Building healthy relationships for the Emotionally Wounded

I had a conversation with a girl pal in London who is lurching from one bad relationship to another, and for some strange reason, that conversation went online to a few others when I wrote about human beings being born incomplete and we spend our lives searching for that completion. We fantasised that the sow’s ear is actually a silk purse, in our desperation to believe in fairy tales. I knew someone intelligent who believed a young man who said, “I’ll be queen in your kitchen and whore in your bed”, only for the young man never to cook and squired himself in the spare bedroom putting himself on dating websites.

It is better not to be in a relationship than being in a wrong one that drains the best out of you and screws your head up (BIG time). But my girl pal wails, “I don’t like being alone!”. I have other girl pals who have children and who find it daunting to be single mums: they are not alone but they are scared of raising children alone.

BUT here’s another piece: I know quite a few people who are too broken to be in mutually fulfilling, long-term relationships because any long-term relationship calls for a healthy union between two people.

I strongly believe that we have to heal ourselves us first before entering into a relationship with one other. If we bring all our childhood hurt, past anger, turmoil and unhealed past into a relationship, that toxicity will destroy a relationship that has the potential to be something really good.

So what’s the solution?

BBC recently did an article about a small group of women who come together to build a home for themselves and their children.

According to Janet Hoggart, one of the ladies in this “patchwork family”:

“It was amusing, several women in our friendship group who were starting to feel disgruntled in their marriages were thinking ‘hmmm, there is another way, you don’t have to die of heartbreak’. We picked each other up, you don’t have to be on your own,” Janet says.

“Not blowing a trumpet, but it was an open-door policy for waifs and strays, people having a rubbish time would come into our lives – have some wine, sit down, we were good at cooking meals, very inclusive, had so many parties. It was a really happy time, really positive time, women-bonding time.”

You can read the article here.

Here’s a lovely, spiritually uplifting article about why women need each other, especially if they have unfulfilled emotional needs:

You can read the article here.

“Being with other women helps you to be a better mother, and the moral support, physical, emotional and mental support and stimulation create a beautiful harmonious environment for children to thrive.”

So what if you are a man? I think then the solution is to rent a room in a happy family home. I once knew someone who was incapable of sustaining anything for more than a few years because of his tendency towards emotional cruelty who lived his happiest and most peaceful years when he was renting a room in a loving family home.

Maybe the world needs this holistic structure more to help its brokenness than conventional coupledom?