In looking at relationships, we think about comparisons: do we match in education, socio-economic background and expectations, ethnicity or culture, interests, etc.?  But there are so many other ways in which we could look at compatibility.  One of them is quality of attachment.

My worst match, in that regard, was with my mother.  I came from my heart, all-in, open, and devoted.  I think of it now as giving gold.  I take no special credit for the depths of my feelings; I think children, like dogs and other little animals, are wide open, as I was.

My mother, alas, couldn’t respond in kind.  From her, I got back what I call “nice-nice” manipulation.  She was responsible, wanted to be a good mother, did her best, and was lousy at relating from the heart.

So I spent the first decades of my life enraged that I couldn’t reach her.  Now I can take less personally what I understand even then: this was never going to come out even; she didn’t have it in her.  I always knew it wasn’t personal (she couldn’t), but I still felt the hurt.  If she’d been just anyone, I’d have moved on, but she was my Mother (one of the panoply of gods).  So I stayed in the game, even after she was dead.  My own self-worth depended on it.

I’ve finally learned to evaluate her from my perspective, rather than the other way around.  I’m the center of my world, and I look through my lens.  That only took 70 years.

So before you commit to a relationship (assuming you’re grown up, and know you have a choice), check out the other person’s ability to attach.  Check out your own, too, because what’s going to matter in the long run is whether and how they match.

So I’m still in love with my mother, and I still suffer because I gave everything.  I was open-hearted, devoted, attentive, responsive, forever.  She, alas, was quite limited.  Even today, I feel we were looking at such disparate parts of the elephant that I’ll never be able to grasp how she related.

I did see that she cared most of all about “having a man.”  And she cared a lot about appearances, relative levels of power, whether or not she was respected, and her ability to charm (or, perhaps, manipulate).

Whereas I cared about her.

I was at a huge disadvantage.  Deep inside, I still feel wounded, a failure, lost, abandoned, and infinitely sad.  So where does that leave me today, in matters of the heart?  Is that my model forever?  Me lonely devoted and begging?  I’ve tried everything I know to “move on,” and this is still the default, the substrate.

Today I’m thinking I will never get over it and shouldn’t try.  I will sleep and awaken with this sadness and defeat always.

But perhaps if I leave that pillar in place I can add another, so at least it won’t be the only constant in my identity.  I’m thinking yes, that is still what “relationship” feels like to me.  On the other hand, I tell clients a failed relationship can teach them about themselves: what they liked, what they didn’t, what role they played in how they chose, whether they ignored red flags, what level of tolerance they thought they had for the other person’s flaws, what level of tolerance they really had (or didn’t), and what dream sustained them even when things started to sour.  That way they can learn about their part, and do things differently the next round.

Maybe I can apply this kind of review to the ever-hurting wound of relationship with my mother.  That was my original relationship (which I didn’t choose); I can learn from it and evolve.  Maybe?

As I write this, I realize it doesn’t matter whether I’m in a relationship of the heart or not.  Just the fact that I didn’t choose that relationship might relieve some of my sense of responsibility for being in it, for fixing it, for reaching the unreachable Mother.

I think I’ll do both.  I’ll duck out of responsibility for that primary relationship, and I’ll look at the way I saw myself in that relationship, with an eye toward revising all those terrible misunderstandings.  How I “was” in that damaging relationship isn’t necessarily who I “am.”