Why Do We Keep Pursuing Toxic Relationships?

Love is one of our most basic needs, like food, water, or oxygen. We will feel driven to pursue it the same way we feel driven to eat every day. But what is love exactly, and why are so many people so frustrated in their efforts to find it? Sure, we see people every day that seem to have found it, but have they really? Or does it just seem that way because they are part of a couple and seem happy, so we assume they are? Why does it seem like every time we think we found it, it just ends up being more of the same toxic shit we ended up with last time and the time before that and the time before that?

Every one of us has a map inside of us that is oriented to a compass that points us towards what we perceive as love. That compass was calibrated based on the actions of our earliest caretakers. The map is what we draw internally based on our response to how our caretakers treat us - or how the people that we are told “love” us - make us feel. So, if our parents or caretakers say they love us (or society tells us that our parents love us and we believe them), then however they treat us calibrates our compass towards those actions. Those become the behaviors by which we define “love.” Our map is what we draw based on how their actions make us feel.

If our parents treated us with kindness, compassion, patience or grace, then our compass becomes oriented to those qualities. Those qualities become our “north star” that we orient to. We then draw our love map based on how someone behaving that way towards us makes us feel. If their actions lead to us feel safe, strong or empowered, then we will eventually seek out people who make us feel that same way because that is what matches our love map. Similarly, we will reject people who cause us to feel things that do not align with our love map.

Understand, that our compass and map are aligned based on what is, not as either we or our parents want to be. No matter how great of a parent either you or your parent think they were, if they were actually demanding or distant or withheld affection (for whatever reason, sometimes because they thought that would make them a better parent) that is what we will seek in adulthood.

If our parents abused us or were emotionally distant or only gave us attention when we performed up to their standards, then those behaviors become our compass and we draw our map based on how we feel when they treat us that way. If our caretaker’s actions cause us to feel guilt or pain or shame, then that is what we draw on our internal maps. Then, when we go out seeking love as adults, we will instinctively look for someone who treats us the same way our parents or caretakers did, because that will, in turn, create feelings in us that match up with our map of what love looks or feels like.

The problem, of course, is that no one wants to live in guilt, pain or shame, and we will instinctively push those things away, while at the same time desperately seeking or pursuing love. Imagine that we all have an operating system that was programmed into us. Now imagine your operating system tells you that wallpaper paste is food and bananas, apples and oranges are poison.

Obviously, you are ravenously hungry, but every time you try and eat, you will become desperately sick, because you have been programmed to believe that what is poison is healthy and what is healthy is poison. Until you deprogram and reprogram yourself, you will just keep pursuing what is harmful and passing up what is healthy, while getting sicker and sicker and sicker.

Now imagine, to make matters even worse, that someone tells you God loves you. If you have an internal compass that is oriented towards “love”involving things like grace, kindness, compassion, patience and empathy, then this might be perceived as good news. But what if your internal definition of love was set by people who harmed, abused or abandoned you? How does the idea that God loves you help you? The answer is, it doesn’t.

Until we can reorient a faulty compass towards the qualities and values that actually define love, then even the idea that God loves us does not bring comfort, but more shame and pain.

This is one of the many, many reasons why deconstruction is so important.

Deconstruction is the process by which we can recablibrate our compasses towards the qualities that actually define love and away from actions and behaviors that bring shame and pain into our lives. Only when our compasses are reoriented and our maps rewritten will we be able to pursue healthy, wholesome, life-giving relationships with people who are capable of treating us with kindness, compassion and dignity.