SoloMio

I've been looking for an old post that had a passage quoted in it about how we sometimes build our relationships that have our past hurts as a foundation. In other words, we connect with people not because of the positive things in our past experiences, but the negative--so we marry wound to wound. This, of course, leads to a shaky foundation.

I'd love to recover it--this syndrome had a name, but I can't remember it (woundering, or ??). Can someone send me in the right direction?

My DS33 had found "the love of his life" four months ago, but all of a sudden the whole relationship exploded, and now he's accusing her of having borderline personality disorder. He's starting to recognize that he reaches out to needy people so that he can be Mr. FixIt, but as soon as they exhibit any kind of rejection (not even rejection of his personality, even just a "why did you do that?" kind of question to him) he gets very insecure and feels abandoned.

The girl he's been dating had a similarly unstable home life with a dad who was addicted to pills. He died in December in his 50s from the pills--and her mom had thrown him out a couple of years ago and she lost contact. So she has a bunch of issues, too. Sounds like a perfect storm for a really unhealthy start to a relationship unless they can (and want to) straighten themselves out.

I'd love to share that post with him. I remember it really helped me understand some of my own patterns.

LexieCat

I don't know the post you are referring to, but it sounds a lot like Imago Relationship Therapy, which is based on the theories of Harville Hendrix. Basically, the idea is that we all have childhood wounds, and we unconsciously seek out partners with characteristics similar to our parents (who wounded us--not necessarily abused, but just wounded us in the normal course of being parents), so we can heal those wounds.

Sort of makes intuitive sense.