The Rom-Com Rhapsody

Approximate reading time: 12 min

I am worried about my flatmate Teresa.

She admitted to me that she had never sworn in her life before.

(I believe her.

Teresa is the sweetest thing ever!)

That is until she started reading my blog.

She has said ‘fuck’ twice today!

She said it is refreshingly liberating!

(This was not quite the influence I had hoped to have on the masses!)

Moving on…

I am still mulling over my master’s dissertation.

I still haven’t figured out my actual research question yet but I do have a general idea about what I want it to be on. So, I thought maybe I would share a little bit of that with you and then hopefully crystal-clear clarity will illuminate me sometime in the NOT-TOO-distant future.

(Please note my explanation is going to take a long and winding road, so buckle up:-)

I have already explained how I started doing my master’s in Attachment Theory simply because of my own attachment issues. It’s exactly the same reason I studied to become a life coach all those years ago ….so I could hopefully figure out how to coach myself into a happier existence. Little did I know that my life coaching would be the first step on a long ladder of steps that have gotten me to where I am today. Although it has taken a wee bit longer than I initially planned, I think it is working;-)

(You know I have an insatiable need to be liked!)

I have confessed before that I used to be an avid fan of romantic comedies.

I seriously could not get enough of them in my younger years.

Of course, I realise now how they continually fed into my “I’m broken narrative” and allowed me to keep the fantasy and hope alive that

SOMEDAY,

SOMEHOW

a wonderful man would come along and make it all better.

If I could just find that man to love me ‘issues and all’ then things would start to improve

I would be a wife

I would be a mother

and finally

my life would have some

purpose and meaning.

(I mean hell if Julia Roberts was a prostitute and could find love then surely there was hope for the rest of us?)

In hindsight, I also realise that it was the same reason I spent the good part of 20 years holding onto the fantasy of my first love….

(Yes, 20 years- it’s mortifyingly embarrassing to admit that)

I mean I dated other people, and I had relationships, but somewhere in the back of my mind, there he was still sitting on the beautifully ornate white statuario marble pedestal

(encrusted with diamonds and pearls)

that my 14 + year-old mind had carved out so lovingly for him.

I was just never quite able to let go of the …”Just-maybe-if-he-could-love-me-dream.“

I am very happy to report that I finally get that my obsession had absolutely nothing to do with him and everything to do with me.

What can I say, limerence is a bitch!

When you don’t love yourself, it’s easy to believe that that love can be found in another.

I admit I have tried to watch a couple of romantic comedies in the last couple of months…in the hope that I could perhaps just ‘chill out a bit‘ and enjoy the fantasy.

(Like in the good old days ya’ know)

Alas, it is impossible.

Once you see something it’s pretty hard to unsee it. And not only that but then I keep seeing more shit that drives me even more batshit crazy….

(Oh Good Lord I feel a much-needed rant coming on)

Like do you notice how Hollywood has created a whole genre of movies based around the context of childhood trauma that we all get to have a good laugh at?

Invariably the main character of most rom-coms will be one of two types of people

1. Those fastidious high achievers, A-type personalities who have absolutely no ability to let anyone in and are adamant that they do not want or need love.

2. Or the hopeless romantics who are a little hapless, neurotic and ever so slightly quirky

….who just can’t seem to find anyone to love them.

(For the purpose of this rant I will be focusing on the latter type as she sounds vaguely familiar to me.)

More often than not our #2 heroines don’t have, particularly sorted careers, they might jump from one thing to the next or fill their lives with random odd jobs so they don’t have to feel too committed to one vocation. Or they might have achieved success and then completely failed at maintaining it.

They are often overly anxious.

They are relentless people pleasers and invariably have a whole host of friends in their lives continually telling them what they are doing wrong.

They have no emotional boundaries; they keep choosing the wrong men

(Aka the nitwits and the narcissists)

and are repeatedly reprimanded by friends and family.

(Whom of course they ignore!)

And one of the funniest bits?

The presence of an often emotionally absent mother who has little or no genuine attunement to her daughter and her emotional needs.

I mean you only have to think about good old Bridget Jones and her heartbreakingly null and void relationship with her mother Pamela. A woman who adoringly hugs Bridgette after she has finally been released from a Thailand prison and purrs in her ear:

“Darling, I’m sorry I didn’t write I have just been so busy”

Or how about Annie Walker from Bridesmaids with her equally loveable mother, Judy who clearly has absolutely no emotional boundaries with her daughter and often peppers her with positive platitudes that show no genuine empathy or sensitivity to her daughter’s very real pain. Judy seems more concerned with encouraging Annie to move into her house, so that she will have company, than addressing the issue that her daughter is deeply depressed.

OOOOh or how about Monica from Friends?

(not a rom come I know)

beautifully neurotic, over-the-top anxious Monica and her overbearing, critical and self-absorbed mother.

I know these are just movies.

I know we find it funny because so often we can relate to them.

I know they are just playing up the whole fairy tale narrative by adding in the evil ~~step~~mother!

I know somewhere out there the writers who created these characters most probably modelled them on real people.

But fucking hell it still frustrates me.

(Disproportionately so, and unfortunately for you, you are going to have to hear all about it!)

It frustrates me because as funny as it is to laugh at these women (And men) and their dysfunctional family dynamics ….this is a very real problem that too many people struggle with.

It frustrates me because these movies ultimately all become about the main character having some big life-changing AHA moment or a ‘pep’ talk from someone that all of a sudden enables them to suddenly ‘get it’ and walaaaaa they finally manage to turn their life around.

It frustrates me that there is never any real dialogue around the effects of relational trauma, and how devastatingly lonely and painful it can be trying to work through it.

It frustrates me that this is so far away from how true healing needs to happen

and yet NON of these stupid rom-coms come with their own disclaimers.

If it were up to me ALL ROMANTIC COMEDIES would come with a disclaimer people!!

The problem is all too often so many of us grow up in good enough families. Our parents weren’t alcoholics, we weren’t physically (or sexually abused) all our physical needs were met and more often than not we had parents who genuinely loved and cared about us.

With the absence of any ‘real visible trauma’ in our lives, it’s very easy to make the seemingly logical conclusion that we had no trauma and that all our struggles really do come down to us just not working hard enough, being positive enough or that we are just quite simply flawed.

But relational trauma is real, not getting your basic emotional needs met as a young child can have a huge effect on how you see yourself and how you relate to others in your life.

Our parents loving us is not synonymous with us getting what we needed as a child.

For a child to develop a healthy sense of self they need healthy caregivers who have dealt with their own emotional pain and are subsequently able to mirror their child’s own emotions back to them. The wounds that come from not having that mirror that you needed as a young child are incredibly painful to heal in adult life, and all too sadly many people don’t even know that they have these wounds.

In his book, Healing the Shame that Binds You, (A free PDF download of the first 3 chapters is available here) John Bradshaw describes it perfectly:

In 2014, just before my 40th birthday, I wrote a post called “The Almost 40 singleton” It was a call out to all those unmarried people out there who, like me, wanted to find a partner but were finding it a little hard. I wanted them to know that there was absolutely nothing wrong with them, that they were perfectly okay and that their person quite simply just hadn’t arrived yet.

Now at the ever so wise age of 48, I have decided that I would like to recant those sentiments, please.

I was …..~~wrong.~~….mmmm…..misguided!

In truth, I was not ok

I was struggling with my attachment issues.

I was continually hooking into other people as a way to keep myself going.

I had no genuine sense of self-agency, I was constantly living in fear of rejection and my self-love was ever so slightly dismal.

It makes me a little sad when I think about how I spent a good ten years ‘working on myself’ watching and listening to dating coaches and other various people who proclaimed to have the answers for my life.

To what end?

It horrifies me that I spent years trying to get my ‘Life coaching off the ground’ with absolutely no knowledge whatsoever about relational trauma and the absolute havoc it reeks on your self-esteem and your self-concept.

(Thank God I didn’t get any clients)

Don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with dating coaches but it’s taken me almost ten years to get to this place where I can see how futile so much of that was.

No amount of dating advice, no matter how sound it is was ever going to fix that

‘hole in my soul’.

Our attachment strategies don’t just magically disappear when you find a partner.

That being said, I will concur that it is definitely possible to heal with a partner.

This attachment wound begins in your childhood relationships and ultimately it heals in relationships too. If you have an insecure attachment and you are lucky enough to fall in love with someone with a secure attachment then healing can absolutely occur through the support and love of your significant other. It is also possible, in my humble opinion for two people with insecure attachments to grow and learn together through the years, if they both have quite strong reflective capacities and they are both willing and open to learning about themselves.

So look it’s not completely impossible.

It definitely can happen…

However in both cases, it takes patience and years…. and these types of examples are by far the exceptions, not the rule.

BUT

here lies the problem with an insecurely attached person finding love with a securely attached person.

#1 Frankly, all too often we are not attracted to them.

They do not reflect back to us what we grew up with. They are calm, centred rational and boring as shit.

(Hell, who wants that?)

They often don’t ignite that spark of lust and desire that we so desperately are looking for…

(and that we so mistakenly assume to be love)

They don’t feed into our drama.

They are inevitably the good guys that we don’t want.

#2 All too often securely attached people are not attracted to us.

They have good role models of what healthy parenting looks like and they are looking for a partner that mirrors that.

They are calm, centred and rational and they have no desire to feed into our drama.

They sense our often unconscious neediness and low and behold it is just not that attractive to them.

Doesn’t that just suck!

(Frankly, I just wish I had known all of this in my early 20’s.)

I guess underneath all this frustration these rom-coms seem to ignite in me is a deep sadness.

The sadness that comes from watching other people who are oblivious to the cause of their own pain maybe? Or perhaps on a deeper, more intuitive level, the sadness could simply be a reflection of what I feel for my own mother who carried such a deep wound of her own. I can’t help but wonder if I had understood all of this, if I had started healing earlier….could I possibly have had more compassion, understanding and empathy for her?

Or could I possibly have had more compassion, understanding and empathy for myself?

So this is what ultimately brings me back to my dissertation topic.

(See I told you we would get there in the end)

My lecturer said we needed to choose a topic that we were truly passionate about because we are going to be immersed in it for 2 full years

Well, I am passionate about helping people to understand how their attachment strategies matter.

(Particularly insecure attachments)

I wonder how many women (and men) are out there in their 40s still looking for love, still unsure as to why they just can’t seem to make it happen.

So I would like to do some sort of explorative case study looking at the role that unresolved childhood relational trauma has had on women over 40. Unfortunately, the topic is HUGE….as my lecturer so clearly pointed out this is something people could spend their entire life researching. .

(That I will not be doing!;-)

So, I need to break it down significantly…I have not the foggiest clue as to how I am going to do that….but there you have it!

I shall wait patiently for my crystal-clear clarity to hit!