Sometimes grief is a person
Complex trauma-havers: if you’ve bestowed your partner with the unofficial title of emotional support human, is that person equipped to handle the honor?
If your partner is “perfect, but” belittles you; shames you for doing normal things like dressing or eating how you like; or otherwise tries to control every facet of your life, I want to know exactly what you’re seeing in that situation that screams “perfection.”
However perfect-on-paper your partner might be, if you’re treating that partner like a project — or taking care of them, like a parent — there might be something else worth considering:
Maybe he’s a distraction.
(Or she. Or they.)
So long as you have a whole adult human in your home to take care of — someone else’s messes to clean up, someone else’s needs to meet — you’ll never have to investigate your own. You’ll never truly have to heal; where would you even start, when caring for your emotional support human is top priority? On top of your already busy schedule, feeding him, sleeping with him, entertaining him, and begging him to respect you is a full-time job!
I’m using heterosexual relationships as an example here because I’m quite often surrounded with this exact experience, but people of any gender can be used as a distraction to…
