I think growing up I thought if I just had a bunch of romantic relationships I'd gradually learn how to get better at them, through experience. I no longer think this works by default. Some thoughts about why:
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The old narrative needs heartbreak to be normal and okay in order to accommodate serial monogamy, which I increasingly suspect is actually just terrible. (Have the same suspicion about poly, that doesn't solve it either.)
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Especially in light of my suspicion that attachment bonds were meant for an entire tribe, not for a single other person:https://thicketforte.com/2018/07/05/meant-for-your-tribe/ …
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2) Relationship patterns are self-reinforcing. This goes real deep, tons to explore here,
@Conaw gave a cool talk about this recently. E.g. there is a real, tragic, unsettling phenomenon of people who were abused continually finding new partners who abuse them.Show this thread -
Cf. SSC's "Different Worlds," which hits the phenomenon right on the head but IMO is incomplete in its analysis:https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/02/different-worlds/ …
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Anxious and avoidant attachers continually finding each other is similar. I don't know how to name the general pattern but it has something to do with all your shadow / unprocessed stuff coming out in who you're attracted to.
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Then your shadow / unprocessed stuff comes out again, in how you relate to who you're attracted to. From the inside this can come to feel inevitable, e.g. a woman might come to feel that men are inevitably abusive, avoidant, etc. (rather than only the men she's attracted to).
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I want to be really clear that I'm not trying to "victim-blame" here. It sucks that some people reliably attract abusers into their lives whatever the causal mechanism. I want to understand what's actually going on so we can actually improve people's lives.
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People have "fields" - ways of being that strongly influence how other people behave towards them, that radiate out through words and actions, but also through facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, etc.
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The most durable fields are self-reinforcing; e.g. if you have a "niceness field" such that people feel you're nice and want to be nice to you, you experience a world full of niceness, which makes you more nice, etc.
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Some people have "victim fields": their faces, bodies, etc. broadcast that they can be bullied, harassed, abused. So they attract abusers and experience a world full of abuse, which makes them more traumatized, which strengthens the victim field. This sucks.
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Symmetrically, some people are looking for victims to abuse, and find them. Less sure about their fields; some kind of reassuring strength thing? Probably tied up with parent projections; "daddy issues" are super real as far as I can tell.
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"Victim fields" is just one example, there are others. This POV suggests that not only will people get worse at relationships over time by default, they'll keep having the same terrible relationship each time - same pattern of abuse, or attachment trauma, etc.
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I've used the phrase "by default" a lot here. So what's the non-default, for improving at relationships? This is a whole other huge topic, but my best guess, in short: the entirety of psychological / spiritual / personal / interpersonal development.
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Learning about attachment and trauma is a fine place to start, tho intellectual understanding needs to be supported by experiential, somatic understanding; you need to be able to experience what your attachment wounds feel like in your body.
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Transforming your relationships ultimately involves transforming the entire context of the rest of your life + way of being. Do you habitually flinch away from negative emotions? How does that relate to not being able to talk about conflicts with your partners? Etc.
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Do you feel an overall sense of worthlessness? How does that relate to your need for validation from your partners? The rabbit hole can go arbitrarily deep.
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In a more spiritual direction I'm excited to dive into this book, which I take to be explicitly about romance as a spiritual path: https://www.amazon.com/Entering-Heart-Moon-Ngakpa-Chogyam-ebook/dp/B007U8UE9M/ …
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See also
@utotranslucence's post here:https://autotranslucence.wordpress.com/2018/11/01/crazy-mad-love/ …Show this thread
End of conversation
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