Wounded Lover: When Love is a Constant Struggle

“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”

-Zora Neale Hurston

We all feel lonely sometimes. But some people fight that battle harder than others. Have you ever felt haunted by loneliness? Felt unlovable or a sense of defectiveness? We all cope with childhood wounds to the best of our ability because we all have certain wounds from childhood, although the wounding may be felt at various levels of intensity. But there are those who act out in adult relationships because of their childhood wounds and cause harm to others. Have you worried that maybe you love too much or too hard, sharing a level of devotion that the other person may not deserve? There’s nothing wrong with being loving, but people-pleasing crosses a line. 

Crossing the line of thoughtfulness or generosity into self-sacrifice makes me think about the distinction between being possessive or jealous, versus being territorial. Territorial means you protect what you cherish, but never at the expense of the thing or person. Whereas, feeling jealous or possessive usually involves the fear of losing something and then overstepping an important boundary. Love can make you feel "crazy." Neuroscience doesn't call it an addictive love cycle happening in your brain for no reason. There's a time when you're falling in love when the chemicals in your brain actually go catawampus. So, what happens when a person mixes that with deep-seated childhood trauma? 

They could become obsessive, inappropriately possessive, or maybe even delusional about the state of the relationship. They can become wounded men like the character Joe in Netflix and Lifetime's You. I love how they walk us through each of his relationships while giving us his inner dialogue. The twisted stories he's telling himself to rationalize his possessiveness, his cruelty, his manipulation. He's so delusional that he really believes he loves these women when the truth is that he really sees each of these women as his own wounded mother, whom he's desperate to protect. 

He love bombs the women in his life, giving them the perfect fantasy, all while he tries to control every aspect of their lives. And when they ultimately see through his lies and manipulation, he violently discards them. The women don't trust their intuition even though they know that at some level, he's too good to be true. But it feels delicious to believe the lie. To believe in the fantasy of what he’s offering. So, they paint red flags green. I think it also shows what too many women have had to endure for the promise of a loving long-term relationship. I’ve seen versions of that not only in my clinical experience, but also in my experience from my work on the television show, TV One's Fatal Attraction.

I’m not saying that men don't have to push hard things down and compartmentalize. But women tend to be more physically vulnerable and endure threats of sexual assault, verbal and physical abuse, and mental manipulation, all from an initial promise of love. For happily ever after. People ask themselves why these women stay in these unhealthy relationships. There’s often so much criticism as to why women who have survived men who abuse their power over them in the workplace keep going to work. They believe she must be lying. These women are too often given very little empathy once they share their stories even though it’s a desperate push for survival that makes them suffer these silent sorrows.

I don't know that it serves any of us to rush to believe in situations where we weren't present. Consider facts and evidence. But when a person shows you signs of a lack of empathy, believe them. When a person shows you a lack of respect for survivors, from subtle sexism to more hostile forms of abuse, believe them. There is no solace next to a bully. But it's easy to believe in the fantasy of a romantic knight in shining armor because we have to cope in a world where wounded men who prey on women actually exist. So again, when you see the red flags, listen to your intuition. Don't paint red flags green. None of us are invincible from being one of "those" women.

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