(NOTE: Written about an experience in the past, does NOT reflect the present.)
If you are perplexed as to why we even wanted Girl around so much, I assure you, we were equally perplexed. We continued to be perplexed long after the experience, spending many hours late at night trying to figure out what had happened, and why. It took the better part of a year, tremendous personal growth, meetings with our therapist, shadow work, and meditation epiphanies for us to figure it out. Kind of.
Also, I am not here to speak at length about Girlfriend’s personal reasons for being obsessed with Girl. While I understand them, they are hers to discuss. I will, however, talk about Girlfriend’s reasons that overlap with my own.
Reason #1: Unconsciously Repeating Toxic Patterns
Girlfriend and I had very different upbringings, but we do share patterns of seeking relationships that hurt. For our own reasons, we are comfortable in chaos. Comfortable with worthlessness, instability, mistreatment, etc.
I grew up under the umbrella of rigid religion with a God who was ruthless, petty, terrified, conditional, cruel, self-centered, and obsessed with rules. While others claimed God felt like love, I didn’t understand, because to me God was a prison. And, for the most part, this is the kind of love I sought. Men who were controlling, jealous, narcissistic, and sources of great pain. Wounded men who did not love themselves, so had zero concept of how to love another person. Men who could validate how worthless I already felt while inspiring my most glorious displays of codependency. (I will insert that I did have one very nice boyfriend, he was an anomaly).
When Girlfriend and I first met, I suspect we were both unconsciously seeking our patterns. I thought she could be my next narcissist, and she thought I could be her next heart-breaking, hide-her straight girl. And our relationship was… rough from the get-go. Passionate, volatile, all over the place. But over the years we learned, healed, changed, and grew more stable. However, neither of us understood how to function in a stable relationship. So when we encountered Girl, I think we knew she could inject the incredible chaos and instability we were so accustomed to.
And WOW did having Girl around deliver. Parts of us were addicted to the volatility of the experience, it felt like home, the heart-pumping chaos, the blood-boiling injustice, the infuriating inconsistencies, the seething desperation, the decimated trust, the vast uncertainty filling every moment of every day. We were not aware of it at the time, but it makes so much sense now. Our unhealed wounds craved familiarity, and Girl’s presence made our relationship familiar. I could seem controlling and irrational. Girlfriend could seem like an asshole. I could seem like I was going to duck and run. Girlfriend could seem like a narcissist. We both felt like we could break each other’s heart at any moment. And there was the pain of Girl herself, who was not easy to deal with. A shitshow all around.
It sounds like something we should have run from. And yes, we would not touch this kind of situation with a ten-foot pole NOW (or, at least, I hope we’d recognize it sooner and exit immediately). But back then? We didn’t know. We were not aware of how deep our wounds were. We were not aware of trying to recreate toxicity. We were not aware of what we were doing. We just knew that something inside of both of us wanted Girl in our lives SO BADLY it was almost impossible to let her go. She brought all the familiar pain.
