New Year New Me: Being Loved The Way You Deserve

Graphics & Imagery & Writing by Alexandra Roman

unyielding question of the century is: why am I not loved the way I want to be loved? Or some variant of the sort.

How do we choose the people we fall in love with? Why do some betray us? Why do we get red flags and ignore them?

For the past weeks I happened to cross paths with some that were experiencing this phenomena in incredibly familiar ways. Pain and suffering at the end of what seemed, a long relationship soaked in red flags from the very beginning; alone in a faded jungle of emotions and questions. Bleached souls growing dim like the faint beat of a butterfly’s wing.

Why does this happen? What lies behind our choices when we first put on our heart-shaped-rose-glasses?

I have three points to tackle this.

There’s a school of thought, influenced by psychoanalysis, which challenges the notion that our instinct (or hormones) invariably draw us towards those that make us happy.

In fact, we don’t fall in love with those who care for us in ideal ways. Most actually fall in love with those who love in familiar ways.

Adult love is influenced by love that was created in childhood. Subconsciously we are seeking to recreate the feelings from when we were little; traits tangential with someone that caused us trauma as children.

Why? Because we all have childhood traumas that have yet to be explored. Perhaps when you were small, your parents got divorced prompting you to live with your mother and rarely seeing your father. You may have interpreted the divorce as a form of abandonment from a male figure. Your mind then could have buried this emotional information into your subconscious. As you grow…