In your household, love came with screaming matches, tearful apologies, slammed doors, and passionate makeups—that emotional rollercoaster 🎢 became your original template for what love feels like. Your developing brain learned that *chaos and intense emotions* often came before calm and affection, making it a powerful emotional mix. 
 
But this lesson came with a cost. Now peaceful partners feel flat, hollow, incomplete—like there's no chemistry. Your relationships often start as *intimacy on steroids*, the kind of connection that feels electric, urgent, and deeply bonding. It's the type of connection you have with someone who feels like they might be "the one"—someone you feel you've known for years, whom you understand intuitively and with whom you've already survived many storms together.
 
Yet this connection comes with a catch: you often attract partners who are *unreliable, unpredictable, emotionally unavailable or volatile*—because that familiar cocktail of intensity feels like "being together with someone close." You either pick partners who bring the chaos or create it yourself, reenacting the family drama 🎭 you've had modeled for you.
 
Even when your rational mind knows this relationship is destructive, leaving feels impossible. You seek to explain yourself and make your partner understand how wrong they are, convinced that if only they would understand and change, then everything would be alright. Your brain can almost savor the next 'hit' that comes from making up after a fight. The `intermittent cycles` of conflict and wounding each other, followed by tenderness, remarkable vulnerability, and kindness, create profound confusion and lasting love-hate attraction. 🥰﹢😡

Loving and Hating Intensely

Emotionally distant or unavailable parent

Fear-based or authoritarian parenting style

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

Tools & Learning

💓 Loving and Hating Intensely

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