These are the yin and yang of any toxic relationship: the victim and the saver, the person who starts fires because it makes her feel important and the person who puts out fires because it makes him feel important. These two types of people are drawn strongly to one an other, and they usually end up together. Their pathologies match one another perfectly. Often they’ve grown up with parents who each exhibit one of these traits as well. So their
model for a “happy” relationship is one based on entitlement and poor boundaries. Sadly, they both fail in meeting the other’s actual needs. In fact, their pattern of overblaming and overaccepting blame perpetuates the entitlement and shitty self-worth that have been keeping them from getting their emotional needs met in the first place. The victim creates more and more problems to solve-not because additional real prob lems exist, but because it gets her the attention and affection she craves. The saver solves and solves-not because she ac tually cares about the problems, but because she believes she must fix others’ problems in order to deserve attention and affection for herself. In both cases, the intentions are selfish and conditional and therefore self-sabotaging, and genuine love is rarely experienced. The victim, if he really loved the saver, would say, “Look, this is my problem; you don’t have to fix it for me.
Just support me while I fix it myself.” That would actually be a demonstration of love: taking responsibility for your own problems and not holding your partner responsible for them. If the saver really wanted to save the victim, the saver would say, “Look, you’re blaming others for your own prob lens; deal with this yourself.” And in a sick way, that would actually be a demonstration of love: helping someone solve their own problems.
Instead, victims and savers both use each other to achieve emotional highs. It’s like an addiction they fulfill in one an other. Ironically, when presented with emotionally healthy people to date, they usually feel bored or lack “chemistry” with them. They pass on emotionally healthy, secure india viduals because the secure partner’s solid boundaries don’t feel “exciting” enough to stimulate the constant highs nec essay in the entitled person.
In a way, I personally believe we all can relate to this stuff. Its only when we read certain things that bring new facts to light, do we realise the “what ifs” that you could have done to save the relationship. Again, dwelling on the past does no good to anyone but, somewhere in a corner of our minds we always feel the guilt of not having found a solution when it was needed the most….
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