If you’ve ever taken a commercial airplane flight you have heard the announcement where the flight attendants inform passengers that if they are traveling with children and the oxygen masks fall from the cabin ceiling then adults should affix their oxygen masks before they try to put them on the children. The reason for that is so that the adults can be sure that they won’t pass out from lack of oxygen, which will allow the adult to better assist the child. Over time I have found that the overall message in these instructions is one that applies to managing relationships in your life. You must be in a secure place in your life in order to be in a position to assist others. Still, so often in our own lives we seek to be the healer/fixer for others while we still have untended issues to address in our own lives.
Through introspection I understand how I have been assumed the role of the healer/fixer in relationships in my life. That awareness has allowed me to recognize how often others act in the role of healer/fixer, particularly in romantic relationships. The healer/fixer role in a romantic relationship adds a second level of intoxication to the already intoxicating feeling of being in a new romantic relationship. The feelings are driven by the knowledge that you’re in the drivers seat, directing activities and exerting control. While these actions aren’t inherently negative they create a false scenario that is ultimately unsustainable. Rather than address our own issues and shortcomings outside of the relationship when we’re the healer/fixer we get caught up in this role and take on an air of superiority, forgetting the things that we need to work on in our own lives. We also tend to become blinded to the reality we quickly turn from romantic partner to more of a life coach (and an unqualified one at that) and task master which is hardly romantic.
There are varying reasons why people assume the role of healer/fixer in romantic relationships. Through introspection I realize that I have assumed that role in the past due to my own lack of self-esteem. I realized that I unconsciously believed that no one could love me just for me. By taking on the role of healer/fixer I was offering a bonus to romantic partners to make up for my perceived shortcomings. Interestingly, looking back I now realize that for many of my potential romantic partners this was a turn off. I was too eager to please and to help, and I believe they could sense that something was wrong. The romantic partners that pushed forward into relationships with me were the most needy, which allowed those relationships to blossom since my healer/fixer ways were a welcome deviation from their frustrating lives. That type of situation is always unsustainable though. Eventually my romantic partners would get frustrated with my constant input and assistance while I would get frustrated at their frustration. Eventually the relationships ended.
“But why oh why couldn’t they see how good I was for them?” I would think. But I wasn’t good. I was just passing on another form of toxicity, which was the unrestrained desire to fix someone else’s life. Meanwhile I was really using my role as the healer/fixer as a diversion to bury my own problems and insecurities in a shallow grave. When the relationships would end once again all of my problems would be laid bare without any progress made on addressing them. I continued with this cycle, like most people do, for a long time. It’s only in recent years as my personal awareness has grown that I have consciously avoided getting involved in what I see as other people’s problems when in a romantic relationships. I’ve found that it takes much discipline to just be in a relationship without trying to achieve some other goal. In part it’s difficult because oftentimes romantic partners attempt to draw people in to their life’s problems.
Just like the healer/fixer is a common relationship role so is the needy/victimized person. When the two meet it may seem like heaven early on since both people can act out their preferred roles but the relationship will surely end up like hell! What you have is two people who are each seeking their own ends in the relationship that sound like they should be complementary but really are not because there’s no end to what each person will demand from the situation. This the exact opposite who just want to be together for the joy of being together, a situation that is truly rare in the entire history of relationships.
It’s critical that we examine our patterns in romantic relationships in order to have any chance of breaking the negative patterns that lead to brief/chaotic/unsatisfying relationships. The bottom line is that most of the time we have more work to do on ourselves in order to be able to participate in a healthy relationship. Likewise we need to be able to evaluate whether potential partners are attempting to draw us into relationships in order to fulfill some need of theirs that they have not come to terms with. We can only clearly evaluate situations when we have a certain level of inner peace.
Writing this I was reminded of an Off-Broadway play that ran in New York for a few years whose title perfectly sums up the kind of relationship that I’m writing about here. The title of the play was I Love You. You’re Perfect. Now Change. Healer/fixer’s in particular get heavily invested in changing people they’re in relationships with. If you’ve ever been a healer/fixer you’ll know that you’ve made progress if you can be in a relationship and are able to tell the person, “I love you. You’re perfect. Let’s be together!”
In The Midst Of A Journey 