Hands up who likes me?
Really?.... No one?....
Well I’m just going to hang out with my loser mates that no one likes either. And complain about how much all you cool people suck, and we can get all resentful together and make each other feel better for being rejected losers that no one likes…
Sounds pretty pathetic, right?
If I told you that everyone has done at least some version of this in their lives, would you believe me?
Ever heard of a wound buddy?
Its like a thunder buddy, but instead of thunder it’s a shared experience that’s considered significantly negative which needs constant soothing and reinforcing by that certain someone else that makes it okay to stay wounded and reactive to that old experience.
Doesn’t that just sound great?...
Does anyone remember me yabbering about safe and right before? Few weeks/months back, but given how things have been going lately, I’ll forgive you for not remembering. This time anyway…. Next time, you get the Taken speech…
Part of the way we find our partners is by finding a wound buddy. If we are still damaged and hurting based on previous relationships anyway. This doesn’t have to be an intimate relationship either. Just something that can allow for connection. Friend, acquaintance, work colleague who also thinks the boss is a bell end, bloke at the pub who doesn’t want to go home because the missus is in “one of her moods”, girl who posts on Insta that men suck because her boyfriend went to the footy windup without her.
You know, the stuff we can all kind of relate to because we’ve all been there on some level. What makes this different is when it goes waaaay beyond that momentary connection over a common though incidental frustration.
Have you ever met those friends who hate _____ because they were shunned by them once? And now the whole basis of their relationship is that mutual hatred of _______?
Have you ever met that couple who, frankly, hate the world? There’s always something to complain about, that’s screwing them or life in general, and they aren’t quiet about it either? Mines called Glenn and I’m told his wife is the same, if not worse…
And maybe that’s the superficial assessment of the relationship. Maybe there’s much more to it?
Maybe they like David Attenborough doco’s?
Maybe they also hate Brian Cox doco’s?
Maybe they think earl grey is where its at, but green tea is essentially the same as toilet water?
Maybe the sex is amazing?.... Seems unlikely, if your relationship is based on hate, but maybe that’s what gets said motors running. I’ve heard of more elaborate and unlikely aphrodisiacs.
My point is, MOST long lasting and fulfilling relationships are based on mutual likes and genuine appreciation for the person on the other side of the longing gaze over that previously mentioned cup of epic earl grey.
But what if there’s not? What if hating people who don’t pick up their dogs shit in the park is what you bonded over and that’s literally it? what kind of relationship is that? Probably one that should be left at the park too, which admittedly is usually easier to walk away from than the huge McNugget your dog just dropped... (Not for everyone though. Yeah, I saw you look around after realising you had no poo bags left, Shawn).
If there’s not, most of us usually do walk away. But what if pain is all we have, and suddenly theres this person who might actually understand and appreciate this pain you have? What if they feel it too? What if their pain compliments your pain? When you’ve had very little beyond the pain, sharing it seems uncontrollably attractive, doesn’t it?
As I said, we’ve all done it. The rebound fling, the people who aren’t good for us but where there, a certain Mr Jack Daniels (because nothing works quite like hair of the dog, right?)
Why DO we do it though? I mentioned it before, and I do always get back to it. Usually…
Safe and right.
What do those people who share our pain offer us? The opportunity to not feel so alone with what we experience. A place to feel safe in our hurt.
And because they give us that safe place to hold this hurt, and usually a similar attitude we already have concerning “the arseholes who did this to us”, we get to feel justified and right in thinking and feeling this way.
Nice initiative on the upcoming question there, Tammy, that IS a slippery slope. The tricky bit to explain is why though.
Who has ever heard of the term “good time friends”?
You know, those people who are fun to be around, but as soon as you’re not getting busted up with them every weekend night (for example…), they forget you exist? And you find out the hard way usually…
Something real comes up in life, or you start to wake up and/or don’t want to live that life anymore, suddenly you don’t here from them ever again?
Why do you think that is?... Tammy? You nailed that last one, want to have another crack?
If someone sees that your pain is no longer driving you to maintain the same coping mechanisms they have anymore, do you really think they’ll want you holding up a mirror to their own addictive ways of pretending like things aren’t the way the are?
Good time friends aren’t called that because you have a good time with them. We usually just call those people friends. It’s the name because they are only friends to have “good times” with. The rest of the time, they aren’t friends. So, if you aren’t participating in their “good times” covering stuff up they have no use for you. You no longer make them feel safe and right in their behaviours. Cue button press to release the trap door you’re standing on, followed by maniacal cat stroking…
If you’ve ever given up drinking, how much peer pressure was there to just have 1 from the group? How many people just sat there and said “good for you Ken, I wish I had the will power” or something like that? Not many, right?...
Even if they were genuine friends, they still probably gave you a bit of grief over it. Why was that again, Ken? Ah yes, because you’re showing them THEIR limitations with your actions… How many people really want to be shown that about themselves?
And that’s just friends. Wait till you hear about intimate partners and co-dependency…
Which is nearly the same thing. Same same, but different (if you’ve been to Bali enough).
It’s different because we are looking for complimentary traits on a very different level.
Those good time friends, we want in them the same as us to justify our superficial coping behaviours. They make us feel okay with what we are doing. Put it this way… Have you ever thought something along the lines of “maybe I AM gambling too much?.... Nah, I’m not that bad. Steve just lost 13 grand last night and hasn’t even told Fiona. I’ll know it’s bad when I’m at THAT level…” Yep, that’s safe and right courtesy of your wound buddy Steve right there.
Sounds dumb when you think about it like that, doesn’t it?... And we all do it. Promise.
Yes, I recognise the irony in what I just said, Liz.
No, I won’t take it back…
Because I’m trying to demonstrate a point about how common human psychology works, Liz!!! Not justify self-destructive and self-sabotaging behaviour with immediate straw-man comparisons on an individual level… Jeez.
Can we get back on point now? Please?...
Right. Thank you… So, the real difference between good time friends and co-dependant partners is the role we ask each to play in our lives around our pain AND our beliefs about that pain.
This is going to sound weird, but sometimes we pick our partners because they will normalise and continue our pain and limiting beliefs about why we are treated the way we are.
Now, before I start this next bit… I’m not interested in victim blaming, but I could see how this part might sound like it. So, brace yourselves.
When you learn that being in a relationship is a certain way, that it involves giving X behaviour and receiving Y behaviour, that shit kind of sinks in. Especially if it's playing on beliefs you have about yourself already.
What if dad was a douche bag bully to mum, and she just took it even though you could see in hindsight that it was crushing her? What do you think that might do when it comes to expected behaviours in that kind of relationship? What kind of standards and beliefs do you think you’ll have about how intimate relationships should play out?
Not great, right?...
What about if mum was a henpecking bitch that liked to emasculate dad? What would that say about how things where “supposed” to be? Same again: not great, a bit (read a lot) crap.
If this is what you think is normal, what do you think you go looking for? Consciously and subconsciously? Without even knowing you are? Yep, exactly that same bollocks… Or exactly the same awesomeness if that’s who your parents and/or early partners were.
Why do you think domestic abuses victims stay as long as they do? Because its such fucking fun?... or maybe its because they think this is normal, as messed up as that sounds. And as much as they know that’s true… This is what their conditioning makes them THINK they deserve. Not just domestic violence, but the treatment by said partner in general, regardless of gender or roles.
If this is what you think you deserve, if this is what is normal, if this is what your subconscious goes looking for WITHOUT CONSULTING YOU IN THE SLIGHTEST…. Well, that's typically what you’ll get. And this is the truly heartbreaking bit, you’ll stay there because you’re more scared of “not normal” than their bullshit…. You’ll say “I know this is terrible, but they do love me. Really they do.” And that’s because your parents stayed together, in your unsophisticated childhood mind, in spite of the harsh and horrible energy you felt. You were taught that this treatment, those feelings, these roles, were just how things were. And so you play them out.
Ask me again why its so hard for domestic violence victims to leave…
Ask me why drug addicts don’t just say no…
Ask me how people justify doing stupid shit when they have a wound buddy prepared to fulfill their need for justification by doing their own stupid wound buddy shit…
Then we look at the other side of the coin: the perpetrator. They are frankly, and in the very same way, acting out what they think is normal for the role they find themselves in.
No one’s really born that level of arsehole or bitch or whatever. But when it’s the pattern they were shown, and it gets “results” so to speak… why wouldn’t they do it? it fulfills their need to feel safe and right. So, they go looking for the person that will let them act out their beliefs of how relationships go…
Both of these people have wounds and pain. What’s weird is how normal the pain and behaviours that back them up ca become.
Humans… we’re weird.
Yes Tammy, understatement of the century…
And that’s just our friends and partners.
What do we do to people we don’t actually like?...
Now, I’m aware that this is sounding a bit grim. Sorry about that. Its not quite that bad. As long as you recognise that this isn’t how everything is, and that you get to make choices about what you continue to act out.
Sometimes people are together as wound buddies because neither want to be alone. Pretty inoffensive version, as long as that suit both people and they aren’t slamming said partners head into fridge doors because they resent each others boringness so much.
At the end of this though, the point that worth making I think is this. We’ve all done it. And that’s okay. As long as we don’t stay it, stay that wound buddy that needs others to placate our pain.
Sorry guys, but there’s only one person on the face of the planet who can heal your pain. And it’s not that dude at the nighty who has a temper like your dad/ex. Or that girl at the gym who turns her nose up at anyone not magazine cover material like your mum/”type”…
They don’t heal you, or even help you heal those wounds. They make it worse. More reasons to believe the bollocks you believe about how you should be treated, by them and by you.
You CAN heal yourself. You need to heal yourself. Help is important, but hoping someone else will do it for you… That keeps the cycle you have going…
Are you having fun?
Or is there something you need to look at in the mirror about why you’re still treated this way?
No, you don’t deserve it. Never did, never will.
But I’m not the one who needs to believe that. Or act on it.
Be kind, be smart, be your best you.
“I am the wound and the blade, the torturer and the flayed.” Charles Baudelaire
Comments