With Tremendous Pain Often Comes Tremendous Clarity - Filling the Hole in Me

It’s been over five years since I wrote my first posting on this blog. I have done a lot of processing and healing during that time. I thought I had gained sufficient understanding and clarity about what had happened to me to be able to avoid such a catastrophe again. But I was wrong.

In 2009 I wrote a post entitled "There is No Hole in Me" directed at O. In it I said:

"Dear O,

There is no hole in me. After months of intensive research and consulting with several experts, I know that every normal human being is vulnerable to sociopaths. This is because, as Michael Fox (author of Emotional Rape Syndrome) points out, emotional rapists (malignant narcissists/sociopaths) exploit the four most primary human needs: health, achievement, love and faith. In the case of a man - woman relationship love is the primary (though not only) target for exploitation."

This is true..... BUT.....

O was absolutely correct. There are holes in me. Holes that attract and enable emotionally unavailable people to exploit me. I fought O on this because it seemed like victim blaming to suggest that something about me had caused It to do to me what it did. 

This post is not about victim blaming. Nothing I did caused It to do what it did. People’s behaviors rest entirely on them. That said, I have come to realize that until we accept what it is about ourselves that makes us attracted to emotionally unavailable people (diagnostically pathological or not) and that drives us to allow these people so deeply into our lives and hearts we will continue to repeat the same pattern over and over again. This article is about the holes in me.

There is a plethora of information out there describing the red flags to look for in the beginning of a relationship. These lists give us a baseline of the common types of behaviors we can expect from people who are referred to by many names: emotionally unavailable, users, narcissistic, selfish, womanizer etc. All of them share a lack of empathy to some degree or other and a deep seated narcissistic selfishness. If we are able to spot these traits before we get too involved all the better, so these lists serve a useful purpose.

But what if we can’t spot them? What if the behaviors are so well disguised in the beginning that the are truly invisible? What if the man you’ve met and fallen in love with seems like the most healthy, mature and loving man you could hope for?

As useful and accurate as these lists are, they are also troublesome. While the behaviors of emotionally unavailable people do devolve to include most or all of the characteristics found in these lists, each one of these people has a unique history and personality that often disables us from recognizing red flags until it’s too late.

About a year ago I became deeply involved with a man who turned out to be yet another emotionally unavailable narcissist. With all of my knowledge and experience I had accumulated, I had to ask myself how it happened again.

While the details of what happened are important, for they reveal just how unique yet alike these people are, the purpose of this post is to look at the other side of it. Of course the red flags showed up one by one. But once again, I dismissed them one by one. So I was forced to ask what is it about me that blinds me from the red flags that are so clearly evident behind the masks of narcissism. And I know I’m not alone in this. I suggest it is a deep seated lack of self esteem and desire to fill up a hole in our cores that we have, for whatever reason, been unable to fill ourselves.

Not ironically, at the end of our relationship this man demanded that I not write a blog about him. Does he know he’s a user? Of course he does! He, like all narcissists protect their image of being a decent human being at all costs. The idea that he should be found out and written about is unacceptable. This post is for you It2.

In time I will be grateful for this relationship and the lessons that are unfolding. The biggest of these is that of acknowledging, accepting and working on what it is about me that drives me to want to be loved by men who are incapable of loving in any real way. What it is about me that makes me lose myself in them so completely that they are able to mold me into whatever it is they want. But be clear! The fact that there is something in me that enables and allows this does not excuse the fact that these people take advantage of it. It’s an attraction of gasoline and fire; an extremely powerful AND always explosive and destructive one.

I intend to write more about this as I sort through it and learn from it. For now, I’d like to point you to two sources that have helped me to begin understand my part in repeating patterns of unhealthy destructive relationships.

The first is the work of Susan Anderson.  

The second is the work of Natalie Lue at Baggage Reclaim

The ability to recognize abusive behavior is important and essential. But equally important is the ability to set and maintain self protective boundaries based on self esteem. These men are attracted to the holes in us because they know that they can pretend to fill them. We, in turn, are attracted to them because we so desperately want these holes to be filled. Until we learn to fill our own holes we will continue to be devastated by destructive relationships.

I hope these resources help you on your journey as much as they are helping me. I leave you with them for now.

Love and hugs,
Laura