website for the definitions or if you feel unsafe, you can 100% trust that gut instinct. You don’t need to convince anyone. I for one, 100% believe you. For counselling click here.
Disclaimer: I write from my experiences and from my client work in counselling and have no scientific training. I am a UK qualified person centred counsellor specialising in anxiety and trauma within the context of counselling. My work is dependent on the therapeutic relationship and the meeting of two minds. It is a humbling experience and that is all part of the healing process that I witness every day. It is the best job in the world. This is not an emergency service. If you need to speak to someone urgently outside of my sessions, please call the Samaritans on 116 123 (24/7 confidential helplinei in the UK).