I am perennially curious. I move into areas of ignorance slowly like water on clay. Defining who I am and at the same time desiring to be more at ease; more at home in life; more at home in my body keeps me constantly seeking.

This last binge of understanding came when I stumbled upon Esther Perel. I had had no previous contact with her work. But after viewing one you tube video I binged.

When a starving person sits down to a plate at first, he or she needs to go slowly. So I watched the one video. I took notes. I shared the lessons on social media. I slept on it.

And then I spent four hours the next day learning.

The dissatisfaction which is central in my life is and always has been the deep well of loneliness. So many times I have read that an individual’s social connections are the greatest predictor for longevity and contentment. I read the statement in the writings of various researchers in its various formations. I took notes for years. I “got” the concept.

But what had always blocked me suddenly came to shining clarity as I listened to Esther. She talked about the Dowry of Relationships. The inheritance of ability to live in a kind, loving and intimate way with others is the legacy each of us carries from our family’s experiences.

My legacy was that those who were closest to me did the greatest damage. To be within an arm’s reach was damaging. To be dependent on love to a parent who broke my bones and another one who blamed me for angering her partner left me feeling only safe when I isolated myself. I escaped to the world of books.

I saw my parents form friendships which were to be quite frank, weird. The fat family with boils on their butts came to the house for my mother, the nurse, to inject them with penicillin. The woman who sat at our dining room table telling my mother about all of the ways that we, The Coach family, were lower status than her family was. Her daughter got awards. The mother had a new watch. See it. Then there was the hairdresser who hated her husband. She would show up when she had a truck load of stories about what a failure he was as a man. She marked the sides of all of the containers in the house to make sure the children were not taking any food she had not specifically given them.

And then there was my mother’s family: the brother that showed up to borrow four thousand dollars from my mom. I had to listen for years about how he “took” her money. The sister that stood me next to her nakedness in the shower and scrubbed my hair with some acid like soap that stung my eyes. When I cried, she told me what a baby I was. The other three siblings I only saw once, thankfully.

So the script I inherited was that friends are always in an unequal relationship. One is the status person and the other sits meekly while being bullied.

“Oh, that is the way you can be a friend,” I thought. “Smile and take nasty comments.”

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And then at school I learned that my vocabulary, the way I spoke would cause others to gather around me and kick me while telling me I was a monster of arrogance.

My Dowry of Relationships is now the Hope Chest I am opening. I am taking out each experience and looking at it.

To be close is to be betrayed. To be close is to inevitably let in pain. To be open and honest is to attract rejection.

The results are so built into my mind habits that I am quite impressed with the strength of them. I dislike eating with others because my father beat me at the table. My mother force fed me in order to make me fat and not competitive with her as the “beautiful one.” I dislike riding in a car with someone because it means I can’t escape. I am trapped. My father had me sit where he could reach around and strike my face.

Groups of people cause me to feel like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I am watching my tail and ready to move should that person become unmindfully cruel. I will not go into an environment with alcohol. The loss of control, the verbal jabs that pass as humour, the group decision to choose one person out to humiliate inevitably happens in the presence of alcohol. I no longer wish to be a witness to this behaviour. To see others demeaned causes me physical pain.

The inheritance of distrust goes back at least to my grandparents. Their children suffered from the experiences that the parents had to endured. In their social interactions there was a wary circling kind of ritual that I liken to two people about to engage in a knife fight who are slowly moving around looking for an opening. The watchfulness of defence and protection was the over riding necessity in both of my parent’s families.

So my Dowry of Relationships is that in order to have a close relationship, one must endure being hurt, betrayed, disrespected. Inevitably, there is an ultimate price to pay. I get the same feeling when I watch film noir movie or detective show. Cynicism is an armour.

I am sitting with this new clarity of information and letting myself “real” ize it.

I do not see myself as a victim or as lacking social skills. I see myself as merely human.

What I do know now is that the inheritance of experiences will always script our lives until we clearly see the source of our decisions.

There is a time to just stop and sit. There is a time to forgive ourselves for not supplying the necessities of life to ourselves. There is a time to simply see ourselves as a vulnerable entity who is on a journey. I am grateful to the hours I spent listening to Esther Perel. She showed up because I was ready to learn.