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It’s a big conversation with important implications this July, too crucial to hold back.

Hope to see you there!

MFJess

So, in a partnership, how do you say…. “I don’t feel like I love you anymore.”

I mean, I might KNOW that I love you. That I’d be devastated to lose you. You’re a huge part of my daily life and I can’t imagine it without you.

Or… I might KNOW that I once loved you. And assume the feeling is still there, somewhere, even though I can’t actually access it right now.

But do I FEEL like I love you, right now, in this moment, and the vast majority of them? Does my heart swell when you’re around? Does it seem like we really SEE each other, and connect fully? Does being in your presence melt away the stresses of the day? Am I the best version of me in this relationship?

“Eh.” Sometimes. But it’s definitely not what it used to be like, in depth, intensity, or consistency. In fact, half of the time (for me, more like 95% of the time) I don’t feel love in our relationship, at all. I just feel fear, compression, repression, insecurity, and resentment.

The thing that was once so connective, refreshing, rejuvenating, validating, and addictingly stabilizing becomes the exact opposite. Time and time again.

So what’s up with that?

Well, this month, we’re still talking about relationship issues over in the living-book-on-recovering-from-CPTSD community.

Including, how and why our trauma histories cyclically pop up together, revealing deep wounds and self-judgments we never knew we held. Ways to foster better communication for conflict resolution – down to a subconscious wound-healing level. And the purpose of having them at all… so we can heal all parts of ourselves, not only the ones we preferentially keep “near the surface.”

Meaning… I’ll be straight with you, it’s a DENSE month over in the private stream. Three research episodes that are crammed with things that have changed my perspective on relationships and confidence in someday being able to navigate them, drastically.

And we’re starting with an episode on a topic that probably baffles all of us.

Why does love fade? Why do protective programs take over? Why do we become hardened to each other as time goes on? And why does resentment, withdrawal, and mutual self-defense become our standard relational go-to?

Well, let’s open this conversation and talk through a shockingly simple explanation. Even better yet, it’s a “full circle” discussion, pulling in our past several months of learning to clarify one of life’s greatest shitsteries. The loss of love, uprising of protective strategies, and growth of resentment in relationship.

So let’s talk it through, in the brief version. For all the details, you know where to go. Check the show notes.

First things first. You remember our ongoing “small s self vs. Big S Self” conversation?

(If you also think it sounds like “big ass Self” – I know. I cackle at it every time too.)

The small s self is our egoic representation of ourselves, which is a more externalized view on who we think we are and need to be. It’s cognitive, it’s learned from our social experiences, and it’s roughlyyyy…. Not really about us, at all, on an authentic level. It’s the template designed by our interactions with every other person on the planet. The cognitive approximation of what is “correct” based on prior opportunities for punishment and reinforcement.

The Big S Self is the opposite. It’s an energetic, emotional sortof thing that lives in your body – in your guts and your chest.

It’s not developed through your folks reinforcing or punishing it, the way that your egoic self is. It’s always been there, in its full form, and it remains unscathed by trauma. It’s the source of allll the good C’s, according to Internal Family Systems therapy. Compassion, curiosity, clarity, calm, compassion, creativity, connection, confidence, and courage.

I think I threw an extra C in there. But you see how important these characteristics are – in life and in relationship. Problem is, it’s really difficult to maintain access to this Big-S Self thing, because we disassociate from it under duress.

So you might already see where this is going.

When we fall in love or into deep connection (note: when we say “relationship” around here, we mean any variety of associative partnership, not just romantic ones), we do it… through the Big S Self.

It’s our source of that unconditional love nonsense. It’s how we genuinely bond with another. It’s that experience of “seeing someone’s soul” and feeling that they see yours, too. Being seen as the Capital S Self is the sensation of being fully accepted and appreciated, that fills your body with good feelings (for once), and sets your brain on a less negatively-slanted thought train.

Seeing life through rosie colored glasses and actually feeling fully ALIVE in your own skin? That’s the Self, being drawn up from the darkness of the tomb you usually keep it in for safe keeping.

And that’s… Love. Operating from the full, authentic, Self. Unencumbered by nasty brain programs that are usually dominating every moment. Being allowed to let down your guard, open your heart (sorry, I fucking hate those words also), and just be, safely, without fear of punishment or retribution.

You know, the things we never got early in life.

So our long-lost Big S Selves allow us to meet needs we’ve never had fulfilled before. We suddenly understand why it’s supposedly so rad to “be a human.” A mystery we have never understood before. We see life in a whole new way… all the way down to how we assess ourselves (small s).

And we feel alive.

Problem is. It doesn’t stay that way.

Over time, we can’t sustain this fleeting state of being in our Self energy. Especially when we have trauma histories.

We learned a long, long, time ago that it’s not okay to just be us. On either level of self – small or Big S. So we learned to disconnect from the Capital S Self, to push it out of our bodies, because the pain of life has been too great for our sensitive soul-y things to experience.

Add onto that, the fact that we have heads that are programmed… uhhh… let’s say… in extreme ways. We have trauma reactions. Protective instincts. Segmented memory systems. Fragmented personalities. Disassociative tendencies. Hypervigilant systems.

So, that early Big-S-Self-Big-S-Self connection? Gets bowled over.

Eventually, life is going to start pinging those trauma-reactive programs in your brain. Your head is going to automatically respond, sending rapidfire activations through your neural networks, and lighting up the fractionalized portions of your brain that correspond to survival behaviors, past experiences, and present emotional floodings.

And there goes the “pleased about existing” energy you had.

In other words… we live in a traumatizing world, that’s guaranteed to start triggering your same ol, same ol, shitty trauma brain. Lighting up your parts – go back to the parts and IFS episodes if you don’t know what I’m saying – and shutting down your capacity for reaching your Big S Self.

You stop being the full, authentic, you. Feeling all your feelings. Being present and curious in your experiences. Having the same openness, compassion, and confidence.

And instead, you start being… a conglomerate of your trauma responses.

How have you learned to survive so far? What are you always on the lookout for? What signals danger to you? What roles do you have to fill to be accepted? How do you need to respond to keep breathing? What other forces threaten those efforts?

Your head springs into action, your protective parts take over, and your initial connection struggles to be maintained.

This is the stage of “revealing your less favorable parts.” The small s selves that live inside of you. Your protectors, exiles, and distractors. Your fragmented personality bittles.

And at the same time?

Your partner will be going through the same thing. This isn’t a one-sided issue and it doesn’t necessarily start with you. It’ll be a mutual problem that can start from either party. And here’s why.

If ONE person’s parts are getting lit, so are the other person’s. Our brains respond accordingly to other brains – automatically – without our conscious input. And we have parts that were developed by people who demanded we jump before they even have to utter the words.

So, when one person slips into parts? So will the other. BOTH relational partners lose their access to the Self.

And – here’s the extra damning news – their parts activate each other in a highly-destructive, corresponding fashion.

If THEY show up in a self-defensive, aggressive, rigid program (a protector part) – you’ll have two options. 1) wither from their behaviors. Become the corresponding weak, easy to please, and overly flexible version of you. Likely, an Exile part. Or 2) stand up to their behaviors. Front with your own Protector part to keep yourself safe without selling yourself out.

Thirdly, I suppose you could also flip into a Distractor part. Create chaos or disassociate completely to avoid actually dealing with the aggressive afront.

But no matter which way you go, the result is the same. They fell into a part, and you reactively, protectively, did the same.

Now, both partners have been reduced from their full, soulful, connective Capital S Self thing…. To their “preferred,” egoic version of small s self, when life provokes that flex to take place.

But it doesn’t stop there, because over time, they’ll slip all the way into (probably) not their favorite, preferred, conscious parts. We eventually take on the learned, fueled by fright, segments of our personalities that were developed to deal with our families of origin and the rest of those negative experiences we’ve had.

So… “love”? “Authentic connection”? “Soulful bonding”?

All go out the window.

We don’t have access to the best of us. Or the resources that are necessary for healthy relationships – all those previously listed Cs. Or, even, our own full scope of emotions and somatic sensations.

We can’t reconnect fully. We can’t find acceptance, because we’re repressing pieces of ourselves. We can’t be present in the moment or stay unmarred by bad relational memories flooding our brains.

And we mutually shut down. Perhaps one partner before the other, maybe all at once. The connection ends abruptly in an explosion or gradually fades.

Both people might attempt to rekindle the relationship. But staying in their Self energy is exceedingly difficult – in general. And also, the difficulty level is raised to an exponential degree when we’re encountering someone else who’s not in THEIR Self place.

Remember, each time they show up with parts, your system will do the same. Everyone becomes shut down, highly reactive, or disassociative, again.

So, with no one capable of staying in their Self, the relationship stops feeling fulfilling. And this is where the resentment comes in.

You KNOW that this connection was great at some point. Your partner was able to give you what you deeply needed. They were there for you, with you, rather than working against you or withdrawing.

So now… your brain doesn’t understand why they don’t offer the same level of connection and soulful love back. You feel like they’re withholding from you. Refusing to be the person they once were.

And when we expect something that isn’t being fulfilled? When we assess that it’s a conscious choice, meant to deprive us? That’s when we get resentful.

No big deal, just one of the four horsemen of doomed relationships.

So our partner is stuck in the same cycle we are – flipping through parts trying to survive the pressures of the world, the past, and the present relationship triggers. Neither of us can really BE OURSELVES. But both of us are externalizing the experience to be the other person’s choice. Probably, because at the same time, we’re also punishing ourselves for being the problem.

We’re mad at us for ruining it. We’re mad at them for the same thing. But we can’t get out of the hole that’s been dug between us by our correspondingly reactive parts. All we can do is stew in our negative feelings and unmet needs, growing apart as we struggle through our bad relationship behaviors, feeling helpless to change a thing.

Or, ya know, consider this all “vice versa.” Maybe it explains why someone kept insisting YOU were withholding love and connection, no matter how hard you tried or how intensively they begged.

And I bet you haven’t treated yourself kindly in the aftermath of that bewildering experience.

Well… I hope this little rundown has given you some clarity on those past shitshows.

We connect with the Capital S Self. We experience acceptance. And it feels like everything we’ve been lacking for our entire lifetimes.

We fall back into the small s self when we need to prove who we are to our brains, them, and the world.

We get triggered into our parts – showing up as Protectors, Exiles, and Distractors as earthly and relational pressures eventually start trickling in. Our survival programs and hidden wounds take over the relationship dynamic.

Our parts trigger our partner’s parts, so they’re reduced to adaptive responses, as well.

And at that point, no one can access their Self energy. Connection becomes fraught. Acceptance isn’t genuine. The love feels lost.

Leading us to cycles of resentment, as we mutually assess that the other party is withholding what we need from them. Without, of course, knowing what those needs even are, or how to accept fulfillment of them, because we’ve been hiding these pains from ourselves.

Holler back to last month.

And at that point, the relationship is set on a pathway towards hell. Neither person is able to right the sinking ship alone. Both struggle to refind their Capital S Self. And every time parts present their fugly little faces – jk, we need to show them respect and appreciation or they’ll destroy us – we lose any progress we’ve made and set off the other person’s parts in return. Alarm bells blaring, protective programs engaging, connection impossible.

And we’ll learn next time… that means the end of constructive communication.

Locked in parts battles, we shut each other down and turn our partners away for our protection. And a whole lot more. We’ll talk about it.

But I hope this has helped clear up some unsolved mysteries for you.

To deepen the application in your own life? Consider when your relationships took a fraughtful turn. What pressures were weighing down on each partner and setting off parts? When did they “start to feel like family” and your red flags starting flying onto the field? When did your brain start assessing them as “maybe dangerous?” and responding accordingly, even when you wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt?

When did your parts get involved in relationships, when did theirs, and how did they rot out the connection that was built?

Ya know, some light weekend reflecting. Just kidding, this could be a year or ten of work.

But in the meantime… I’ll see you here in two weeks to pick up the rest of the bullet points from this conversation! We’ll talk about how parts play dirty in relationship. And how to resolve conflicts in parts on parts wars between partners.

If you’re hankering for a lot more of this information – we’ve got it for ya. Hit the private stream at patreon.com/traumatizedmotherfuckers for the hours-long episodes digging into the research and extra details behind all these bite sized summary shows.

Get the videos, reflective worksheets, discussion polls, and community submissions while you’re there. Surprise, everyone is getting ALL the resources this month, regardless of subscription level, because it’s a dense and crucial one.

Also, check the new “Beginner” tier available there – for those who are just starting to learn about CPTSD and want an easy entry into the most-needed information and private community. We’ve made it easier for you.

And til next time. When we try to make trauma-typical relationship disasters easier, overall…

Hail yer damn Self. Capital S.

Hail your ability to connect authentically, if you can heal these pesky parts. We’ll work on it.

Hail Archie.

And cheers, y’all.