Addicted to the Role: When Dysfunction Feeds the Ego

1. The Performance of Pain

“That is the character that I play in that person’s life…”

People don’t just live through pain—they perform it. Why?

Because in pain, they find:

Control: If I’m always the one wronged, I never have to change.
Validation: People pity me, pay attention to me, or excuse my behavior.
Familiarity: Even dysfunction can feel safe when it’s all you’ve known.

👉🏾 This is emotional theater. The person isn’t interested in resolution—they’re interested in staying relevant in your life through drama.
They are not building a relationship.
They are building a stage.

🔹 2. The Self-Sabotage Loop

“I know all I gotta do is start doing this or stop doing that… I don’t want it fixed.”

This is where it gets sinister. The person is conscious of the solution. They know how to improve the relationship, but if they fix it:

They lose the role they play.
They lose the emotional leverage.
They are forced to evolve—and that scares them more than losing you.

Why? Because healing requires responsibility. And responsibility demands that they give up the luxury of blame.

To fix the relationship, they would have to say:
“It wasn’t just you. It was me too.”
That level of emotional accountability is too heavy for someone still clinging to their wounds for identity.

🔹 3. Projection as Protection

“You think you play a part in fixing it, but you didn’t play a part in breaking it.”

This is where you, the outsider or partner, get pulled into the storm. They project guilt, blame, frustration on you to:

Avoid looking inward.
Maintain the illusion that you are the unstable one.
Control the narrative by emotionally confusing you.

That’s not love—it’s emotional survival at your expense.

🔹 4. The Insecurity Beneath the Anger

What appears as anger, distance, or sabotage is often a mask for:

“I don’t feel enough.”
“I don’t believe I deserve peace.”
“I’m afraid you’ll see the real me and leave.”

Instead of facing that fear, they create chaos—because if the relationship ends due to drama, they can say “See? I knew this would happen.”

It confirms the insecurity and avoids the pain of vulnerability. That is, ironically, a form of self-fulfilling abandonment.

🔹 5. The Empath’s Trap

This piece is also a message to the empath—the person who tries to heal, to fix, to carry someone else’s burden.

But here’s the truth:

You can’t save someone who benefits from being broken.
You can’t love someone into accountability.
You aren’t responsible for someone else’s refusal to grow.

Sometimes walking away is not giving up—it’s refusing to be an extra in their pain performance.

🔷 Metaphor: The Leaky Cup

Imagine loving someone is like pouring water into a cup with a hole.
You give and give, but it’s never enough.
Because the problem isn’t your effort—it’s their broken container.

And when you finally stop pouring, they’ll say:
“See? You gave up on me.”
But the truth is…
You just stopped drowning trying to keep them full.

🔷 Closing Reflection:

This piece, at its deepest level, is not about a failing relationship.

It’s about:

What we tolerate when we confuse love with labor
What we accept when we don’t believe we deserve peace
And the painful freedom of realizing some people only love you as long as you play your role in their dysfunction.

When you realize you were cast as the villain, the fixer, the fool—
You step off their stage.
You reclaim your script.
And you choose healing over performance.