the search for unconditional love

More rambly introspective piece today. Feel free to skip. I do get big insights into myself tho

I was stuck in a spiral where I pretended to myself and others that I was attracted by them in order to receive attention, affection, emotional support, care, understanding.

Male socialization probably made me have a way harder time believing anyone could be happy for me to open up with them and be my entire self if they were not a partner.

I think that’s the thing I was missing in a bunch of cases, the need to be my entire self.

Becoming very in love and infatuated was some sort of unintentional love bombing, so people would not be tempted to leave me.

Oh, shit that hurts to think of my behavior as emotional bombing, but it’s not so far. I do think I genuinely cared about all the people I’ve been partnered with, even when I pretended to myself to care more than actually did.

I remember Vals telling me that me having many relationships was a bad sign. It showed that I did not know how to end relationships. I ended multiple ones after that. Including one which was definitely limping along not from attraction and love, but for pity towards my partner, from fear of what’s they’d become without me.

I’m not sure what’s been the driver of those times of intense infatuation which always end up decreasing.

One of the drivers of this dynamic is that a new relationship had no baggage. If I’m not capable of processing the stress and conflicts of the relationship, they accumulate, and the relationship becomes less and less good, and interests ceases. A new relationship has no baggage, so it’s new and shiny and simple.

But that was the easy one, the dynamic I’ve known for a long time.

One that I don’t really know how to point at yet is one around something that I was looking for in those relationships, that somehow I did not find, and stopped believing I could find, which made me lose interest. And the high level of excitement at the start came from feeling like getting this thing was possible and just within reach, but it never really materialized

Possibly it is some sort of chasing dreams of a relationship where I would just be so obviously compatible with the person, that I would not have to do any effort to make it go well? Hm, not sure if that’s a main part.

I think a thing that kept turning me off was when I became an emotional anchor, where I ended up reduced to a pillar to support their life, an ear to hear them, arms to hold them, someone to hold space to process their trauma. I’m so happy to be helping friends and partners process shit, but it feels terrible being reduced to just this, and my rescuer tendencies push me into this. But this part is also something I knew.

Another one is something more in the direction of understanding, of wanting to meet someone who could meet me where I’m at, who would desire me as myself, who would want to uncover and get to know all of me, not just the convenient and nice mask that I wear around. Someone who would be excited in every new facet I would reveal. I think this is more like the thing I was looking for? The things that come to mind are the deep curiosity and desire to cross the chasm that exists between two minds that Keltham and Carissa express for each other in Planecrash. It’s also something I’ve felt a lot with my wizard friends, Vals and Vaniver, who somehow are always loving, patient and understanding, no matter which part of me I’m trying to express and get understanding and care about.

I have a lot of shame. Notably around my sexuality, my body, my attraction. I’ve been slowly processing it. I’ve made tremendous progress in all of them in the last few years. But there is still a lot to go through.

In my heart, the thing I long for is for someone to hold me while I slowly uncover facets of myself that were hidden for years out of shame, who stay with me even when it’s so hard and I relive the memories that made me learn that it is not safe to be myself, who hear me out fully and patiently, and then accept all of me, all the things I revealed, all of myself. I want all my fears and shames to melt away in the warm glow of unconditional love and acceptance.

My system 2 knows that I’m a fundamentally good person according to my own values. I know that all the things I’m ashamed about are actually not bad according to my values, but it’s been ingrained so deep in myself that it’s dangerous to express some parts of me, that I would only be met with ridicule, disgust, hate.

I crave release from my insecurities. I crave to be fully free. I want to abandon the strategies my child self built to protect himself, because they’re not needed anymore, because I know who can be trusted or not, because I can care for myself no matter what happens. But my ingrained emotional strategies don’t care about my explicit models believing the threats are not longer there. They need to be actually accepted by people I trust to learn that it is now ok to relax.

And so I’ve been chasing someone who could provide me the unconditional love and acceptance I need to let my fears melt away.

And no one was ever up to the task. I could never trust them fully. Some actually made me develop new insecurities by making it unsafe to be myself. Every one of them has not been in their own shit, their own trauma. In comparison, I’ve been so much more free and secure than them, so I was the one to take the role of helping their fears and insecurities melt away.

There’s many reasons I’ve not yet been able to build sufficient trust to make progress on resolving those insecurities.

First one, and the one I’m the most disappointed about, is that I’ve never spent a long enough time with someone to build the trust necessary. I’m sure I could have made more progress if I had actually prioritized it over the long term. But I guess I never realized this was a goal before writing this. Oh, well.

Second, it’s hard to find people who share enough of my models, of my culture, of my language, to even be able to explain the thing I’m insecure about. But this seems like a fake reason, as all I need is for them to have any tradition of self work, and then I can learn to express myself in their language. It just takes a while. See first reason.

Third, it’s hard to find people with whom it would actually be safe, people who would actually not reject me or be disgusted at me if I expressed all of who I am. This also constrains the set of people to be people with very high openness, and with close enough value to mine, so that they can look at me in my entirety and tell me “Now that I see all of you, I still think you are a good person worthy of love, and all part of you are worthy of love”.

I’ve been chasing this for so long without ever realizing.

I don’t think this was a good motivation to find romantic partners.

I want to direct this desire towards finding a close friend, someone who would want to start a slow dance with me. Opening up, laying down arms, noticing triggers to not spiral at each other, giving each other space, cultivating curiosity, learning to love unconditionally, learning to be loved unconditionally.