~ More on Real Love

From Toxic Families Forum

“…since the quality of emotional interplay in healthy relationships is often much subtler than the blatant drama of unhealthy relationships, its dramatic potential is usually overlooked in literature, drama and songs. If unhealthy styles of relating plague us, perhaps it is because that is very nearly all we see and all we know.” - Robin Norwood

It is not just popular culture that feeds dysfunctional relationships to us, but it our frame of reference from our own background telling us what relationships should look like. If our parents were battle-scarred and/or battle-weary, we will be bloody and bruised before we know it. We can choose their style to take up arms against our partner or we can go to the other extreme and refuse to battle anything out. Then we become unncessary to the dynamic, forever frustrating (and ultimately losing) our partners.

We can think that love is about breakup to makeup and that our relationships need to be played out like a high wire act otherwise they are meaningless.

As we’ve said in countless posts, real love and healthy love is anything BUT dramatic. Usually our drama is our own unfinished business playing itself out with someone else’s unfinished business. It has nothing to do with our present and much to do with our pasts. We are unfinished and if our parents were unfinished, we just continue to play out the historical dramas in our lives.

Real love and healthy love is quiet for the most part. The drama is minimum.

If we are playing out our relationships on the high wire that usually means they are not healthy and we are not healthy. It means we have work to do.

original article can be found @

http://toxicfamilies.lefora.com/2007/11/02/26-tftd-more-real-love/page1/