Story Number 2: Meet Anna. She is 30 years old and has just divorced her husband she spent seven years with. Anna has filed for divorce because she felt her husband was not emotionally available to her so she cheated on him because she was missing his attention and love.
After the divorce Anna has continued meeting guys who did not want or were not ready to build loving and meaningful relationships with her. However, when there was a nice loving guy appearing on her horizon, she would push him away. Let us have a look at her past to understand why. When Anna was a child, she was craving her father’s love because she felt he was not there for her. He was always coming home late, did not spend time with her, and did not show her any affection. When she was 11 years old, she saw him cheating on her mother with another woman. Then, he left her and her mother for another family.
What has Anna learned from this experience as a child? She has concluded that she is not worthy of love; that to be loved, she always needs to prove herself to someone by being very nice and doing the best for a partner – in other words, buying her partner’s love instead of just being who she is and receiving love without any trading.
Even though consciously Anna did not want to attract a partner like her father, that is exactly what she was doing unconsciously. On top of that, desperately trying to win the partner’s heart, she would overdo things for him, pushing him even further away. Remembering that her father was a cheater, she was also trying to control where her partners go and who they talk to. This was putting a lot of pressure on relationships and eventually destroy them.
Additionally, Anna has developed a pattern of a ‘strong’ woman. Because she was abandoned by her father, she decided for herself that she will do everything to be independent and cold-hearted so she would always be ready for the unexpected: to be abandoned. This was not allowing her to relax in relationships, to show her vulnerabilities and connect with a partner on a deeper level.
Seems like Anna has developed a robust and complex set of harmful patterns and behaviours. But even this story can be re- written. Let us have a look how.
To break through her harmful story, Anna will need to become an adult, because until now she was living according to the protective mechanisms she has developed as a child and she was still behaving as that scared, abandoned child from her past. Once she becomes aware of how the childhood traumas affect her present, she steps into her adult life where she is able to recognize her harmful patterns, break them and create a new story. Here is how it could work for Anna:
When she meets a new guy, she can become more aware of her patterns from the past. For example, if there is a guy who is genuinely interested in her, she could consciously choose not run away from such a guy and allow herself to be loved and cared for.
When in relationships, Anna could let go of her ‘independence’ and learn to be more vulnerable and trustful towards her partner. Coming back to the memories of her father cheating, she could share them with her partner and explain why she becomes jealous when she sees other women around him.
As you can see, we can rewrite our stories. It requires time, it requires a lot of work with yourself and others but it is very rewarding. Do it for yourself.
Anna Boroshok is the Founder of Fearless Female Founders: we-fearless.com / contact@we-fearless.com
