Bonds. What are they? What pushes us towards bonding? What’s the point?

Even though this is my blog and I can write whatever I want whenever I want-

I get stage fright! I get nervous! And I often think to myself before writing:

“What’s the next trick I’m going to pull out of my sleeve? I have no clue!”

But eventually-EVENTUALLY, my desire to write pushes me forward and I begin a post.

But today I’ve been wondering why I post? That’s the question I’ve been thinking about ever since I got home from therapy.

Today as I was talking to my DBT therapist, she challenged me to dig deeper into why I behave how I behave (she’s real good at that). And she asked me “Why do you seek connection online, Nancy?” And I said:

“I don’t know. Do you know?” and then she laughed a little and asked me to think about it more because she reassured me that there was no right or wrong answer.

I told her I often feel lonely. And this feeling of loneliness scares me. So I often go on dating apps, then get rejected, then get off of them, then feel sad, then feel lonely and then I do the process all over again. It’s pretty silly! But I keep doing it. And I have for many years.

One thing I do like about myself is that I’m a bit of a philosopher. I like to think about my thoughts. So today I’m gonna be writing about Bonds.

What are they? Why do we make them? What pushes us towards bonding? What is the point?

I believe that no one can do everything alone. We need help. And whether we want to admit it or not- it’s important to have help.

As a species, there have always been roles. Role of hunter gatherer, role of caregiver, role of child, etc.

These roles have grown and grown with time and now we have so many roles that naming them all would take a lot of time! (I won’t do that to you but they exist)

Sociologists have argued that due to the division of labor, we have become more productive, more efficient, more orderly and so on.

Due to this drastic change, we rely on each other to function.

Traditional ways of viewing this for example is a family.

A family (typically) consists of a father/husband figure, a mother/wife, a child/sibling, and so on. This unit (while unpredictable to us as we are born) becomes a primary part of our childhood.

By the time we are technically an adult (18 years-old in the U.S.), we have already experienced bonding to our primary caregivers and to people associated with them.

But what is a bond?

According to Merriam-Webster (Dictionary) a Bond is:

“To form a close relationship especially through frequent association.”

But the bonds we make in our early childhood life are almost never truly up to us.

But why does that matter?

Unfortunately, being bonded to unhealthy people (and or toxic people) does happen. Not every child will grow up in a loving, caring, stable household.

So because of a result of that, without meaning or intending to form unhealthy bonds… the likelihood of someone who grew up in a rough household to form another unhealthy bond is pretty high.

For example: I knew a guy once whom I loved for 5 years. His name is Matt. Matt grew up in a unstable environment. One minute everything would be okay, the next his parents would be yelling and screaming at each other. His parents claimed to love him but lacked the ability to express care and affection. If Matt had a problem, he had to solve it himself. If he was sad, he did not feel comfortable expressing his feelings with his family. He wanted to be a “man” and this would lead him to struggle with emotionally regulating himself- causing him suffering, which he would hate and this would later lead him to having a problem managing his anger and to smoking cannabis to feel more relaxed. When I met Matt, I was in a dark place in my life. I wanted to be loved so badly (like I do now but before it was worse!) that after 4 months of getting to know Matt, I had fallen in love. He was emotionally unavailable, coped in unhealthy ways, and would take out his anger on me- but I didn’t care. I loved him regardless. Matt had never been cared for this way by anyone (that I’m aware of) so when I showed him affection, care, attention, and admiration for his accomplishments- he was hooked. He didn’t want to lose me-yet he wasn’t in love with me or felt an attraction. So what did Matt do? He wanted the affection so badly that he told me we were dating. I wanted his love so badly that I believed him. Years passed and the bond continued. Regardless of the mean things he would do and say- I stayed. Why? We trauma bonded. And we didn’t want to live without each other because leaving one another would bring some form of loneliness back into our lives and we couldn’t handle that. Until one day, I had enough. I had just lost the need to stay and be hurt anymore. And I left.

But the point is, the way Matt grew up and the way I grew up had affected us in many ways. We both suffered from low self-esteem and had negative beliefs of ourselves.

And sometimes that cycle goes on and on and on for people.

Unfortunately it has for me but that’s why I’m asking myself these questions now:

What pushes me to make bonds?

I can’t speak for you but what pushes me to make bonds is because (as of right now) I want to feel interesting. I want to be someone’s cup of tea. I want to have an emotional connection rather than one based on physical attraction and intimacy.

And I’m wondering to myself… why? Why Nancy?

I could easily say: “Well, maybe it’s the trauma”.

I won’t go into details about the trauma I survived but I think because of the trauma, I am afraid of being myself. Being by myself- feeling my feelings.

I often don’t feel safe enough. And it’s almost as if I’m a little girl watching princess movies and wishing someone would rescue me.

But the reality of it all is that I’m the only one who can save me.

And that starts with questioning, analyzing, and recognizing my feelings.

Eventually, I’m going to learn what healthy bonds are like.

And when I do, I’ll make sure to write about them.

So, my friends, I wrote this post in hopes of answering these questions (by answering them through my lens) because I think it’s something I’m going to always be examining from now on.

And I hope you do too! In whatever way that may be.