We have often been told that opposites attract. I find that there is a much more resonant truth about attraction. That is the concept that like attracts like. We have all experienced to one degree or another the realization that we are now in a relationship with someone that is pretty much a carbon copy of our parent…and usually the parent with whom we have the most issues. Why is that? My theory is that, even if we don’t want to be like the parent with whom we have the most issues, there is still a part of that parent that is within us. It is because we want to avoid that aspect that we end up attracting it into our lives over and over…until we finally resolve said issues.
We cannot resolve said issues if what we do is run away from them. No. We actually have to muster up the courage to stand tall and boldly look those issues in the eye. We have to have the courage to say, “Enough, already!” We also have to be humble enough to realize that the very things that irritate us most about another person are very possibly things that we ourselves do on a daily basis, perhaps not in exactly the same way but nonetheless they are present and accounted for in our behaviours.
As a personal example, my father was a rager. It made me fear men for a fair portion of my young years. But growing up to become a man this put me into a state of self-contradiction. How can I fear men when I AM A MAN? So I distanced myself from men so that I would not have to deal with rage and aggression from anyone. But then the rage and aggression would come at me from the women in my life, be they friends, lovers or spouses. Just show me a group of women at that time of my life and, like a moth to a flame, I would be attracted to the ones with the explosive hot tempers. Then I looked back at my own behaviour and realized that in my very late teens and early twenties I, too, had an incredibly hot and explosive temper. So, in fact, I was becoming much like my own raging father. I decided that I had to, therefore, work on how I relate to my own anger.
For years I had been stuffing it down until it reached the boiling point. Then suddenly it would erupt in a wave of hostile actions and a plethora of obscene expletives. I had to learn a different way. So I began to study the art of Zen meditation. This is the one thing, I can honestly say, that helped me the most. I had tried a number of different things, but Zen meditation did the trick. It is amazing how relaxed and centered one can get when one actually has the tools to manage energies within and emotional turmoil! I became someone I actually enjoyed being, and this did not mean that things did not frustrate me or anger me. It simply meant that I now had the tools with which to deal with it constructively. Instead of being rageful, I was able to become direct and in my own power. Now, people do still often take that as aggressive, depending on what their own issues are around being confronted with someone who will not take any nonsense from them. But once they realize that I am not raging, or even that angry for that matter, but simply not putting up with their garbage, they come to understand that there are things that they can and cannot get away with when it comes to our interactions. Once that realization sets in, the interactions change.
Even when I am setting appropriate boundaries with people in a non-raging manner, I am quite aware that they, too, are a reflection of myself or at least of a self that I used to be. Once I have chosen that a certain set of criteria are in place for appropriate behaviour, I just stick to that. It makes life much clearer and far less muddled. I can now actually be upset with someone’s behaviour and STILL have compassion for the situation that they are in as said behaviour gets addressed. But it is important that it does get addressed.
When we allow poor behaviour to enter our realm, we give permission for that poor behaviour, and all the ripple effects thereof, to breed itself into a nest of nastiness. Holding ourselves and others accountable for their actions actually creates security within relationships, families, communities and so on. Ignoring the behaviours by burying our heads in the sand serves no one, least of all the person whose behaviour is so damaging.
We also do not want to raise a generation of people who think that it is completely alright to do or say whatever they please, regardless of who may be hurt in the process. So helping them to also see that their behaviours reflect poorly upon themselves and that they speak volumes to their own character helps the next generation to actually take charge of themselves in a very constructive manner.
In this way, as they go out into the world and find friends, lovers, spouses and so on, they will hopefully be attracting someone who reflects to them the best aspects of themselves, rather than the worst, and vice versa. So instead of thinking, “Hmmm…there is something about you that reminds me of my mother/father/brother/sister or whomever” they will be able to acknowledge that “There is something about you that reminds me of me.”