The Pattern I Couldn’t See Until Now
There are moments in life where something doesn’t add new information — it reorganises everything that came before it.
This feels like one of those moments.
I’ve peeled back layers for years: therapy, reflection, writing, breakdowns, breakthroughs. Each layer revealed something real.
But this one feels different.
This one feels foundational.
The realisation is simple, and devastating in its simplicity:
I was never loved in a clean, secure, attuned way.
Not as a child.
Not as a partner.
Not as a man trying to build a life.
That truth doesn’t arrive gently.
It lands like gravity.
Love Mixed With Need
My mother didn’t love me in a way that felt safe or nourishing.
Her love was entangled with resentment — the resentment of raising a child while still wanting her own needs met.
I wasn’t met where I was.
I was something to be managed, endured, or unconsciously blamed.
My father carried deep shame.
He wanted children, but I don’t think he wanted parenthood.
He wanted something in return — meaning, validation, repair.
When that wasn’t possible, withdrawal followed.
Neither of them were villains.
Both were emotionally unavailable.
And that combination leaves a child learning a quiet rule:
Love exists — but it isn’t really for me.
Repeating the Shape of Love
Years later, I found myself in a relationship that looked different on the surface but felt eerily familiar underneath.
There may have been attraction at the beginning.
But love never had the space to take root.
Pregnancy arrived early.
Pressure arrived immediately.
Decisions were made from fear, responsibility, and expectation — not from truth.
When she eventually said she didn’t love me, we separated.
After time apart, we came back together — not because love had suddenly appeared, but because it felt, to both of us, like the right thing to do.
The responsible thing.
The stabilising thing.
What followed was years of trying on both sides.
I was proving.
Trying to earn what I hoped could still grow.
She was resentful — not because I had forced her, but because she believed she had no real choice.
Family pressure, duty, and circumstance closed in, and I became the symbol of that trap.
I accepted that version of love.
Not because it was nourishing —
but because it was familiar.
And she stayed — not because she was free,
but because leaving felt unbearable.
That wasn’t real love.
It was survival, layered with responsibility, guilt, and quiet grief.
Psychosis as Escape, Not Madness
I don’t think my psychosis came from nowhere.
I think it was my nervous system doing the only thing it could when reality became unbearable.
Knowing — on some level — that I had created a family without real love.
Knowing — much deeper — that I had never been loved in the first place.
Those truths arrived faster than I had the relational support to hold them.
So my mind escaped.
Not into randomness — but into meaningful fantasy.
Stories that gave me purpose.
Identity.
Belonging.
Significance.
Psychosis wasn’t a failure of my mind.
It was an emergency exit.
The Role I Was Playing
There is another truth that matters here — one that prevents this story from becoming flat or self-punishing.
I was growing inside that relationship.
Even while I was proving, even while I was hungry for love, I was also changing.
Becoming more reflective.
More emotionally aware.
More capable of seeing patterns rather than just enduring them.
That growth didn’t come because the relationship was healthy —
but it also didn’t mean I was static or blind.
I wasn’t only surviving.
I was learning.
Where I Abandoned Myself
This is the part that matters most.
I wasn’t just abandoned.
I also abandoned myself.
I didn’t love my partner purely either.
I loved the idea of rescuing someone.
Of proving my worth.
Of finally being chosen if I tried hard enough.
That isn’t love born from fullness.
That’s attachment born from hunger.
And hunger doesn’t choose freely.
It clings.
My Son, and the Line I Refuse to Cross
The only place I’ve felt unconditional love is with my son.
And even writing that makes me pause.
Because it is not his job to heal me.
Not his role to fill the absence I carry.
The fact that I can see that — worry about that — tells me something important:
The cycle is already weakening.
I don’t feel entitled to his love.
I feel responsible for protecting it.
That difference matters.
The Grief That Finally Has a Name
What I’m grieving now isn’t just a relationship.
I’m grieving:
- the childhood that never felt safe
- the love I thought I had
- the years spent proving instead of being
- the fantasy that kept me going
This grief is clean.
There’s no villain left to fight.
Just loss.
What This Makes Possible
Seeing this doesn’t fix anything overnight.
But it does something quieter — and more powerful.
It releases me from chasing love that feels like survival.
It allows me to imagine connection without proving.
It invites a different kind of future — slower, safer, unfamiliar.
I don’t yet know what healthy love will feel like.
But for the first time, I know what it isn’t.
And that might be enough to begin.