🚙Driving without a GPS: When making your own choices feels unsafe

How It Started

Growing up, your parent constantly reframed and redefined your reality, making you unsure about your own understanding of events, questioning your own memories, and uncertain about your own feelings 🤯. When you said you were hurt, they told you not to be a wuss—"it don't hurt that bad". When you remembered something clearly, they insisted you were confused, exaggerating it or simply making it up. In the shadows of their gaslighting, your developing mind learned that your version of events was inherently unreliable—that the adults around you were the ultimate arbiters of what was true, right and real and what wasn't 🧑‍⚖️. This systematic undermining of your perception became your survival adaptation—you learned to constantly check your reality against others' versions to avoid being "wrong" again. Your ability to read other people's perspectives and adapt to their versions of reality became a protective superpower 💪, helping you navigate a world where your own inner compass had been systematically destroyed.

But this came at a devastating cost. Your developing mind learned that connection meant never pressing your own opinions, that your perceptions were shaky and needed constant double-checking. When your parent voiced their take on your friends or teachers, you learned to just shrug and say "Whatever"—that was safer than arguing your point and risking a fight over something as "trivial" as having your own opinion. You discovered that keeping the peace required keeping your thoughts to yourself. This became your gift—you became incredibly skilled at hearing other people's opinions and seeing both sides of the story, sometimes adopting polar opposite opinions on the same issue as if they were your own. What seemed like flexibility and impartiality to you, meant sacrificing your inner compass. You traded away your ability to trust your own judgment in exchange for not risking being called "crazy, dramatic, extreme, overreacting or wrong" 🧭.

How This Shows Up In Relationships

Now you find yourself magnetically drawn to partners with strong, confident inner compasses—but not just any confident people. You unconsciously seek partners who are specifically unable to validate multiple perspectives, but who seem to be able to validate yours. These are the people who see the world in black and white, who are decisive to the point of being inflexible ✊. This isn't coincidence—your childhood wound is drawn to recreate the exact dynamic that created it in the first place.

When a strong-willed partner chooses you and starts making decisions for both of you—all the while staying respectful and having your best interests in mind, your nervous system floods with dopamine—the neurochemical reward of being respected and valued by decisive authority 💉. This feels like coming home because it temporarily resolves what you've been looking for: finally, someone who is both decisive and has your best interests in mind. The relief is intoxicating. You can relax into the safety of having someone else's reliable reality to follow, letting their confident perceptions guide major and minor decisions alike.

But then your buried core need surfaces with a vengeance. Deep down, you desperately want what your partner has in abundance—the ability to form strong opinions and make important decisions with ease. Not to have your perceptions validated by someone and not to give a damn about being called crazy, dramatic or wrong. This is precisely the wrong partner for you. You chose them for what you didn't have. If you grow to reclaim what you've sacrificed as a child, the power differential that created the original attraction between you will disappear 💀. Your partner will no longer seem to you like the infallible GPS system—but rather just another fallible human with strong opinions. The dopamine hit from being chosen and validated by decisive authority evaporates, and the relationship loses its neurochemical reward.

Without the neurochemical reward, the relationship may feel flat and uninteresting. You may find yourself losing attraction to them or simply feeling bored. Sometimes this alone is enough for the relationship to end quietly. Other times, you may unconsciously revert to the same childhood survival strategies you used with your gaslighting parent: either you completely submit ("Fine, you're right, I don't know anything") and resign to being a confused child forever, or rebel and create conflict ("You're not the boss of me!"), attacking their confidence as controlling and manipulative.

The Core Pattern

You seek partners with strong compasses because they represent your “polar opposite”. That is the part you had to give up as a child—your ability to trust your own perceptions and stand by your decisions. Through these partners, you gain the temporary safety of external guidance and the relief of not having to trust your "unreliable" judgment. But your unconscious partner selection ensures failure: you specifically choose strong-minded people who can't entertain multiple perspectives, then blame them when they predictably can't meet that need. The moment you start to grow in your own opinions and decisions, you discover that you're being controlled and manipulated all over again.