Emotional Inheritance: reasons why we cannot re-engineer our instinct in any quest for a life-partner
I gawked at this tiny store at my school which sold all kind of sweets for hours while waiting for my Papa to pick-me up. I swear, my other childhood preoccupations was to take over of all stores at schools which sold sweets and stuffs and make it mine, only. My Papa came toward me quietly until I didn’t notice his movements, he said to me “Want some?”. I startled. I couldn’t believe this day will finally came to me and I would willingly give everything I had in return just to be in this kind of rare moment.
When I was a kid, I had a severe asthma that I had to deal with for years, at least, it got better when I was enrolling junior high school. During that period of time, I need to shield myself from any kind of its triggering factor; of course including sweet stuffs in all its form. FYI, I used to involve in endless fights with my Mama because I often sneaked in our refrigerator and took one candy and ended up with another asthma drama overnight. But this time — this one is a whole different story. My Papa was a perfect angel depiction of mine.
I came home with a chocolate on my right-hand and my other hand holding papa’s hand. I didn’t care what kind of nightmare that had awaited — but this moment I had — was definitely too precious to be distracted by my fear and worries. It didn’t mean that papa wasn’t concerned about my condition at all, but he had issues with saying ‘no’ to his only daughter. Anyway, he didn’t say ‘no’ to me, I wasn’t asking either, so he wasn’t guilty. I’d freed my Papa from the feeling of at fault if in case my asthma acted up at night. When we got home, he grabbed cough asthma syrup and gave it to me and Mama didn’t know this at all (probably soon cause I’d wrote this story lol).
That’s only a glimpse of our emotional attachment. Overall, he is a guy who:
- doesn’t say ‘No’ to me
- never raise his voice regardless of the circumstances in our house
- never impose his ideas or opinion to me
- always reliably seeks for explanation whenever I messed up
- doesn’t crumple if I acted like a j*rk
- can bear my rebellion
- always answers my silly questions wholeheartedly
These characteristics possession of his perfectly fitted on my (mostly) obnoxious and childish personality. He is indeed my first love.
When I grew up and started to fall in love with person(s), I began to notice how I attracted with people. For each of my relationships; at least — this guy has one trait that shares to Papa’s characteristics even for the slightest. I thought it was mostly because my huge admiration to Papa and that’s how I made him as a role model — until the fact that today I found this mind-blowing scientific reasons over why I’ve always stuck on the personality traits I feel familiar with (and found it difficult to get myself unstuck from this criteria) while I am in search for a perfect partner. I feel rather genius when I read this. Here are the things I would like to share with you:
I’m currently reading the first few pages of The School of Life book series; How to Overcome Your Childhood, and already feel like a great philosopher in a life-time (I highly recommend you to read this too). As you might have a look at my previous post, you’d probably be able to have a guess why I bought this book. This shows us about how our day-to-day behavior is enormously influenced by what so called as emotional inheritance, yet very few of us is aware of. Providing an analogy of a family tree with its lineage down generation, the guys at the bottom would see themselves as the product of all the dudes and girls had come before them, therefore, they’d likely to share similar characteristics possession with their ancient family (as I believe you already know about this). However, this emotional inheritance pass-down both sunny and dark sides, which should be enough to force us knowing a little bit more details about how this inheritance works within us.
As the book explains about childhood-derived challenges that affect our adult selves, such as; a kid who receives unreliable love from parents will create their adult consequence of avoidant behavior, detachment, or overly independent nature, I also think other matters work in the same way. My happy junctures of childhood moments with Papa snapped perfectly and mostly lead myself to feel sentimental about it. A photograph of Papa who carried me on my first-birthday smiling widely affectionately, a moment when Papa bought me a chocolate at school, a moment when Papa burst into laughter as I cried and yelled over an unfinished homework, a moment when Papa always answer my question about, “Why do I be sent to hell if I do not fulfill the 5 times prayer?”, or “Why is male lion so lazy?”, or “Why does dolphin can kiss a human’s nose?”, and many other questions which surprisingly, he will always have the answer that satisfies my curiosity.
“Our adult identities are heavily determined by how things unfolded before our fifteenth birthday.” — The School of Life
The exact reason why I always get stuck with the similar characteristics possession when I look for partner is not only because the feeling of admiration I have for Papa. It’s more than that.
Those childhood memories lingering on my head — how papa treats, communicates, reacts, and manages his daughter is the emotional inheritance that works in my inner self — creating a definition of love in my own version, which later guides me in seeking the similar criteria in whoever the prospective partner is and make sure if I’ll receive the same thing I used to get when I was a kid, in order to feel the love I used to feel in my childhood moment.
I’ll say the prospective partner is not sexy or not my type, which is actually translated in my inherited state of mind as: “He’s a guy who often argues with me, he’s so close minded, and most importantly, he’s stupid. None of my questions is well-answered.”
I need to be with a person who shares the same characteristic as my Papa, therefore I can feel that I am belong to this person, place, nuances, or whatever it is and again — I’ll be loved the way I used to be.
“Inheritances that work in us are not derived from the present moment, it involves a repetition of behavior and expectation that were formed and learned in childhood and might playing out in our adult lives.” — The School of Life
If you’ve ever questioned yourself over why it is so difficult for you to redesign the instinctive criteria once you believed about a life-partner, now you know where it comes from.
