by: E.B. Johnson
Life doesn’t happen like a storybook, and neither do our romantic relationships. Despite what we’re promised on soap operas and TV, our intimate partnerships are incredibly complex organisms of their that can undergo multiple levels of change as the days and years pass.
Our relationship strides can be both good and bad, but they can also uncover some of our more unpleasant attachment and coping habits — the worst of which is toxic attachment; the bane of happy couples everywhere.
Toxic attachment denotes the way in which we form our closest and most intimate bonds. More often than not, when we talk about toxic attachment, we’re talking about behaviors like jealousy, dominance, manipulation, selfishness and desperation. These are the behavioral patterns that destroy and undermines the connections that bring our lives joy, and they’re far more common than you might think.
These poisonous relationships center around a “fantasy bond” or an imaginary perception of what their relationship is (or what they want it to be). A fantasy bond occurs when two people form an illusion that is based on individual fears, rather than facing up to things for what they really are. Fantasy bonds replace the real feelings in relationships and replace then with something much more dangerous altogether: a desire to merge identities.
We learn our bonding behaviors when we’re young, and we continue to test and refine those patterns over time. The things we take on in childhood can follow us throughout our lives, but there are also a number of other places that we learn the toxic relationship patterns that keep us stuck, scared and searching for some shred of happiness in eternal night.
Poor self-esteem
If you can’t respect yourself, it’s hard to find other people that will respect you either. Feeling good about ourselves is important; loving ourselves even more so. Poor self-esteem is one of the…
