It’s reality math a lot of people don’t want to face – and this may sting a bit – but when it comes to relationships the truth is - hurt people want to be with hurt people – consciously or sub-consciously. (like energy seeks and attracts like energy) And this is dangerous of course because it’s hurt people who hurt people – thus perpetuating a cycle. Not only that - but many “hurt people” are like...
energy vampires and will suck the remaining life energy out of those who are themselves hurting and weak and trying to gather strength to become healthy and “unhurt.” But the healthier you become - the greater the motivation and drive will be to want to be around other healthy people as well. There is always hope if you allow pain – if you try to deny it, you will only know suffering and therefore more “hurt” in a cycle of hurt. But as Thoreau put it “The sad truth is that the masses tend to live lives of quiet desperation.” And it simply doesn't have to be that way. Rescuers are usually the ones in true need of rescuing.
I absolutely see that attraction to hurt in myself. It's a fundamentally human quality. But I no longer see it as a default or a flaw or a problem because I truly opened myself up to something higher in my present relationship, which in turn affected all my relationships, those with my friends, my kids, my ex, my coworkers, etc. I haven't changed the whos, I've changed the hows: how I am with those people, and it's transformed those relationships. An energy vampire can only take what you allow him/her to suck from you.
Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix is the best practical book I've read on the topic. But Marianne Williamson says it best and most simply:
Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix is the best practical book I've read on the topic. But Marianne Williamson says it best and most simply:
When we love, we are automatically placing ourselves within an attitudinal and behavioral context that leads to an unfoldment of events at the highest level of good for everyone involved. We don't always know what that unfoldment would look like, but we don't need to. God will do his part if we do ours. Our only job in every situation is to merely let go our our resistance to love.
Relationships are assignments. They are part of a vast plan for our enlightment, the Holy Spirit's blueprint by which each individual soul is led to greater awareness and expanded love. He brings together people who have the maximal opportunity for mutual growth. No meetings are accidental.
In the holy relationship, it's understood that we all have unhealed places, and that healing is the purpose of our being with another person. We don't try to hide our weaknesses, but rather we understand that the relationship is a context for healing through mutual forgiveness. Adam and Eve were naked in the garden of Eden but not embarrassed. That doesn't mean they were physically naked. It means they were emotionally naked, totally real and honest, yet they were not embarrassed because they felt accepted completely for who they were.
