When “love” comes with conditions, scripts, and invisible walls.
I’m getting closer to being able to name and understand this pattern after friction or rupture in relationships with people heavily invested in their rightness and entitlement, and equally invested…
I am a survivor studying the wreckage, noticing a pattern.When a person is being harmed, a mountain of tidy evidence is demanded—transcripts, videotapes, witnesses, perfectly composed testimony—and even then, it…
I’m learning to recognize a pattern. I name something specific: a word that was said, a boundary crossed, a moment that caused distress.The response shifts quickly—to my tone, my sensitivity,…
Over the years, my children’s father, my mother, and my sister communicated and met without me. This alliance was formed in the shadows. There was no pre‑existing relationship between my…