The meeting of the two lonely souls is the meeting of the dark sea with the moonlight.”

When two thoughtful people attract and deliberately approach each other, they first approach psychology; they read minds, notice facial expressions, have conscious eye contact, observe body language, catch vibes, and try to figure out if this person fits into their vision of partnership.

By admiring and analyzing a person for partnership, we unconsciously follow our family dynamics. Our subconscious programming and life experiences allow the other person to enter our world. Particularly, in terms of relationships, we pursue people that we find familiar with our very own idea/image of a family. Our childhood understandings from our home and learning from the outside environment strongly influence our future relations. Cultural and biological factors also play a very important role in the development of our psychology. Both nature and nurture sometimes compete and sometimes combine and help us to choose a life partner. Happy souls attract the happiest ones but the sadist has his definition of pursuing a relationship and love; and luckily if they find one, their psychologies fit together with what they are accustomed to. Fortunately, those from happy families find it smooth to depict the potential match but the case is risky, challenging, and even confusing for those who are from broken families. 

Who likes to describe a family as broken and a person as confused; many people around the globe belong to shattered and broken families. Either their parents have not experienced healthy married life or they are brought up by a single parent. Kids from unhappy families grow up more disturbed than those from single parents. For this reason, in hopeless families, kids feel distressed when they see or hear their parents fighting and yelling. It’s very difficult for them to listen to unkind words. This not only makes kids feel unprotected and insecure but can develop long-term mental health effects.

Horrible memories of shattered childhood become lifetime nightmares like fighting with parents, shouting, arguing, yelling, insults, threats, or abuse, and ultimately results in compromise. Fighting is abusive, and hatred feelings are dangerous, it only sets a bad example for kids to emulate in their future relationships. This style of relating when combined with some other external factors, like high ego issues, failure of past relationships, and fear of intimacy, makes it even more difficult for them to pursue healthy relationships in the future. It inhibits proper emotional development and the ability to make close connections with other people. This unstable sense of identity and lack of security is something that kid has to deal with throughout life.

Individuals from broken families don’t trust easily, as they have faced disappointment in childhood in trusting their family members, parents in particular. So they have and give hard time in trust building, which is a basic ingredient of every relationship. They also live in the fabricated idea that either the person doesn’t deserve them or vice versa. They overthink simple things and this overthinking sometimes makes things complicated for them. This overthinking affects their mental and physical health as well. Their sense of staying conscious and careful makes them extremely formal and doesn’t allow them to mingle with people casually.

They hardly get casual with a particular number of people and when they do, they avoid long conversations about themselves and they smartly give the impression as if they are interested to know about you more. Well, that’s true to some extent, as they want to know about the other one as much as they can so that they make sure the other person is worthy to open up with. A relationship commitment and marriage will be an awkward conversation for them even once they get a bit closer they still want to stay independent in the relationship; which means they hardly open up clearly if they need you. This is the hard part for the other person who is at the receiving end that this person doesn’t need you much; it’s immense insulting and hurting feelings. They do because they grow up taking care of themselves most of the time and even their younger siblings, so they don’t depend on others much to take care of themselves. Even when they truly want you for themselves, they don’t openly or hardly express rather they want you to understand their needs to come close to you. At this stage, you have to be generous and supportive enough to give them your shoulder to rely on, stay calm, try not to get frustrated with them, understand, and not be judgmental, as they trust in your love for them.

However, girls and boys from broken families have different effects on their psychology.  Men’s childhood sufferings usually evolve into addictions (alcohol, smoking, etc) and obsessions revolving around professional endeavors and achievements; as well as high ego rather than addictive behavior in relationships like some women.

Quoting from a book, Norwood states, “The man tends to become obsessed with work, sports or hobbies while a woman tends to become obsessed with a relationship usually with a distant man.” Such a woman finds herself attracted to confused, emotionally unavailable, distant, moody men and considers them as suitable candidates. Such women dismiss “happy guys” as boring, as their idea of “love” is wrapped around taking care of another human being. Therefore, when a woman who loves too much meets a stable, caring, and jolly man, she will get a subconscious vibe that she is not able to love him. Love for her is fixing. Love is a project. Happy normal Love appears distant and cold to her. If a man needs no caretaking and she does not have to chase him, so he’s not even on her radar for a romantic relationship. Yet when an emotionally unstable, mysterious, detached, or addicted man comes her way, she sees a project in which she can pour love and devotion into his life. The twist is her alert call. Such a woman magnetized to his coldness. Though the good thing is, she typically falls for his potential and overall personality worth, rather than what else he is. Other than his emotionally detached personality, she also idealizes the positive traits she observes. So this woman will hold onto that hope that she’ll be the one who can make him emotionally stable and expressive. She can be his best platform for catharsis, in any way. She finds walking away just cruel. Moreover, her motherly instincts’ also push her to treat him like a baby.

Though being a part of a broken family, she also needs to be treated like a baby and also wants him to behave like her guardian but the woman is a mother first. So she started depending on him emotionally and felt empty without his attention, with the passage of time being with him became supreme to her overall fulfillment. So she spends so much of her time and energy in pleasing him that her life begins to slip away from her hands. Her life becomes tunnel vision around him and slowly her hobbies, friends, and life outside of him drip away until her entire world is chasing and taking care of this man who might not even provide her with a consistent, healthy romantic relationship. This style of relating turns love into a drug. The cycle of chasing, avoiding, coming back together, dramatic fights, brain chemistry, etc keeps them hooked on the drama.

So why do some women find themselves in a pattern of this sort of relationship again and again? And what is the solution? How can she cure herself first and if she is lucky enough to secure a permanent relationship with “this man”, whom she is considering as a love project, what will be their future as a couple? The future of two broken people? Are they going to settle down as a happily married couple? Or are their childhood traumas going to influence their married life? How they will treat their children, in the same way? No.. they must not. So what to do?

Well, the first thing to break the cycle of loving too much is to pour all that compassionate energy into yourself. When you form a genuine relationship with yourself (by communicating with God, the beauties of nature, and then with yourself), you will find the answer, that love with its pure essence, doesn’t exist outside of you.

Secondly, when it comes to living with this man in a permanent relationship, both need to have healthy communication at every step. Every marriage has some compromises, and couples’ disagreements are pretty normal, and kids learn something positive from the natural differences between parents. They grow up thinking that having dissimilarities and then solving them is normal, which is a pretty healthy lesson to learn. They learn that some misunderstandings are good for better understanding.

Therefore, the difference between healthy and unhealthy fighting is an essential one. Either they will learn how to deal with a difficult situation or they will lose, but only one of those models will be good. These two wandering souls shouldn’t consider each other better but just different and they can be genuinely happy. It’s a common phenomenon that individuals from broken families consciously try to avoid fights in their future life and when they do, it’s because of their mind’s subconscious programming.

Loving someone who comes from a broken family can be better than the rest, as they will love you and cherish you with all of his heart. You can be his safe place, and he will always have your back. Either the arguments of these apparent cold people are full of emotions, or be completely shut off. Whatever the case would be, the best and most romantic part is, that they want you to be happy with them at the end; as they can’t afford to see their beloved sad. If they do that they will be happy the most, or else, they just want to finish the argument with or without a solution. They can leave things unsettled instead of fighting. As they need to know that everything is okay.

But no matter how long it takes, after this journey full of compromises, there is bright hope at the end that once they cross the difficult stage of letting someone in, once they trust you and fall in love with you, they will stop hiding things from you. Here come your much-awaited moments, when they will start sharing things from their past, family, fears, insecurities, uncertainties, needs, demands, dreams, and desires; and that is where your relationship takes a new and beautiful turn. No doubt, Love-avoidant people typically have their addiction outside of love, they decide to keep walking on different paths but they do their best to be the best co-parents.

Once they get over the initial shock that they are getting married, they will be overjoyed. At this point, they have moved on from their past, and they look forward to starting a new life with you. An ideal marriage that remained a mystery for them or a fairy tale that only existed in stories started happening to them. When they start seeing a long future with you they will be more expressive. Not only communicative but they try hard to be a perfect partner, and they handle things better with kindness. Then you will start creating your own home sweet home, your love life, and your family.

Another great thing is that They will make an amazing parent of what they have experienced as a child they don’t want to repeat that. They keep their personal life private from the outside audience and even from their children. They will give their children the life they wish they would have had.

Dr. Sundus

Dr. Sundus is a Media Professional; a Journalist/TV & Radio Broadcaster and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Mass Communication, NUST; she has work experience in Electronic, Print, and Web Media, she has been serving Magazine Journalism since 2006, and Ph.D. in Strategic Communication from University Utara Malaysia.

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