You Cannot Get The Love You Needed In The Past

In Sumerian mythology, the goddess Inanna descends to the underworld. At each of seven gates, she must surrender an article of clothing representing her status as queen. By the time she reaches the bottom, she is totally naked and killed by the rulers of the underworld. Three days later, however, two mysterious beings restore her to life.

It’s a beautiful metaphor for intimacy. We enter relationships clothed in our old ideas about what love should look like, what we should do to be lovable, what others should do to prove love to us. And one by one, these veils are stripped away.

It's so painful. Beneath these old ideas lie old wounds. Perhaps we never got the affection we needed from our mother, or the recognition we longed for from our father. Perhaps we learned to earn love by being useful, agreeable, or exceptional. And so we carry these longings into adulthood, hoping someone will finally give us what we were missing.

But the truth is: You cannot get the love you needed in the past. You can only get the love you need right now.

No matter how deeply someone loves you today, they cannot give you a different childhood. And when we unconsciously ask others to do this, even their most generous expressions of love will leave us disappointed.

There’s a Buddhist teaching summarized in four words: “No one is in charge.”

As children, we needed someone to be in charge: to feed, protect, and comfort us. And some part of us may still be waiting for someone to take charge. But no one is in charge. The people we love are just as vulnerable as we are.

This can seem terribly lonely. But it can also be the beginning of genuine intimacy.

When we stop asking others to make the past turn out differently, we can finally see them as they are. Not parents, protectors, or saviors, but human beings, whose naked vulnerability turns out to be the only thing that can resurrect our faith in love.

As always, if you’d like to be held through your own process, reach out and we’ll set up a free coaching call.