Getting Clean With Your Inner Child (So It Stops Sabotaging Your Relationships)

(Fourth in a Series)

So you're on board with this journey of self-discovery and freedom. You get that the stakes are high: they are your access to real love, real connection. Let’s drill down a little more on what we are dealing with here.

So let’s circle back to our couple from several articles ago. They were attracted to one another. They felt chemistry. They felt something good. They called it love.

They got married. They had a couple of kids.

And then the sheen started wearing off.

More and more, they noticed resentments building. There were more and more fights. Fights that seemed to go nowhere. Or ones where one person dominated and forced the other to capitulate to his or her demands, leaving an inevitable byproduct of resentment and distrust in its wake. All the things that seemed so wonderful about the other became increasingly overshadowed by the very serious flaws that were glaring more brightly by the day. The seeming love that existed before began devolving into a battle of wills, in which neither party was willing to concede. An emotional trench warfare ensued.

Sound familiar? If so, I’m guessing you have airtight arguments as to why you are right and your partner is completely unreasonable. You are probably sharing those contentions with your friends, and they are eating them up.

Well here’s a news flash: your partner is selling equivalent shares of that stock on her markets. And her friends and confidants are buying too. Because that shit sells.

What is so much harder to sell is this:

The key to your freedom is in identifying where your unhealthy demands are pushing you to try to control your partner in ways that not only don’t get you what you want, but instead push what you want further away.

This certainly lacks the glamor and the justice issues of your product. Moreover, it requires that you give up something of seemingly great value–your rightness, your entitlement, your deep longing to be met where you think you need to be met in order to feel loved. And yet, it is the key to your freedom.

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And so our brave couple is starting to come face to face with the reality of their situation. Their initial attraction for one another was based, as much as it was on the good qualities they saw in one another, also upon the unresolved aspects of one another. Which, as we will recall, plugged so perfectly into each other. The parts of us that were hurt as kids rushed into this new situation, convinced without consciously acknowledging the stakes, that the world was going to get it right this time: this new partner was going to be all of the things our parents, our prior lovers, our world, was not to us when we needed them. We were going to fix our past.

Our broken-hearted-child-selves interpreted this fantasy as love.

Except for this one thing: when you roll back the curtain, what you find is not consistent with this fantasy.

In fact, what you find is that your partner has their own issues, that are plugged into yours. And that those plug-ins are starting to turn toxic.

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So what do most people do when faced with this unfurling dynamic?

They get taken in by the illusion. That their demands on their partner are totally justified. That their partner is being completely unreasonable in withholding what they are demanding.

And so the battle lines are drawn. The trenches are dug. And the couple settles in for a long and grueling battle of wills.

We know how all of this ends. It’s not pretty.

Breakup. Walking away convinced that the other was, far from the seemingly angelic person we were initially attracted to, entirely the problem with the relationship, and the reason it fell apart. Again, our friends agree with us on this.

And so we pick up the pieces, raise our chin, and march bravely toward a new horizon. Where we will at last, we are certain, meet the person who will not have all the toxic issues our former crazy partner had.

But here’s the problem:

We are hauling along with us, as we bravely march into the new fray, the very seeds of our destruction. All the while firmly believing we are leaving those seeds behind us. And we are headed for nothing other than a new version of the same dynamic, played out on another stage. Pushing and pushing us, all the while, to at last surrender and do the real work that these dynamics are demanding of us.

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And so let’s return to our couple. The ones who are starting to fray. The ones who are stuck in their respective trenches of right and wrong. What are their other options beyond breaking up and hoping the same dynamics that produced this ending will result in the bowl of cherries we know we deserve when we find our next partner?

Well, as they say in the old saying, when you’re pointing your finger at anything, there’s three fingers pointing back at you.

So what if the gold–the real, priceless artifact, the gift–is not to be found out there? What if it can be extracted only by doing the real work of seeing where we are being emotionally dependent and demanding that our partners, the world, concede to our demands?

If this is so, our couple has an incredibly precious gift laid before them. One brought by the benign and loving way this matrix is designed: by the unavoidable calculus of relationships. It is this: their relationship, and the pain it is causing, is a perfect window into the work that each of them needs to do to actually move the needle on their personal happiness, fulfillment and satisfaction.

But there’s a price you have to pay to make use of this gift. The price of admission is to stop blaming. Stop trying to control what is outside your control. You cannot make one bit of use of the gift being laid before you until you do so. And start looking where the real possibilities for transformation lie:

Within yourself.

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And so what will our partners find when they start to look within? When they make the choice to step off the endless merry-go-round of attraction, falling out, blame, and starting again?

They will find their childhood pain. They will find their core communications. And they will get to see how they are making unreasonable demands on their partners to get needs met that will never satisfy them.

What do I mean by “core communications?”

All of us have them. They are the communications borne of our needs not getting met as children. They are our unhealed child’s way of trying to set right what went wrong, sometimes very terribly wrong, in our childhoods.

For me, the core communications were that I needed to be cared for and acknowledged.

Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Why shouldn’t anyone be entitled to be cared for and acknowledged?

But here’s the catch: this child-within-me’s demand that my partner meet his demands in the ways he believes they need to be met are destined for rejection.

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How do we know when this child-within-us is at work, making unreasonable demands on our partners?

Circumstantial evidence. In the form of outsized reactions.

I came home with something I really wanted to share with my wife. I walked into the house excited to share this thing, certain that she would appreciate it. And when I approached her to share this thing, she said, “I can’t do that right now. Would you mind taking care of the dishes? I’ve got an important email I’ve got to get out before 6.” And she walked away.

Wow. OK. I guess whatever I have to say isn’t very important to her. Not that I don’t make time for her whenever she chooses to share whatever highly relevant crap is passing between her ears. But let me ask for just a few seconds of HER precious time. Nope. And isn’t this just SO TYPICAL of how SHE ALWAYS SHOWS UP AROUND HERE. It’s all about her, never about me. Doesn’t someone who loves someone care about what they have to say?? OF COURSE THEY DO! BUT SHE COULDN’T CARE LESS. Why am I stuck in this marriage with this person who seems TOTALLY INCAPABLE OF LOVE??! AAARGH!!!!!!

Hmm. Well. Let’s zoom out for just a second here.

I got home. I wanted to share something with my wife. When I arrived home, guess what? She was knee deep in her own situation. She may have been open to hearing what I wanted to share, but just not at that moment.

What’s important here is that my reaction to her seeming dismissiveness says far, far more of relevance to me about me than it does about her.

What does it point to for me? That my child-animal has taken the steering wheel. Because his issue is that he didn’t get heard when he was a kid. His dad was always pontificating about this and that. But Dad didn’t care what his kid had to say. His mom was dead. His extended family disappeared. So this kid had a lot going on inside, that he needed to share and get taken care of. The adults who should have been doing all of this for him were nowhere to be found. They were dead, gone away, or knee deep in their own issues.

And so the kid got clear that what he needed was to be heard, acknowledged and cared for. He came to understand that he would know he was loved when those needs were met, in the way he believed they needed to be met. And he would know he wasn’t loved when they weren’t.

And what my wife’s response to my bid to share did was communicate to this child-animal, in no uncertain terms, that she had no space for his need to share. It was a big, fat fuck you to his bid to heal the gaping hole in his heart left by the shortcomings of his parents and family.

So how is any reasonable kid to respond to that kind of slap in the face?

With rage. With resentment. With righteous vengeance. With all of the emotions that he did not allow himself to feel or express, either as a child or an adult, when he was actually victimized so many years ago. And so out come those feelings here, now…completely misdirected at a person and a situation that in no way merits their unleashing.

And what’s more, that kid, when he acts out toward his wife, is GUARANTEED to push away the thing he so deeply wants.

He tries to approach his wife. He tries to tell her how her callousness has hurt his feelings. How, any reasonable person knows, it is important in relationships to make space to hear what is alive for your partner. How he always does this for her when she is wanting to share something. Etc. etc.

And guess how all of this goes over for his wife.

You may have guessed it. Like a lead balloon. What you might not have intuited is why.

Why? Because she is being confronted not by her grown up adult partner. But by an angry, resentful, entitled child. Who has no empathy for what may have been going on for her at the moment he made his demand to be heard. And who is making demands of her that she can’t possibly meet: to resolve his childhood hurts and trauma, through how she shows up for him.

And even if she could resolve those traumas for him (she can’t): the demand from this child-animal feels deeply imposing to her. It feels wrong. Why? Because somewhere inside her, even if unconsciously, she knows that he is asking her to do his work for him. And he is doing so in a way that is completely entitled, in ways that he isn’t willing to see.

In other words, he’s showing up like a pissed off child. He is being emotionally dependent.

Not a super attractive look for a grown man, is it? How likely do you think it is that this man will get his needs met by his partner? Or to convince her that her behavior is wrong and needs to be changed?

If you guessed not so great, you’re probably on to something.

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In my next article, I will address what you can start doing when you are ready to look at how your child-animal shows up and to take ownership of your own freedom and healing.

Peter Fabish is Co-Founder of Conscious Family™ Law & Mediation.