Rosenna Bakari

As an example, fear of abandonment may attract relationships where you feel protected. You show up with a victim mentality (unconsciously), and the partner exhibits rescue behavior. The two of you play your relationship roles as victim and protector.

Early relationship stages reveal the two of you are a perfect match. The protector is sweet and kind, and the victim is determined. Love is in the air.

The relationship revolves around previous victimizations that had nothing to do with the current relationship. Over time, the victim eagerly reprimands the protector for causing pain whenever there is discomfort. The protector begins to feel inadequate and unappreciated.

The protector is not a healthy role and is usually taken on by someone with co-dependency issues. They thrive on enmeshed relationships. They need someone to be dependent on them. If the co-dependency attachment bond is broken, conflict arises.

The victim cannot stop feeling like a victim just because they are attached. Attachment doesn’t change the victim mentality. It often deepens it. Fears of abandonment exasperate in relationships.

Validation of Love

Validation is a molecule of love. Relationships should feel validating. But validating your love for a person is different from validating a person for love.

Where open emotional wounds exist, lovers seek personal validation as a relationship requirement. Personal validation from a partner is required in the absence of self-regulation.

If people cannot convince themselves that they are loveable, they will need constant reminding from someone else. Such a demand strains the relationship.

Disorganized Attachment

The need for personal validation is part of the disorganized attachment style. The style develops in childhood when caregivers do not create adequate love bonds with the child.

Disorganized attachment adults have unreasonable boundaries in relationships around sharing time, resources, or possessions. They don’t seek to validate love, but rather themselves.

Personal validation requires arousal of some kind.

Some couples use materialism such as gifts, houses and furnishings, jewelry, and vacation packages for arousal. Sex is often the focus of arousal, as is unreasonable time spent together.

Whatever the source of validation, there is a high need for it. The absence of it creates conflict because conflict is a significant source of validation. Let me explain with a reminder that validation requires arousal.

When conflict arises, the brain perceives it as a threat, which is arousal. The person feels validated when the partner remains in the relationship after the threat. The partner is still providing arousal validation.

In the absence of all other validation, conflict serves the purpose. Consider the example in the following section.

Arousal

In new relationships, many couples have frequent sex. It builds attachment quickly. As the relationship settles, most couples adjust to a lower frequency of physical intimacy. They move on to other ways to build life intimacy together, not just physical. However, if sex is the validation, something else happens.

Let’s say the couple had sex five times a week, and now they only have sex three times a week. That’s two days of arousal no longer available for validation.

An easy replacement for arousal is conflict, so the couple may find themselves in arguments twice a week. The arousal of conflict replaces the missing arousal of sex.

Validation needs are about feeling wanted. One partner gives the other partner the responsibility to make them feel wanted, needed, or loved.

They do not know how to elicit those feelings from within. They likely need to learn how to navigate the world to feel validated outside their relationship.

Validation relationships can exist for a long time because conflict is an easy substitute for arousal. But high-conflict relationships take a toll on individuals.

Perpetual conflict can result in poor mental and physical health. When the conflict peaks, divorce is imminent.

LOVE OFFERINGS

Loving allows enough physical and emotional separation for independence yet enough physical and emotional intimacy for relationship security. The following patterns typically validate authentic love potential.

• Offerings: Potential lovers show appreciation for one another’s time with gestures or offerings. Opening doors, paying for the date, and bringing flowers or small gifts are evidence of kindness. The absence of kind gestures suggests a person may be looking to be rescued instead of partnered.
• Access: Potential lovers have reasonable access to one another. They share themselves with one another synchronously. They may grow apart briefly to focus on themselves. But they always grow together again. They don’t keep growing apart.
• Freedom: The expression of freedom is a critical expression of love potential. Authentic lovers don’t show up as people pleasers. They have gentle and respectable ways to say no without shutting down. Lovers take no for an answer, significantly distinguishing them from people who only attach.

Most early relationships show evidence of potential love. However, a person with unhealed wounds will break these patterns sooner than later. Authentic lovers maintain the patterns throughout their relationship.

Is it Really Love?

Love doesn’t come as easy as attachment. Love does not fail because it doesn’t demand. It reflects. Love reflects what you see in yourself, the good, bad, and ugly.

Learning to love starts with healing the parts of you that you try to hide to make yourself lovable. If you want to love harder, then heal wiser. If you are looking for love, start within.

You bring love to a relationship to share, not create it.