Question: I understand that when there is an event associated with rāga, or attraction to something good that happens, meaning a positive experience, then if something else happens that is similar to that event, one is again naturally attracted to that. But in the case of a bad experience, or dveṣa, normally one should reject it. If one did not like the event, one should not repeat it. I do not understand why people repeat negative experiences, specifically within relationships.
Answer: This is a very good question, concerning abusive relationships. If a person had an abusive relationship in childhood, then when she grows up it would be expected that she reject that type of relationship. Just like if you were punished by your parents by being shut inside a closet, then when you grow up, you would have a fear of enclosed spaces. It would not be expected that you become attracted to enclosed spaces, but rather that you may actually develop claustrophobia. So why is it that if you experience abusive relationships in childhood, you tend to be attracted to them later in life? This is an interesting phenomenon.
When you are a baby, or a small child, your world rotates around your parents, whom you love, honor, and respect. You yearn to be with them, and you hanker for their love. Although a child wants to play with her mother and father, sometimes the father is not available, and sometimes he mistreats the child. It is not that he always mistreats her, since being a father he also deals nicely with the child, but sometimes he mistreats her. In some cases, the mistreatment may happen more often than the loving and kind exchanges.
You yourself, as a child, were looking for love, but when he mistreated you, you didn’t have the option to leave him and go somewhere else, since you were his child, and dependent on him. The idea that it is possible to give up on the father, and try to get love and support from someone else, does not enter into the mind of a child. The child is dependent on parents for her survival and is also looking for security and love from them. Sometimes she gets favorable treatment, sometimes (or perhaps most of the time) she gets unfavorable treatment, and because of this, the child becomes programmed to think that this is what love or loving relationship means. Because she has no other experience, and because she is strongly looking for this exchange of love, this abusive relationship becomes part of her definition of love. It is like making one’s own dictionary of words such as love, security, relation etc. Later, when she has grown up, she thinks that this is what love actually means, and a healthy relationship feels wrong, as if something is missing. She is naturally attracted to a person who would treat her like her parents. The person who matches with her experience feels the right person.
This is what is actually working in the background. She may read about true love and she may see other people acting in loving relationships, but still, her concept is her concept, and everybody works according to their own concept.
When we are growing up, we develop our concept of what love is, what brotherly and sisterly relationships are, etc. These concepts become very deeply set inside the psyche (meaning they become rooted in the citta), and then these ideas guide us in our life. Therefore, everybody has a different understanding of love. Although we all use the same word, this word is very subjective. It is not like “chocolate”, or some object with a fixed meaning. Rather, it is something which you have experienced, and you have understood the meaning of this word based on your own experience. Because experience varies from person to person, you think, “this is what love is”, and someone who has been raised with healthy relationships will think, “why is she staying with this man, when he is so abusive?” If someone advises her, she won’t understand the good advice. Sometimes, even the parents themselves see their daughter stuck in an abusive relationship, and advise that she give up the relationship, but she won’t. The same people who have programmed her are now giving advice to her, and she cannot understand that advice.
When you are in this kind of abusive situation, you won’t have the intelligence to see the abuse without emotion. You think under the influence of your childhood conditioning. That is the only way you can think. Even other people who are doing the same thing can see that you have a problem. So, the parents may have behaved like this themselves, but they cannot see it in themselves. However, as onlookers, being distant from it and not part of it, they can see it. Often, it is seen that people give advice to others, but when they become involved in a similar situation, they make the same mistake for which they had given advice. It is easier to see something that is distant from you than something that is very close to you. You cannot see if something is put right in front of your eyes leaving no space in between them. Therefore, one remains in an abusive relation because of one’s childhood programming. And if sometimes, one gets out it, one again choses another abusive partner.
