## How it started
Growing up, love came with mixed messages: sometimes your parent was emotionally available and caring, other times *distant, or angry* 🎭. You learned that love could disappear without warning, that people you depended on might suddenly become unavailable or leave entirely. At the same time, you experienced moments of genuine connection that felt so good you'd do anything to hold onto them ✨. This taught your nervous system a cruel equation: *the more you care, the more you have to lose* 💔. While a part of you desperately seeks closeness and intimacy, the other part is terrified that once you have it, it will be taken away—so you learned to guard against losing it by not raising your hopes too high.<br><br>
## How it shows up in relationships
Your texts tell the story—flooding them with hearts 💕 when they're distant, then leaving them on Read ✓✓ when they reply too fast. Now you find yourself caught in a double-bind of *conflicting desires for both closeness and defense*, creating `simultaneous pull-push behaviors` that feel confusing, yet protective 🌊. In relationships, you alternate between extremes—sometimes showing intense attraction, while also picking fights, or pour your heart out, but then immediately downplay and qualify what you just shared. You might act distant to protect yourself from potential heartbreak or `test your partner constantly`—pushing them to prove they won't leave, while simultaneously giving them reasons to want to 🌀. Your nervous system can't tell the difference between getting closer to intimacy (good) and getting closer to inevitable loss (bad). *Sometimes you do both with the same person within a single day*—desperately reaching for them when they feel distant, then feeling suffocated and needing space the moment they respond to your need for closeness 🔄.<br><br>
## The core pattern
You've become an expert at starting the very fights that prove your point: "See? No one can handle the real me." Yet the "real you" is just a scared kid who never learned love could be steady. This pattern feels almost intentional, except *it's not under your conscious control*. Relationships feel either dangerously suffocating or painfully absent, with no middle ground. You either lose yourself completely in new partners or keep them at arm's length to prevent being overwhelmed by their "unreasonable" needs. With time, many of your relationships become chaotic and volatile, which sometimes drives you to swing to the opposite extreme and avoid deep connections entirely—keeping things strictly casual. *Your heart wants what it fears most*—the very intimacy that could heal you also feels like it could destroy you.

When love feels real only when it hurts

## Signs you might relate to this dating style:
> - You push partners away when they get too close
>
> - Calm relationships make you nervous - like something's wrong
>
> - You test people by starting fights to see if they'll stay
>
> - You miss them when they're gone but feel smothered when they're around
>
> - "I love you" and "I need space" might happen in the same hour
>
> - Happy times feel fake - like the bad stuff is coming soon

## How it started:
> - Your parents were hot-and-cold - loving one minute, distant the next
>
> - Good moments disappeared without warning
>
> - You never knew where you stood with them
>
> - Love felt like a rollercoaster you couldn't get off

## You attract:
> - **The Drama Addict**: They need your emotional chaos to feel alive, using your push-pull to avoid their own boring emptiness
>
> - **The Rescuer Complex**: They need someone to "save" repeatedly, so your mixed signals give them endless fixing projects
>
> - **The Intensity Junkie**: They need your emotional extremes to feel passionate, using your volatility as their entertainment
>
> - **The Stability Avoider**: They need your unpredictability to justify their own fear of commitment and consistency
>
> Your nervous system relaxes around these partners because they prove your survival math works—love requires constant vigilance and emotional warfare

## Who you're drawn to:
> - **The Steady Secure**: Their consistency terrifies and fascinates you—they represent the emotional safety you never learned to trust
>
> - **The Fellow Chaos Creator**: They match your push-pull perfectly, validating that "real love" requires dramatic ups and downs
>
> - **The Part-Time Lover**: Their distance feels familiar, like home—it triggers your desperate pursuit mode
>
> - **The Fixer-Upper**: They promise steady love but can't deliver  
>  
> You confuse anxiety spikes for chemistry, and peaceful moments for boredom  

## Core pattern:
> - You think love has to hurt to be real, so you create the very drama that keeps you from experiencing steady, secure love

## What healthy attraction looks like:
> - Someone who stays calm during your storms without leaving or fighting back
>
> - Partners who prove love isn't about tests, games, or emotional extremes
>
> - Relationships where "boring" doesn't mean "broken" or losing interest
>
> - People who love you the same on Tuesday as they did on Monday
>
> - Connections where you can be close without fearing abandonment or suffocation

Come Here, Go Away

Emotionally distant or unavailable parent

Living in refugee camps or temporary shelters

No safe adult to turn to for emotional support

Parent constantly in trouble with the law

Parent involved in illegal or criminal activities

Parent with anorexia and eating disorders

Parent with borderline personality disorder (bpd)

Parent with extreme paranoia, delusions, or conspiracy beliefs

Parent with obsessive-compulsive disorder (ocd)

Parent with self-harm or suicidal behaviors

Parent with undiagnosed or untreated personality disorder

Scolding, verbal abuse, put-downs in the family

Sudden displacement/immigration due to war/persecution

Witnessing violence during migration journey

Tools & Learning

🌊 Come Here, Go Away: When love feels real only when it hurts

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