If you’re in a relationship with a loved one that repeatedly acts in hurtful ways, you’re likely dealing with recurring rushes of anger or disappointment, regardless of whether you are consciously aware of or express these or similar emotions. It can feel as if this person keeps stealing the sense of emotional safety that you, your body and mind, are hardwired to seek.

It is only human, after all, to feel betrayed by the actions of a partner who is emotionally or physically abusive, addicted to a substance, compulsively spends money, or repeats acts of infidelity despite promises, as occurs with sex or love addiction.

While the emotional intensity is understandable, it is still a heavy weight to carry, much less balance. It’s not easy to deal with these emotions, and at the same time the repeated strikes, which challenge your efforts to restore the inner sense of emotional safety that, at any given time, you innately strive to realize in relation to life around you.

A look at the usual simplistic approach…

In response to hurtful actions of a loved one, forgiveness is largely regarded as the highest, most noble action, and a prerequisite for healing to take place. Depending on the circumstances, it often is. In fact, a stubborn refusal to forgive can both prolong and intensify suffering for the person that was wronged.

In response to being wronged or mistreated by a loved one, whether emotional or physical abuse, or betrayal and infidelity, forgiveness is often considered the most critical ingredient for healing to eventually take place.

Indeed, depending on the context, forgiveness is a powerfully healing agent. In fact, a refusal to forgive or let go often prolongs suffering for the person that was wronged.

But what happens when the hurtful actions are repetitive and ongoing? Or, when the person who has acted wrongly is not willing (or able) to make meaningful amends? Or when the wronged person is not ready to forgive?

In these circumstances, argues Dr. Janis Abrahms Spring, author of How Can I Forgive You? The Courage to Forgive, The Freedom Not To, genuine forgiveness can only take place when the onus of responsibility rests on the person who acted wrongly to earn forgiveness, and that, in certain situations, the best option for the person who was mistreated or betrayed is to have the freedom to not forgive, and to instead turn to the healing power of acceptance, one of four approaches to forgiveness.

Toxic interaction patterns seemingly take control of partners’ lives to negatively affect the possibilities for fun and intimacy in their couple relationship.

When a relationship becomes toxic it reflects the habitual ways partners manage their emotions, in particular, the emotions that human beings find most challenging, such as anger and fear.

In Part 1, we explored five toxic interaction patterns in which partners collude in scripted roles with one another, and get stuck activating one another’s protective-response patterns. In Part 2, we looked at the neuroscience beneath these emotional command circuits, in ready position to activate, and how they destabilize each partner’s inner sense of emotional safety in the relationship, setting them up to be at their worst, when they most need to be at their best to effectively handle challenging situations.

In this post we explore key factors that affect the balance of relationships, and the first step partners can take to break free of the toxic patterns and restore balance in their relationship and, or personal life.

What would it take to restore balance?

Restoring balance in a couple relationship is primarily about each partner establishing their own inner sense of emotional safety in relation to the other.

The latest findings in neuroscience place love and healthy relationships at the center of what optimizes our health, physically and emotionally, and the quality of our lives in general.

Perhaps no experience in the course of our lifetime, whether conscious or subconscious, consumes more energy, or produces more intense emotions, and up and down extremes in thinking or behaving, than the drive to secure the heart of that special person we seek, and to make a difference in some way – to matter and bring value to the relationship.

A growing body of scientific evidence shows that the way we express love and care for one another, from the time we are infants and throughout our lives, directly affects the health and physical structure of our brains and nervous systems.

Love that turns toxic is neither healthy nor genuine, though the intentions of each partner are often well-meaning.

A couple relationship can be described as toxic when, due to intense emotional reactivity and defensive interaction patterns, it no longer promotes, and instead harms the individual mental, emotional, and physical, well-being and growth of each partner. The relationship is increasingly off balance, a factor that is affected by, and directly affects the individual inner sense of balance, health and safety of each partner.

In contrast, genuine love is an empathic connection that recognizes the authentic other and self as separate and unique beings, even encouraging the individuality of each as essential to the formation of healthy intimacy in a relationship.

Neurological findings in the last decades show that we are wired for certain early protective behaviors in life, and that these become habitual responses automatically activated throughout life, often without conscious awareness. Intense emotional experiences in childhood can alter the structure of the brain and have enduring effects in adulthood.

Everyone has ideas about love; for human beings, it is a lifelong preoccupation. The love relationship is unique in that, across cultures, nothing drives otherwise normal human beings to do crazy things than the quest for a love bond in a couple relationship.

What is genuine love, however?

It has many attributes. One experience of love is, as Mark Twain describes, “the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.” Recent findings in neuroscience would agree with Mr. Twain’s statement. Romantic attraction appears to release the same levels, if not higher, of dopamine and oxytocin into the bloodstream as drugs.

Genuine love, however, is all encompassing. It mirrors the attributes of human nature at its best.

“Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence,” says psychological theorist Eric Fromm. It’s something that “stretches your heart and makes you big inside,” notes poet and author Margaret Walker.

An even more far reaching view says that,

“Love has no awareness of merit or demerit; it has no scale… Love loves; this is its nature.” ~ HOWARD THURMAN

Attributes of a genuine love are ones that reflect our human nature. We are relationship beings, hardwired with inborn strivings, for empathic connection.

The eroticization of male dominance and female passivity in couple relations is a game in which there are no winners, an unhealthy trap that blocks what makes human relationships human —  an empathic connection — a wired drive to mutually know and to understand one another, in our relationships, that is rooted in our compassionate nature, yet also a learned skill, which requires us to remain open and vulnerable to grow the courage we need for its realization.

The dehumanizing nature of these cultural stories, as value systems, remains hidden in our world today, upheld and masked by mass media and pornography industries, that sell notions of eroticized dominance to men, and a milder version of romanticized dominance to women. These cultural values normalize addictive patterns of relating in couple relationships, with interlocking dynamics of narcissism and codependency, and cause a lot of emotional suffering for both sexes, with far reaching effects on family and other social contexts.

For this and other reasons, looking more closely at the impact of these cultural stories opens up possibilities for men and women to see one another anew, and, rather than compete, to honor the intrinsic dignity and value of each in relation to the other, first and foremost, as human beings, with an amazing potential to work cooperatively to build societies that support the formation of healthy relationships and enrich human life.

Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man (dreamstime.com)

Human beings are fascinated by stories. It’s part of our nature, as much as breathing, and our brain learns best through the telling of stories.

Simply put, we are born storytellers. We fashion a story about ourselves from the time we are born, if not earlier.

Our story contains an array of verbal, visual, and other felt sensory elements, in addition to a storyline that can endure a lifetime.

This storyline forms an inner dialogue of thoughts, a stream of consciousness, or ‘self-talk,’ that explains and interprets our life, self and situations – to others and to our own mind . We have an average of fifty to seventy thousand thoughts a day, most of which are repetitive in nature, and not conscious thinking, but rather under the control of the part of the mind that runs all the systems of the body that we don’t have to think about, often known as the ‘subconscious,’ ‘unconscious’ or ‘non-conscious’ mind.

Paradoxically, we are the creators of these running commentaries, and at the same time, the stories we fashion turn around to shape us and our lives in profound ways. 

“If there is something to gain and nothing to lose by asking, by all means ask!” W. CLEMENT STONE

Getting what you want isn’t always easy, and, for many, neither is the asking. Yet, the ability to make clear, concise requests is a hallmark of those who achieve what they want in life, to include personal success and great relationships.

If you read this and are thinking, “but I do ask,” “it falls on deaf ears,” or “nothing works,” etc., think again.

It’s not uncommon for people to think they are making requests when instead they’re merely venting, complaining, or repeating a well-worn mini-lecture.

The human psyche, Dr. Carl Jung said, ever strives for wholeness and healing.

Jung taught that healing, wholeness and consciousness, whether for an individual or a group, are inborn subconscious strivings. In his words:

“There is in the psyche a process that seeks its own goal no matter what the external factors may be….the almost irresistible compulsion and urge to become what one is.”

The path to one’s healing is a journey to consciousness, and the doorway to this path is … the discovery of one’s psyche wounds.

Notably, the latest neuroscience supports some of Jung’s observations. The subconscious mind can operate outside of conscious awareness, for example, and we do have the ability to heal our brain with self-directed methods of neuroplasticity.

The most painful wound in the Western psyche?