If You Love, You Will Be Loved

A therapist asked me once, if your childhood had a motto, what would it be? I maybe paused for thirty seconds as I visualized my motto on a flag, waving in a spring breeze over my childhood home. The home where my momma taught me how to taste honeysuckles and we rode our big-wheel bikes in the driveway. I woke up from the sweet memories and said, “If you love, you will be loved.”

 My childhood was simple and magical. There was always a space for imagination and tools for success. We didn’t have a need for much and always had enough. We were not perfect. We believed in fairytales. We had each other, and we had love.

 So how does a woman who grows up in love, knows love and seeks love, end up in this marriage?

In the middle of my adult therapy work, I received a few different labels as professionals dissected how I arrived here. Naive. Empath. Trauma-Magnet. To name a few. There was a subtle insinuation that my empathic nature was an attraction for the man I chose to marry. The insinuation that my empathic nature rendered me a vulnerable candidate, the culprit for why this man chose me. This insinuation became a label I went on to carry for years. A label that impacted how I chose to show up in the world and in my relationships; an otherwise hard, less empathic version of myself. As I healed and learned the relevance of boundaries as they relate to self-love and in relationships, I circled back to this label. This insinuation. And I believe, dear partner, we have enough labels that come out of our stories. Can we place this one on the shelf for a bit, and perhaps name the culprit at hand?

I have met partners who carry similar labels.

I have met partners with devastating childhood trauma compounding the trauma they are now experiencing at the hands of their spouses. I have met partners that are CEO’s of successful, women-owned companies. I met partners that are raising their children in Godly, confident and nurturing homes, despite what has happened in their marriage. We are a diverse population and yet linked by one, common denominator. And it is not an empathic nature, dear partner. It is abuse.

Narcissistic abuse does not have a type. It has a need for supply. And when one encounters the orbit of someone who presents with narcissistic behaviors, spinning in an otherwise tumultuous atmosphere that ultimately leaves you not knowing up from down, we all become the same thing. Despite our childhood. Despite being successful adults. Whether we are rooted in a foundation of love or trauma. Ultimately, we become supply.

I lived as a supply puppet for 14 years. My strings were longer in the beginning. I ventured outside routine and grew within the boundaries he laid. At the time, I didn’t even know they were boundaries. Eventually the strings became shorter. Eventually the strings were tighter. I could only step so far, I could only breathe so deep, and if I challenged the length or the strength of those strings, I was reminded I was only a puppet. I was to stay in place. I was to do the dance of chaos within the confounds of that chaos, to keep the supply going. And one day, dear partner, those strings broke. And I was free.

It is important to understand how we arrived here.

It is important to understand how we do not arrive here again.

But be the empath that you are, dear partner.

Be all that is good, all that is kind, and all that is you.

Be love, and be loved.