Attracted to Who Abandoned You

[Listen to an audio version of this blog here.]

I listened to a podcast awhile back about a guy who lived alone in the forest for 42 days. The first three days, he said, were the hardest, because he felt like he should be doing something or communicating with someone. The more he settled into the rhythms of nature, the more he let go of that feeling. In some ways, being single is like that. For years, I was on and off dating apps. I was in weird, sort-of relationships that usually just left me confused. I tried dating multiple people at once, or even just talking to multiple people at once, but when I did that, I usually started resenting everyone. None of it was very useful, and there’s nothing worse than being in a partnership that feels lonely or unhealthy or suffocating, either.

I just started reading The Tender Bar, and underlined this line on the very first page, “While I fear that we’re drawn to what abandons us, and to what seems most likely to abandon us, in the end I believe we’re defined by what embraces us.” J.R. Moehringer.

Moehringer identified a sentiment I’d carried around for years, without the ability to articulate, which is that people are attracted to the things (or people) they cannot have, so it stands to reason that we crave attention, or even love, from those we feel abandoned by. This is one reason adopted kids…