"Unconditional Love does not mean being a doormat - Unconditional Love starts with Loving yourself enough to protect yourself from people you love if that is necessary. The relationship you describe is codependent - what that means is that you are both reacting to the emotional wounds and intellectual programming that you experienced in childhood. You were attracted to each other because your wounds fit together - you felt familiar to each other on an emotionally energetic level. The very feelings that brought you together are the same ones that keep separating you. The problem isn't in what is happening now - the way the relationship has gone is a symptom of what happened to you both in childhood. This relationship is a sign to you that you have some emotional wounds from childhood that need to be healed - they are a sign to her also but you can't make her want to do the work - you can only do the work for yourself."

"I am not sure what your male significant other's background is but he is reacting out of his childhood wounds also. Sometimes, when a person comes from a home that was very emotionally volatile they think that you don't love them unless you will engage with them - that is respond to their goading; or sometimes when a person doesn't have permission to own their own anger they will pick someone who expresses anger as a way of getting a release, through the other persons raging; or he may be reacting out of his self-hatred, the wounded little boy in him that does not feel lovable, and may need to sabotage things when there is no turmoil or he feels you are giving him love he doesn't deserve; or it could be his excuse to keep practicing an addiction, to drink or smoke dope or whatever.

Whatever is causing him to act that way it is not personal - it is not about who you really are, because you are just starting on the journey to finding our your True Self and your codependent defense system has been a mask you have been wearing to defend yourself - and he was attracted, in part at least, to the mask. You two have come together because your perfectly push each other's buttons - it provides an opportunity to get in touch with and start healing your childhood wounds."

"The way the dynamic in a dysfunctional relationship works is on a come here - go away cycle. When one person is available the other tends to pull away. If the first person becomes unavailable the other comes back and pleads to be let back in. When the first becomes available again then the other eventually starts pulling away again.

next: Romantic Relationships and Toxic Love - The Dysfunctional Norm