E42: Grieving the Fantasy of "THE ONE"

Ever felt like there's a special person out there, and when you find them, you'll just know that they are right for you and that things will just click into place? Someone with whom you have zero doubts. Someone with whom things just move very smoothly and with whom you feel absolutely sure about. Well, today's episode is all about this and why it's important to grieve this fantasy. It's something that everyone with Relationship OCD will want to do as part of their healing process :)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Everybody, welcome back to another episode of the For Love Wheel podcast. It is May 14th, Thursday, and uh got another podcast episode for you. What are we going to be talking about today? Uh today we're talking about the the episode is grieving the fantasy of the one. How many of you have this idea that there's one true happily ever after? Or there's a soulmate, or you know, there's a special person out there that you when you find them, you'll just know that they're right for you, that things will just click, that where you don't have any doubts, or you don't have any insecurities, or there's minimal conflict, and you get along and things move smoothly and da-da-da-da-da. How many of you believe that? And even if you don't entirely believe it, I mean, for many of you that have been sort of on this journey, you've probably learned that that's not the way it is. But still, I would imagine there are probably still parts of you who have that internalized belief system because we got it really early on, and it's come through generationally, uh, not to mention been reinforced through TV and the media and Hollywood and Disney and everything, that there is a one true happily ever after, when your life will finally make sense, right? And you we might not even consciously think about this as being a reality, but we really we have this underlying belief system that life's gonna be better. Life's gonna be better when we find that person. We're not gonna have as many problems, right? We're not gonna be lonely. We're life will life will be good, right? And then we're crushed or we're we're looking for the next thing when that reality doesn't pan out, when that honeymoon phase ends, this the intense period of infatuation and desire. When that honeymoon phase ends, which for some of you didn't even have one, because for for you know, I would say 50% of people that have a relationship OCD didn't have a honeymoon phase. But when that honeymoon phase ends, we're uh left scratching our head, or in in in worst case, I mean, uh or if you have a relationship OCD, not just scratching your head, but pulling your hair out because you're now stuck in this agonizing doubt around, well, you know, if I if I don't feel like I love my partner anymore, or if I'm if I'm uncertain, or if I have doubts, or whatever it is, then must they must not be right for me. So today we're going to be talking about why we need to, and as I said in a previous episode, let the fantasy die and grieve the fantasy of the one and and um and sort of emerge through that as a new person or um or return to a place within our self, free that belief so that we can see a relationship through realistic uh through a realistic lens, and when we can reclaim our wholeness, and we could heal our childhood wounds of emptiness so that we're not, as Esther Perel says, looking for one person to provide what a village once did, right? I think I said this in my la in the last episode to provide a sense of meaning and continuity and grounding, right? To where what we have to do is once we grieve the fantasy of the one and once we start to heal our childhood, we have to diversify our wants in the relationship our wants in life from being putting it all in the relationship to actually in different places in life, like friendships or or work or hobbies or whatever it is, that we're not gonna get everything that we want in life from our relationships. So uh I want to read some quotes to you, kick us off here today. And uh I I talked about this quote in the last episode. I want to tell you again because it's really important for you to understand this, right? Because so in her book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, Lindsay Gibson talks about the healing fantasy, which is the idea of the one. Um uh she writes the one thing all emotionally deprived children have in common is coming up with a fantasy about how they will eventually get what they need. As children, we make sense of the world by putting together a story that explains their life to us. We imagine what would make us feel better and create what I call a healing fantasy, a hopeful story about what will make us truly happy one day. She says that children often think the cure for their childhood pain and emotional loneliness lies in finding a way to change themselves and other people into something other than what they really are. She mentions that everyone's healing fantasy begins with if only. For instance, people may think that they'd be loved if only they were selfless or attractive enough, or only if they could find a sensitive and selfless partner, or they think their life would be healed by becoming famous or extremely rich. Right? And so Lindsay goes on to explain that whatever the healing fantasy, it gives the child optimism to get through a painful upbringing in hopes for a better future. So now when we she's talking about emotionally deprived children, because this is her book around um uh uh adult children of emotionally immature parents. And I would say for most of you, I would argue that we have come from homes uh of emotional immaturity, right? Homes where our parents were either on the spectrum of emotionally immature to um to uh to nar to even narcissistic. And um, so uh we especially created this narrative, this story on early in life that one day things are gonna be different. And what we do is is uh when we grow up and uh uh reinforced by the fact that we're watching shows and we're being inundated with messages that are seeping into our our uh our consciousness, right, our subconscious and taking root in there is this idea that there's Prince Charming or whatever that we're gonna finally meet. And you know, we get wrapped up into these stories because it plays off of this old narrative that one day things are gonna be different, right? And so we have that we construct this idea of the one reinforced by the media that we are gonna find somebody and it's gonna solve our problems. We might not even know what the problems are. We might just feel we just might not feel great inside. We might feel lonely or empty, and we not might not really even know what to call it, but life doesn't feel um complete for us, right? We might walk through life and just feel like something's wrong. We don't really even know what it is. Many of you will feel that in your relationship and you'll project that onto your partner like, well, if something doesn't feel quite right in me, then it must not be the right relationship. This is playing off this old storyline that if I was with the right person, that sense of feeling something's off wouldn't be there, right? This is a continuation from a very old storyline early in life. So then I go on to say, you know, that when we fall in love, we're really falling for the healing fantasy. So we fall in love with someone, we're infatuated with them, we feel head over heels, they're the best person ever. This is everything I've ever wanted. We are falling for the story that we've already had within our heads of how life's gonna be different, right? Uh that we hold very unconsciously, right? Um and uh and uh Richard Schwartz, the founder of IFS, uh talks about this in his book, You Are the One You've Been Waiting For. And he says, uh to all of us drowning in this empty, striving, isolated, and anxious North American lifestyle, the media throws the biggest life preserver of all. From watching movies or TV or listening to songs on the radio, you'll be convinced that everyone sooner or later will find their one true, happily ever after relationship. The person who will heal you, complete you, and keep you afloat is out there. If the person you're with isn't doing that, they're either either he or she is wrong, uh the wrong person altogether, or you need to change him or her or them into the right one. How many of us try to do this? We're like something's not, we don't like a particular thing that our partner does or says or the ways that they show up or whatever. And we're wanting to change them into the person that we think they need to be in order for us to feel that sense of completion or that sense of fullness or that sense of fulfillment within us, right? Whether they're not in uh may whether they need to be more intellectually stimulating, whether they need to be smarter, whether they need to make more money, whether they need to be more close, whether whatever it is, we're wanting to change them into what we believe we need them to be that fits the narrative of the healing fantasy or the story of the one that we developed throughout our life, right? Growing up. Um, so right. So what do we so this is this is a process that we need, this is something that we need to grieve because we have to come to terms with the fact that nobody is going to save you. You have to come to terms with the fact that nobody is gonna come along and save you from your own history. That's your job now. But we carry these inner children who are screaming out into the world somebody please help me. Somebody, please take this feeling of emptiness or this void away. Somebody, please give me a sense of meaning. We're we cling to others as a way that we needed to cling to our parents because we needed that from an early on. Our a sense of meaning, sense of continuity, a sense of grounding, as Esther Perils talks about in her quote, was supposed to come from the earliest attachment with our parents. Safety and security, to be seen and known, to have timely soothing, to have reassurance that we needed, to be picked up when we were crying, to be looked at with delight, to be seen and and loved unconditionally, to be completely delighted in as a soul, as a being, uh, and to feel completely valued, right? If we didn't internalize that throughout their early childhood and our very early formative years of development, then we will carry that that space, that emptiness along the things that we didn't get early on, and we will try and complete that through our relationships, right? And we have to realize as an adult that that's not gonna happen, that somebody else isn't going to fill the cup up that's that's half empty, that we need to take responsibility for our healing, and surprisingly enough, the compassion that everybody has that seems to be uh separate from the psyche that seems to come from somewhere else, right? Like, how can it be? How can how can we be the one to heal our pain when we're operating from a place of of wounding, of lack? Well, it's it it appears that compassion, the the the agent of healing, is separate from psyche or the site the psychology um of the the the brain or the the whatever we want to call it, right? That love is something that's greater than who we are, than all of us, and that each of us has the capacity to kind of whether we want to think it of as channeling it or opening into that space of love, that through opening into a space of love and holding the the tenderness and the the the the pain of our childhood, of the these little child parts of us, the inner child that really didn't have a complete childhood, actually resolves that issue altogether, right? And by doing that, we actually are able to relate to our relationships from a more place of security and grounding, a sense of continuity and meaning and all this stuff because we we don't we're not operating from a space of lack and of emptiness anymore. We don't need anything from our partner, we're not trying to mine anything out of them or take anything or or whatever because we already have it. We fill that own cup, our own cup up through our own uh compassion, through this sort of source uh of compassion that we all have access to, right? It's a source of compassion that we also needed growing up that we didn't get. So we just we we're we're finding another way in to bring that back in to contribute to these this uh our our internal our inner child. So we need to take responsibility for that healing instead of placing those needs, those early needs, which were needs, now they're they're kind of because we're adults, we we don't see them as needs because we're we don't we don't really need we're not we're not in need. I mean we're in need of our of our own stuff, but we can't rely on other people to to heal us, right? So we need to grieve the fantasy that somebody else is gonna do it for us. We need to grieve the childhood that the loss of attachment, the loss, the the things that we missed out on because we didn't have enough love, right? We didn't have enough love and support. And that is a process within itself. We have to recognize the sadness and the longing and the the the sorrow and the injustice and all of it, right? That we missed out on a lot growing up and we so we have to do that because if we could to to be able to come to terms with the fact that that nobody uh in it is that nobody's coming, right? Nobody's coming anymore outside of us. But we realize when we can access our own inherent capacity to be compassionate, we are as as day as as Richard Schwartz says in his book, you are the one you've been waiting for. I love that title because it's so it's so accurate. You are the one you've been waiting for. We've been waiting for somebody to come along and save us. It turns out that it's us that does it, right? Tremendous freedom comes from um this process. Tremendous freedom in our relationship comes from um from from doing this, this process. So um we also need to talk a little bit about um let's see. Let's see here, what else do I have? The conscious relationship, right? So doing this process, grieving grieving the fantasy of the one um internalizing uh a different narrative around what relationships are, right? Like we have to realize we'll talk about the conscious relationship, but we have to realize that um our partners are really imperfect, you know, they're human. And you know, I I said in a Instagram post, like, you know, it's not all sunshine. Tell them I'll tell you right now. I mean, you know, how many times Dion and I have gotten into you know fights or um, you know, or like just you know, it's our relationship has been a challenge. It's been really great. I mean, I uh not I I won't say that it hasn't, but it's been really challenging, especially for me because like you, I've gone through relationship with OC and I have, you know, more uh or I I once had more of a disorganized attachment style to where I constantly oscillated between avoiding connection and wanting it. And that's gotten a lot better over the years through through therapy. But my God, I mean, being in relationship for me has not been fun. So, you know, I want I I want you to have some some more uh some more accurate expectation of relationship. Like you're coming to relationship with a lot of baggage if you have relationship OCD because it's a relational issue. Relationships aren't going to be all that fun for now, but once you do this work, grieving the fantasy the one, healing your childhood, doing all this stuff, it becomes so much more enjoyable and so much more fulfilling because you're operating from a place of fullness and not a place of lack. And and you can just allow things to be as they are without needing to change them. Um, right? You're able to just be more present at peace. And walk into the relationship more of like with the unknown. Like the way that my partner and I look at our relationship now is, and Esther Perell says this like our relationship's on lease, right? Like it's always up for renewal. We don't own our partner, and our partner doesn't own us. We're not we we're two separate autonomous individuals choosing every day to be in this relationship. So um let's talk about the conscious relationship. So um the conscious relationship, I this is what I see a conscious relations. It's a partnership in which both individuals are fully aware and intentional about their interactions, viewing the relationship as a vehicle for personal and spiritual growth, right? Where a relationship serves as a mirror that reflects our deepest, often unhealed wounds and fears and insecurities, and provides us with a valuable opportunity to address and heal them. So in your relationship, in the ways that you're struggling in your relationship, you are being shown your doubt, your fear, your avoidance, and your anxiety. You're literally your partner is reflecting that to you to show you that it's your work that you need to do on yourself, right? Because um that it's not you're you're missing the point. If we can, if we see it and per and see it as a relationship problem that I must be struggling with this way because my partner's wrong for me, or that I'm not with the one or in the right relationship, you're completely missing the point. It's just like, and I read this in Robert Johnson's book, We, um uh a psychology of romantic love, he says that it, you know, when we fall in love, we're there's a it's a key that oh that's that sort of opens us into the space of love that we are. If we see our partner as the source of that, of feeling this sort of the the the love or the the opening that allows us to feel more fulfilled or whatever, then we're in if we don't see it as a mirror, if we're partner's not sort of, we don't see it as the partner reflecting that which is already inside of us, then we're missing the point. We need to see, we need to know that our uh as we become more conscious in our relationship, we want to see our partner as, you know, not as just uh a sort of not only kind of um a relational contract together and and journey together, but also as the vehicle for helping each other awaken and grow to different levels of consciousness. We, if we can recognize that when, and uh as Richard Schwartz says, our partners like our tour mentor, tour mentor, right? They're they torment uh their torment that we feel in relationships is a form of mentorship because they're showing us the what we need to work on and heal within ourselves, right? So, no, as we navigate the complexities of intimacy, you know, our partners. Will inevitably trigger these unresolved emotional patterns and bring to light aspects of ourselves that require or parts of us that require attention and healing. And by approaching these challenges with openness and a willing to learn, we transform our relationships into power, powerful catalysts for self-awareness and healing. So that so I want you to ground into that that your relationship's a vehicle for personal and spiritual growth and um and that we have a part of that, a part of R C D and struggling in this way is an opportunity to see that you um that you have a lot of healing to do inside of you. You have a lot of healing to do, nothing more, right? As I say, if you are in a relationship with someone that's really healthy and kind and caring and supportive, you are in a relationship worth taking a chance on everything else. It's just your stuff that's rising to the surface, you know. Stuff that's saying, listen, you know. It's challenging when we have parts of us that are like, leave and you're in the wrong relationship and you're lying to yourself and stuff. Those those inner critics, those avoidant inner critics, I mean, can trigger us a lot and it can be terrifying to deal with because the parts of us that are so afraid of losing our partner, they're you know, they don't want to hear these things. This they're terrifying things to hear internally. So it's it's hard to face those. But ultimately, it's all they're all as as you know, Cheryl Paul would say, they're they're messages, they're they're inner messengers inviting you to pay attention to to what's going on in there. And you know, not some like not not messages from your intuition that you're in the wrong relationship, because there is no right or wrong relationship, but messages from within that that call you back into your history to pay attention to where it's all rooted in, to allow you to do the necessary healing that will allow you to become more self-realized in your life, to be able to be more compassionate and present and loving and caring and um connected to your purpose and connected to your your why in life, and you know, and uh a kind, caring, lovely partner can only contribute to your life rather than take away anything from you or or whatnot. So I think that just about does it. Um I hope this was all helpful for you today. We're at about 26, uh, 20, 20 odd minutes here. Um, I hope it was all helpful for you today. Um, I hope that you take away the the this away and start to think about how you might start to grieve the fantasy of the one, what that actually means for you. If you need additional support with that, feel free to join uh my I my course in community, Freedom from Relationship O C D Course and Community, where you know I break all this stuff down uh into a 12-hour course, and you can come to the our bi-weekly support groups, which are on uh every second and fourth Thursday. We just did one earlier today, which went really well. We had about you know six or so people in there, and um, we had a lot of great conversations and QA, and we did a piece of uh practice together, which was fruitful. So if you would like to be part of that, come join. It's only 37 bucks a month to join, so and you can cancel anytime. So if that speaks to you, do that. If you want to really dive into this work and expedite the process and really get to the other side of relationship OC and just be at peace in your relationship, uh uh work with us. Uh, book a free discovery call to see if working with us one-to-one would be good for you. Uh, we'd love to be able to support you in that way. And if you have any questions about the podcast or anything comes up for you, or you have any reflections or anything you want to share with me, you can send me an email. My email is below. And it's just always a pleasure to be able to share this stuff with you. I hope these podcasts, my content is uh is is helping you in your life. So, anyway, take care. Uh, next week. What are we doing next week? Uh, do I have my calendar up, Handy? No, I do not have my calendar. I can't tell you. We're we're we're doing another podcast next Thursday, so uh we'll we'll see you then. Bye bye.