The way you grow up influences how you will experience love. Many adults have difficulty establishing connections with someone due to them not healing from past experiences that they did not fully comprehend.
Once a person understands that there are only two paths to take forward, the meaning of love will become less complicated, and you will want to create the third one for yourself: the path of healing.
You Can Become Hyper-Independent and Avoid Connection
Many people with tough childhoods believe they are capable of doing everything for themselves, without ever considering anything else. Due to this reliance on themselves, they may never feel safe opening up emotionally to others or sharing their thoughts.
Even though being independent is attractive to many on the outside, underneath the surface, a majority of these individuals feel isolated and drained from this type of independence.
In our relationships, we tend to avoid being vulnerable with our partners due to our fear of being manipulated, rejected, or abandoned. We tend to build a wall between ourselves and our partner, often choosing to get involved with those who lack emotion or to end our relationship before we get too close.
While this pattern is understandable, it is a limitation that prevents us from experiencing true intimacy with another person.
Hyper-independence serves as a protective shield, not as a permanent or lasting solution, and true healing can occur only once we realize that we can have a safe and loving relationship simultaneously.
You Can Become Emotionally Needy and Seek Constant Reassurance
Emotional dependence is a second option for people. They cling to their partners for fear of being abandoned again; they were taught as children that love leaves quickly.
Due to this fear of love getting away, these individuals will panic at the slightest moment of emotional distance. As a result, these individuals may think too much, check too often, and ask for constant reassurance.
They want to be close to their partner more than anything, but their panic mode will likely push their partners further away from them, creating a vicious cycle of anxiety, insecurity, and extreme highs and lows emotionally.
Therefore, the energy spent on being afraid of losing the love creates an exhausting state, leaving little energy for enjoying the love that’s there. Healing begins with the understanding that love does not equate to survival, that you deserve a stable relationship, and that fear cannot provide you with such.
Healing: Recognizing Your Childhood Patterns Is the First Step to Change
Many adult emotional habits are a result of growing up, often without clarity of how they were formed. Acknowledging either hyperindependence or an excessive need for support is the first step toward changing these patterns.
At this stage, the past is pivotal in understanding present behaviors; therefore, when you begin to see how they happened, you will view your self-perception differently.
Being aware of your patterns will lead you to make an informed choice about the future, rather than choose only what feels familiar or instinctual to you.
Awareness will prepare you to make conscious choices about how you interact with others, based on informed decisions rather than impulse or the lens of your upbringing.
Healing Requires Creating Safety Within Yourself First
Emotional safety is the reason you either pull away from or cling to people too much. On your path to healing, the first thing you need to do is create that emotional safety inside of yourself.
This means building self-esteem, calming down your body, and learning to regulate your emotions (which you did not learn in childhood). When you have emotional safety inside of you, you no longer seek love out of fear of losing it or avoid love because of fear of being hurt.
Your relationships become calmer, clearer, and healthier, and you will choose partners based on the level of emotional growth you have attained rather than the wounds you carry. Having inner safety provides you with the freedom to feel emotions.
You Learn to Build Healthy Boundaries and Accept Real Love
After healing starts, you will learn to establish healthy boundaries (not walls) where one person can connect to the other freely. You are no longer fearful of intimacy or need connection for your very survival.
Within your boundaries, you can clearly see the separation between yourself and others. Healthier boundaries give you the option to choose to love a person in a way that is respectful, supportive, and has a sense of mutuality.
With healthy boundaries, you will no longer chase conflict or reject loving affection because of fear.
You will begin to have healthy, stable relationships that are on par with your emotional maturity and will demonstrate that you are confident in your ability to love yourself while still being able to be loved by someone else.
Both Paths Can Be Rewritten When You Choose Healing Over Fear
The patterns you experienced growing up will not hold on to you forever. You do not have to relive them as an adult; you can take time, you can reflect on your past choices, and you can make new decisions on how to live your life.
When we heal, we allow ourselves to allow love into our lives that feels right, instead of suffocating. You will learn how to see red flags quicker in relationships, and you will pick healthier people in your life who will not put you down.
You will no longer feel like you are being tested when it comes to love; rather, you will feel comfortable in love and have a safe space to build yourself up.
By choosing to heal from your past rather than choosing to be afraid, you now write your own story and embrace the love you needed as a child.
Born and raised in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ever since I was a little girl, my imagination knew no bounds. I remember vividly how I’d scribble down short stories, each page bursting with adventures and characters conjured up from the whimsy of my mind. These stories weren’t just for me; they were my way of connecting with my friends, offering them a slice of my fantasy world during our playtimes. The joy and excitement on their faces as we dived into my fictional realms motivated me to keep writing. This early passion for storytelling naturally evolved into my pursuit of writing, turning a childhood hobby into a fulfilling career.