Dating When You've Had a Bad Childhood

in the course of any adult life there will be periods when we'll end up involved in that slightly odd slightly unrepresentative and invariably slightly challenging activity looking most people around us won't be any the wiser but with greater or lesser subtlety we will be scanning suggesting coffees and lunches accepting every invitation giving out our email addresses and thinking with unusual care about where to sit on train journeys sometimes the rigmarole will be joyful at times a bore but for a portion of us as many as one in four it will count as one of the hardest things we ever have to do fun won't remotely come into it this will be closer to trauma but it will be so for a reason that can feel more humiliating still because a long time ago now we had a very bad childhood one whose impact and legacy we still haven't yet wholly mastered it may not look like it but babies are also looking out for love they're not going out in party smokes or slipping strangers their phone numbers they are lying more or less immobile in cribs and a capable of little besides the occasional devastatingly cute smile but they too are looking out for someone's arms to feel safe in for someone who can soothe them someone who can stroke their head tell them it will all be okay when things feel desperate and appoints lend them a breast to suck on they are looking as the psychologists call it to get attached but unfortunately for one in four of us the process goes spectacularly wrong there is no one on hand to care properly the crying goes on unheeded The Hunger Una's waged no one smiles reliably or cuddles confidently there is no welcoming breast in the eyes of the caregiver there is depression or anger where there should have been delight and reassurance and as a result a fear of existence takes hold for the long term and dating becomes a very hard business indeed for those of us who experienced early letdowns there is simply little in us that can ever believe that a search for love will go well and we will therefore bring an unholy commitment to bear on ensuring that it doesn't the dating game becomes the Royal occasion when we can confirm our deepest suspicions that we are unworthy of love we may for example fixate on a candidate who is too more attuned eyes obviously not interested their coldness and indifference their married status or incompatible background or age far from putting us off will be precisely what feels familiar necessary and sexually a bit thrilling this is exactly what is meant to happen when we love it should hurt atrociously and go nowhere Oh in the presence of a potentially kind-hearted and available candidate we may become so demanding at uncontained so unreasonable and urgent in our requests that no sane soul would remain in contention we will spoil any potentially good impression by bringing a lifetime of self-doubt and loneliness onto the shoulders of an innocent stranger alternatively unable to tolerate the appalling anxiety of not yet quite knowing where we stand we may decide to settle the matter by ourselves preferring to crash the plane rather than see how it might land will interpret every ambiguous moment negatively because sadness is so much easier to take than hope the slightly late reply must mean that they found somebody else their busyness must be a disguise for sudden hatred the missing kiss at the end of their message is conclusive evidence that they've seen through our sham facade to master the terror of another letdown we go cold we respond sarcastically to sincere compliments and we insist with aggression that they don't really care for us at all thereby ensuring that they eventually won't to escape these debilitating cycles we need to accept that we're searching for someone to love us while wrestling with the most fateful of background suspicions the we don't actually deserve love it's only by properly mastering what once happened to us the letdown we first experienced as infants that we can start to separate out past trauma from present reality and therefore learn to navigate the ambiguities and occasional risks of adult dating it isn't that we've been told that we don't deserve to exist they're just busy tonight they don't know us they're married to somebody else as lots of people who we've carefully chosen not to look at happen not to be there not peculiar it's just unfair and overwhelming to ask someone you've known for 12 hours to make up for a lifetime of loneliness we need to see that this is not the first time we have been in inverted commas dating we've done it before long ago and it was the ways in which it went very wrong that holds the key to our adult errors our intensity our coldness or a lack of judgment the catastrophe we fear will happen has already happened the challenges we set up for ourselves our attempts to get back in touch with a trauma we haven't either understood or mourned we can in time learn to ask people on a date because we grasp that we're not there by asking them what we think we're asking do I deserve to exist no we're asking something far more innocent and far more survivable with the answer to be negative we're asking might you be free on Friday and we can survive because even though we once got terribly hurt in the nursery we are now that most resilient of things an adult so we have many other options we won't as we once feared die of loneliness if it doesn't work we can take our time we can allow things to emerge we can tolerate ambiguity and with such security in mind we can begin to do that most momentous of things without risking our sanity see if someone we like might after all want to go out tonight our online shop has a range of books and gifts that address the most important and often neglected areas of life such as finding a good enough partner click now to learn more

Channel: The School of Life

Views: 807,166

Rating: 4.9556103 out of 5

Keywords: the school of life, schooloflife, education, relationships, alain de botton, philosophy, talk, self, improvement, big questions, love, wellness, mindfullness, psychology, how, to, hack

Id: Papr5yrNLjo

Length: 6min 53sec (413 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 11 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Blow-it-out-your-ass]

My mom didn't buy that extra booster pack of Pokemon cards...life was just downhill from there.

[u/dog_in_the_vent]

What if I had a wonderful childhood but I'm just a hideous person.

[u/Koolbreeze88]

This video isn’t helpful or anything just states the obvious.

[u/whgpqls2330]

I guess the video makes sense...but sometimes it feels as though I’m using this as an excuse to cover up how shitty of a person I am lol

[u/dasanipants]

Is it like dating season or something? I've got a good article for yall 10 tips, forget the gender, works both ways

https://www.mandatory.com/culture/1111694-10-crucial-man-lessons-you-will-learn-from-swingers

[u/M4PO_POP]

Oh yeah Oh yeah yeah

[u/suavecitos_31]

Essential oils?

[u/TheHooligan95]

Makes me think. I didn't have a bad childhood at all. Yes, I had very minor problems with my parents during puberty and all the adolescence, but nothing gigantic, no rape or or stories about terrible abuse. Why am I like this then. I do feel like I'm not deserving of love. I can be too clingy. I can be mean and selfish. I feel bad now, as I'm a terrible person yet I have no excuses

[u/felds]

RemindMe! 4 hours