The Love I Learned, The Patterns I Repeated

Patterns of love rarely start with us. They are inherited, shaped by what our parents lived through and often by what our grandparents never healed. We learn love first by watching, by absorbing emotional environments, by adapting to what feels safest. Before we ever choose our partners, love has already been defined for us.

For a long time, I didn’t realize I was repeating patterns. I thought I was just living life. Looking back now, I can see how the way I learned love—through survival, endurance, and emotional noise—became the way I loved in my relationships.

Where the Pattern Began

When someone asks me what love felt like growing up, it’s actually hard to answer. Love felt heavy. Loud. Unfair. Not because there wasn’t love, but because what I gave never seemed to match what I received. I remember constantly wondering: How can someone say they love me and still hurt me? Nothing about any kind of love made sense to me.

I know my mom loved me. She was there. But she was surviving. And when my dad passed away when I was nine, love became quieter and emptier. Not absent—but stripped down to the basics. Being there. Getting through the day. Making it to tomorrow.

My dad was affectionate in his own way—romantic, attentive, detailed. He made you feel special. But he also carried a lot. Addiction, instability, and pain lived alongside his love. I didn’t see the worst of the abuse between my parents; my mom protected me from it. But I felt the tension, the toxicity, the emotional weight in the house. Love wasn’t calm. It wasn’t safe. It was something you endured.

When my parents separated, I knew they were better apart. After that, home felt like existing—helping my mom with her resale shop, going to school, learning how to be strong too early. As a child, I didn’t know I was adapting. I just knew rest didn’t exist. Love didn’t feel like something you could lean into; it felt like something you carried.

Without realizing it, this became my blueprint. Love meant staying. Love meant enduring. Love meant not needing too much.

How the Pattern Repeated

I carried that blueprint into my adult relationships. Especially with my son’s father.

I stayed longer than I should have, not because I was blind, but because I was afraid. Afraid of starting over. Afraid of doing it alone. Afraid that dating me meant accepting not just me, but my child too. The irony is that even while staying, I was already figuring things out on my own.

I didn’t experience physical abuse, but there was emotional heartbreak, betrayal, and a constant lack of trust. I told myself I was forgiving, but the truth is I wasn’t. I was just pushing resentment to the side so I wouldn’t be alone. I was hurt all the time. I stayed connected to something that already felt lonely—because loneliness felt familiar.

At the time, I didn’t recognize this as a pattern. I thought this was just what love required: patience, sacrifice, forgiveness at the expense of myself. I confused struggle with loyalty. I thought en las buenas y en las malas meant enduring pain without question.

The Inheritance I Carry

I see my mother in the way I love. When she loves, she loves fiercely. She sacrifices. She endures. She survives. I learned resilience from her, but I also learned that love requires self-denial. That you earn stability by carrying everything on your own.

She would say, “Josseline puede hacer sola.” And I believed it. I internalized it so deeply that asking for help feels like failure. Like I’m letting her down. Like I’m letting myself down. Even when I don’t need to do it alone, I push through tears, stress, and exhaustion because I’ve taught myself that I must.

Receiving is just as hard. Help has been thrown back in my face before. I’ve learned to associate support with strings attached, with guilt, with someone keeping score. So even when someone offers, my body tenses. I’d rather struggle than owe.

From my dad, I inherited romantic intensity and emotional heaviness. I love deeply, but I struggle to receive love without suspicion or guilt. I expect a lot from men, yet I don’t always allow them to show up—because I was taught to handle everything myself.

The Pattern in My Current Relationship

In my current relationship, the pattern hasn’t disappeared—but I see it now.

I’ve forgiven things I once said I wouldn’t tolerate. I’ve excused behaviors. I’ve accepted less than I give. At the same time, I overshadow my partner. I stay in my masculine energy, overdoing, overfunctioning, controlling outcomes because that’s what feels safe.

Overgiving gives me the illusion of control. If I do everything myself, then I won’t be disappointed. If I stay on top of things, then nothing can fall apart. Maybe it’s pride. Maybe it’s ego. Maybe it’s survival. But it feels safer than stepping back.

And if I did step back, I’m afraid of what it would say about me. Afraid that I wouldn’t be enough. Afraid that if I’m not constantly proving my value, I won’t be needed. I’m still learning how to sit with that fear instead of letting it run the relationship.

Motherhood and Breaking the Cycle

Becoming a mother changed everything. It forced me to look at my patterns through a different lens.

I don’t want my son to confuse comfort with love. Comfort can become fear. It can become settling. It can become solitude inside a relationship. I want him to know that love requires boundaries, self-respect, and emotional safety.

I don’t think I’m the perfect example right now. But I hope he sees that I show up. That I protect. That I love deeply. And I also hope he learns—through my growth—that love doesn’t mean losing yourself.

Awareness doesn’t erase patterns overnight. But it gives us choice. It gives us pause. It gives us language for things we once just endured.

These patterns once kept me safe. They helped me survive loss, instability, and fear. They taught me how to keep going when rest didn’t feel like an option. But survival is not the same as connection, and endurance is not the same as love.

Now, awareness allows me to ask different questions: What am I choosing out of fear? What am I holding onto out of habit? What would it look like to receive instead of overfunction, to soften without disappearing, to love without losing myself?

I don’t have all the answers yet. I’m still learning how to step back, how to allow others to show up, how to trust that I don’t have to prove my worth through exhaustion or sacrifice. But I do know this: recognizing the pattern is the first act of breaking it.

If any part of this feels familiar, you’re not broken—and you’re not alone. Sometimes healing doesn’t look like having it all figured out. Sometimes it looks like telling the truth, naming the pattern, and choosing—slowly—to do something different.