The Concept of Illusion in Relationships
I just finished reading a GREAT book that I thought would make for great discussion. Check out The Wife Between Us, which is about a woman navigating her marriage with a covert narcissist and sociopath. This book brought up A LOT of memories of my former marriage, and I saw a lot of myself in the main character, it was chilling at times!
The book is completely fiction and a total thriller, page-turner so for me, it didn’t bring up bad memories, per se; it just made me think about the “concept of illusion” that we create in our relationships. There is a quote that I underlined, which is what I talk about in my new video:
The woman who was in the abusive marriage says, “I was happy, I think, but I wonder now if my memory is playing tricks on me. It is giving me the gift of an illusion. We all layer them over our remembrances; the filters through which we want to see our lives.”
When we exit a toxic relationship, we often talk about what HE or SHE has done to US. What THEY did. Why? Because it’s a lot easier. It’s more black and white, and it helps us process what went wrong in the relationship.
But rarely do we talk about what WE did to OURSELVES. In my video, I talk about my former marriage and admitting that I created an illusion of “happiness” because I no longer wanted to experience the pain of my childhood. I was desperate for “happily ever after” and sought that in another person: my husband.
It wasn’t until I exited that marriage where I had to take a hard look at myself and recognized the illusion I co-created.
My friend, THIS is what helps us heal – when we look out what we did to ourselves, and not what the other person has done to us. When you can look at our “shadow,” as I mention in the video, and make peace with the illusion we created, it will set us free.