Why You Broke Their Heart
Six telltale signs why you should never have tried to love them
Oh, to be in love. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? That warm tingling of acceptance and exhaling, being held in the energy of someone who sees and values the entire you. Unfortunately, for many of us who have battled disorganized attachment or avoidant attachment styles, or the learned behaviors of such, we get really good at taking that love but struggle to give it back in a way commensurate with how it’s freely given. Then, inevitably, most of the time, we end up smashing those sources of that great love. We never should have put ourselves or them in that situation in the first place.
Does this make us bad people? No. It makes us unhealed people who, perhaps, might not have yet been in a secure enough place in the first place to take the fragile squish of someone else’s heart and hold it with delicacy one might hold a Fabergé egg. We don’t want to hurt people; we simply do.
Here are six reasons why we likely should’ve stayed away from those we hurt in the first place until we got our…ish…together.
We Can’t Receive: Yes, we feel that glowy, gooey goodness of someone revering them as a special someone, but we do not know how to take it in because we are so damn guarded and our own hearts are doing a boxing footwork shuffle to avoid the actual connetion. When we don’t actually receive someone’s love, hold it, lock it safe, we end up lashing out and looking for reasons to “test” them or push them away. We question them, “Really? Are you sure? Why?” Or, we trauma dump all of the reasons why we deem ourselves unlovable. Its disrespectful.
We Can’t Reciprocate: I remember a relationship in which my partner told me she loved me and my response was, “I do not emote.” So romantic, right? The stuff of romcoms, really. In months since our breakup, she shared with me that response itself didn’t hurt her because she could read that I took it positively; it’s that I wasn’t reciprocal with the love she gave that hurt. And I am not talking about words here, people. Words are one thing. “Love is a verb,” rightfully says every other Instagram meme. I finally told her that I loved her, and I did mean it, but I didn’t know how to show it. And, the more I loved, the more I realized I couldn’t always give back even the actions she showed me. I’d lock down. I’d get cold.
We Can’t Regulate: Here kitty kitty. You’re a feral one, aren’t you? The more someone tries to love you, the more you back into a corner, fur standing up, tail bushed out, claws out, hissing with rage. Sound familiar? It does to me. I’ve been in relationships in which the more love I was shown, the more attached I felt, the more the avoidant part of my disorganized attachment would turn feral. I felt suffocated but I was suffocating myself and the only way to get gulps of air was scream. Sometimes literally (learned trauma behavior, but that’s another article). Even without screaming, though, silence can be a huge indicator of dysregulation because avoidance is so unhealthy. Ironically I didn’t recognize my avoidant patterns until I dated someone this spring who was the poster child for toxic avoidance and had an, “OH SHIT!” self-awareness moment so loud it could’ve deafened me. I was a hurricane.
Yet my inability to love myself prohibited me from recognizing that I was the one tearing everything apart, creating mistrust, fear, and lack of safety, and my response to that was to shatter the love and shatter the hearts.
We Can’t Be Raw: Worse than the silence is the verbal abuse when we are feral. The same ex who very kindly shared with me where I’d gone wrong, very plainly told me my most hurtful behavior was my faux pride and telling her — in my recollection, continually — that I could leave at any time. I had to tell myself that lie to try to get to some balance in my ferality but telling her that lie was downright abusive. I might has well have said, “You are garbage that I can dispose of at any time.” Again, I love(d) her, but since I was in no way ready to face my own punches, she took the hits. Until she didn’t, because she had enough self-esteem to shield herself and her family from my rage, which, in part, rightfully led us to the end.
We Can’t Relax: Gift giving is a primary love language of mine; always has been, always will be. But the giving of things, no matter large or small, does not make up for what we don’t give with our hearts, and our inability to do such often comes from our inability to trust the person(s) and relax into the relationship. So, we find ourselves in the gooey, glowy, golden veil of love and be like, “Yeah, I’m WORTHY,” while being so high-strung and acting like the most superficial, unworthy versions of ourselves, because we couldn’t exhale long enough to let the ones who loved us actually enjoy the relationship, too. The stuff and things stopped mattering. My love language became a Band-Aid.
We Can’t Recognize: Ahh, self-righteous indignation! You sick, sordid little mainstay of those of us not ready for love. If it wasn’t so hurtful to others, it would almost be laughable. There we were, slashing around like feral cats, verbally reducing the people we loved to heart-shaped smithereens, yet somehow felt morally superior. In my case, the more my behavior and attachment issues got out of control, the more I would stand in victim shoes and start blaming others for the fact that I was hurting. I couldn’t recognize that my victim shoes were blocks of cement I molded and I was jumping myself right into the lake. I left a relationship because I didn’t feel loved enough, and while nothing was or ever is perfect, I had more love than I’d ever had in my life. Yet my inability to love myself prohibited me from recognizing that I was the one tearing everything apart, creating mistrust, fear, and lack of safety, and my response to that was to shatter the love and shatter the hearts.
This article says “we,” based on my past, but now I have the most hyper focused intention to never do these things again. I’ve personally worked (with a therapist, a coach, a shrink, spiritualists, my cats) on healing this behavior that came from my disorganized attachment and learning to cope, communicate, and cool it. I’m ready to love again and trying to show that I don’t do these six things anymore. That, now, I can wield the care a gardener might use to tend its beloved flowers in even the toughest moments of a relationship — rather than wielding the claws of a feral cat.
I have vowed to never let my desire to be loved supersede my desire or ability to love and to not actively hurt. Have you?
