COMPLETING UNFINISHED EMOTIONAL BUSINESS FROM CHILDHOOD
The second way in which your emotional programming affects whom you choose to love is by unconsciously motivating you to complete unfinished emotional business from childhood. Here’s how it works. Every child has two basic instincts, or agendas:
If you go through your childhood and these agendas, or desires, aren’t met, it is as if you have unfinished psychological business that is left hanging. You somehow feel incomplete, as if something is not right. Your mind ‘remembers’ that these desires are important to you, and will create circumstances in your adult life to ‘help’ you accomplish these unconscious goals.
YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND WILL SEEK TO COMPLETE ITS UNFINISHED EMOTIONAL BUSINESS FROM CHILDHOOD BY GETTING YOU TO ‘CHOOSE’ PEOPLE WHO WILL HELP YOU RE-CREATE YOUR CHILDHOOD DRAMAS.
Here are some of the ways in which you may be completing unfinished childhood business:
ARE YOU FALLING IN LOVE WITH YOUR MOM OR DAD?
Michelle, twenty-nine, is a perfect example of a woman who was unconsciously using the men in her life to complete some emotional business from her childhood. Michelle came to me complaining that she always attracted very critical, controlling men who made her feel she wasn’t good enough for them. She found partners who’d tell her she wasn’t skinny enough, smart enough, or motivated enough. She’d had three long-term relationships in which each of her boyfriends tried to change her into someone else. Michelle even went so far as to have plastic surgery to increase her bust size because her last boyfriend told her her boobs were too small!
I gave Michelle an assignment—to write out a complaint list about each of her parents, and then to compare the list to her complaint list about her boyfriends. Here is what she came up with:
‘I can’t believe this,’ Michelle told me. ‘I’ve been falling in love with my mother.’ Michelle’s mom was a highly critical, caustic woman. Nothing Michelle ever did as a child met her mother’s standards. She was always fussing over her daughter and comparing her to other children, both in appearance and behavior. Michelle’s dad was a real absentee father, but when he was around, he didn’t disapprove or approve—he was just there. Michelle received a lot of attention from her mom, but it was negative attention. Even as an adult, when Michelle calls home with news of a job promotion, or a trip she’s planning, her mother still questions Michelle’s judgment and makes her feel inadequate.
By attracting men who constantly put her down, Michelle is recreating a relationship with her mother in which she tries hard to be smart enough, pretty enough, and good enough. It’s as if a part of her mind thinks, ‘Maybe this time I’ll get him to think I’m beautiful,’ or ‘I know he will love me if I can just be more of what he wants me to be.’ The little girl inside her has never released her need for Mommy’s approval, so she makes poor love choices.
If you suspect that you may be ‘falling in love with a parent,’ complete the exercise I gave Michelle. Make a complaint list about your parents, and compare it to your summary list earlier in this chapter. The similarities can be frightening, but you will definitely gain some insight.
ARE YOU PUNISHING MOM OR DAD?
If you didn’t feel loved as a child, and you have a lot of suppressed anger about it, you might act out a second option—finding a partner like your parent and unconsciously setting out to hurt him. Louisa, forty-one, has been married to Fredric, forty-three, for four years. This was Louisa’s third marriage, and they came to me on the verge of divorce. ‘I feel like I’m seeing the past flash before my eyes,’ Louisa admitted with a frightened look on her face. ‘In each of my marriages, I’ve ended up feeling completely turned off to my husband. The last two times, I’ve cheated on them, and our breakups were ugly. I love Fredric, and when we got married, I vowed I would never make the same mistakes again, but for the past six months I can’t seem to do anything but criticize him.’
The key to understanding Louisa’s pattern lay in her relationship with her father. Louisa’s parents were divorced when she was five. Her father moved to another city, wrote or called infrequently, and visited even less. All through her childhood, Louisa lived for a scrap of love and attention from her dad, and never expressed anything but adoration for him. But the rage she was feeling inside began to manifest itself when she hit puberty and started dating. Louisa became a heartbreaker: She’d find some guy who was crazy about her, get involved with him only long enough to be sure he really loved her; then she’d cheat on him, break up suddenly, or treat him shamelessly. Louisa was ‘punishing’ her father for abandoning her by abandoning all the men in her life. It was as if she were saying, ‘See how bad it feels to be rejected? Now you know what I went through!’
IF YOU ARE STILL ANGRY AT ONE OF YOUR PARENTS FOR HURTING YOU, YOU MIGHT ATTRACT PARTNERS WHOM YOU HURT.
ARE YOU TRYING TO RESCUE MOM OR DAD?
Here’s another way in which we often unconsciously finish childhood business:
If your parent wasn’t happy and loved, you might:
CASE #1: HOW TAMMY TRIED TO RESCUE HER FATHER
‘I am so sick of falling in love with alcoholics!’ Tammy complained to me. ‘Why do I keep finding these guys with addictions and staying with them?’ Tammy was a bright, thirty-two-year-old advertising executive with lousy taste in men. No matter how hard she tried, she attracted one addictive man after another. Even though she didn’t drink, smoke, or do drugs, she somehow managed to fall in love with men who did. Her current boyfriend, Todd, was typical—a charming, successful business owner with a big ego and a big drinking problem.
Tammy’s pattern wasn’t hard to figure out. She’d grown up on a farm, the youngest of three girls, Daddy’s favorite. Tammy’s father was a hardworking, affectionate