We met 23 years ago.

I (Kim) had just opened my eyes to the reality that dating a gay guy probably wasn’t going to help me in my search for a relationship with a straight guy. A divorce and the seemingly unavoidable series of bad dates had left me enjoying the comfort of being with someone that I thought needed me more than I needed him (he was not out of the closet, so I was his facade).

Oh how wrong I was.

I have now awakened to the reality that I actually needed him for my very survival. I needed to continue my lifelong role of The Rescuer. My role as The Rescuer looked like this:

• It was my job to keep everyone happy.
• It was my job to take away everyone else’s anger, sorrow, worry, doubt, fear, etc…
• It was my job to ignore any desires within me.
• It was my job to deal silently with the twister that was forever active in my mind.
• It was my job to help everyone because, by appearances, I had more than others, and it is so important to take care of those less fortunate.
• It was my job to keep all the secrets that no one wanted exposed.

Who was I if I wasn’t The Rescuer?

Even scarier, if I stopped being The Rescuer, would I cease to exist?

I (Dan) was still, sorta, kinda dating a married woman who was also seeing another guy behind my back.

And… sorta, kinda in a relationship with a woman who said she wanted to be with me, but continued to live thousands of miles away and with her husband.

And… completely exhausted from burning the candle at both ends (and from the sides) trying to run all the aspects of my business that I had started after high school.

It wasn’t my fault I was dating married women. Running my business didn’t allow me to have time for a real relationship. My business wasn’t where I wanted it to be, but that was due to the industry and the economic problems of the country. I was doing the best I could. I was working harder than anyone I knew. I was remaining honest and true to my word, when the other contractors had resorted to deception and fraud. The Victim. My role as The Victim looked like this:

• It was my job to point out (blame) how others caused my problems.
• It was my job to continually judge and compare the opposites such as good/bad, superior/inferior.
• It was my job to mount a defense to every possible scenario I could imagine before it ever became a reality.
• It was my job to put myself down before others had the chance to do it.
• It was my job to be pushed around as if I had no choices in my own life.
• It was my job to keep all the secrets that no one wanted exposed.

Who was I if I wasn’t The Victim? Would I cease to exist?

And as the saying goes, we met because opposites attract, right? Well, sort of.

You see, we each displayed to the world the one part that we had learned to manage as children. Neither was actually conscious of the role we were acting out. It wasn’t a role that either of us would have even admitted to playing at that time (we would have adamantly denied it if someone had described either of us in this light). The roles we were playing were opposite, so we were attracted to one another. We needed each other in order to remain in the roles we were conditioned to. Occasionally, we would play each other’s role, but we would soon return to our comfort zone (AKA private hell). Remaining in the other’s role for too long was very uncomfortable as these roles were unacceptable to our caregivers when we were children, and were to be avoided in order to escape pain, shame, humiliation, guilt and fear.

The thing is that there was a third role that showed up often in our relationship. The role of The Manipulator. We both hated this role and yet we each would jump in and play it until one or the other “backed down” and returned to his/her conditioned corner. It really didn’t matter who backed down first, because the other would quickly retreat to his/her corner in order to keep the roles intact. This sucked. It is life draining. Love cannot exist here and we had no idea how to get out. We would somehow find a way to get temporary relief, but we weren’t able to fully heal. We were playing roles in a very unhappy production of a play called Life. We were just going through the motions. Doing what we “had” to do. Being responsible. Did I mention it sucked?

And…

One day Dan stepped out of The Victim role, but he did not go to the role of Manipulator (our usual meeting place when either of us stepped away from our assigned roles). Where did he go? He was sitting across from me and yet I had no idea where he was. This knocked me down, hard. His Victim didn’t need me. His Manipulator wasn’t joining me. WTF? I might as well have been standing naked in a crowded room. My wall of defense had crumbled. A million things flooded into me. Images of me as a child that I didn’t know were there. Feelings and emotions were on overload. So much was happening and I felt completely and utterly alone. Dan was in a different place, but he didn’t know where he was or how he got there and he sure as shit didn’t know how to help me.

Thankfully, none of us is alone. In our hour of need, an answer came through our mentor. I don’t know how much he was aware of our situation and it doesn’t matter. He was there. He showed us what we couldn’t see and we allowed ourselves to trust him enough to follow his guidance. Over time, Dan and I have been able to learn from him and, more importantly, we have learned to think for ourselves independent from him, which not only allows him to move on to help others, it allows us to venture out and help people as well.

This is who we are. Just two people. Nothing extraordinary. Just a simple event that happened and we made a different choice to see the other side of the whole. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t hard. It was just different. It still is different. Our past conditioning is still there and we have to each help the other see it differently from time to time. We no longer have to accept the roles given to us. We get to make healthy choices as to which roles we want to play and when.