Page 51 - Relationships101 A Guide To Building Healthy Relationships Final 1

camouflage the pain, a lot of us give people what I call the "double sign."

Dick Purnell is 100% correct. We say to a person, "Look, I want you to come closer to me.
I want to love and be loved . . . but wait a minute, I've been hurt before. No, I don't want to
talk about these subjects. I don't want to hear those things." We build walls around our
hearts to protect us from anyone on the outside getting in to hurt us. But that same wall that
keeps people out, keeps us stuck inside. The result? Loneliness sets in, and true intimacy
and love become impossible.”

There is a better way to deal with pain. Today my life is full of healthy relationships.
Relationships must become healthy before they can enter into the cycle of my life. But my
life wasn’t always like this. In fact, I lived a dysfunctional existence for many, many years.
My life cycles did not change positively until the day I changed for the better. I had changed
many times before, but positive change never seemed to follow until the day I accepted one
simple truth that I had been running from all my life:

I had to love myself first.

What? You mean I could no longer compensate for the lack of love I felt for myself by
getting into relationships and feeding off the love someone else gave to me? Although this
pattern always left me lonely, I continued it time after time. Then one day, a light came on
in the spiritual side of my brain, and I began to think about love from a godly perspective.

I remembered hearing people say, God loves you unconditionally. Unconditionally! You’ve
got to be kidding! This was a foreign concept to me because I had grown up with a father
who inflicted severe corporal punishment if you did not do what was expected of you or
what you were told.

When I say severe, I mean severe! Have you ever been beaten with an extension cord that is
folded about three times to give a good grip? How about a curtain rod or wet washcloth?
My mother would get the petroleum jelly and coat the welts all over our bodies made from
the instruments my father would beat us with. So, to accept the notion that someone could
love me unconditionally was a foreign concept. And I did not realize how much those
beatings––from the time I could stand up to the time I left home––had engraved the
message in my emotions and psyche that I was not worthy of love. I thought if I was worthy
of love, then my own father would have loved me and not beaten me throughout my

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