#flat out

Here’s a question: is it healthy to try and tally out blame to partners like it’s a scoring system?

Lots of readers have expressed the need to have a side, so let us take a step back - you have two people here:

Sasuke - Disorganised attachment, characterising as fearful and avoidant

Core Wounds

· Mother's death (unconditional love removed)

· Father's cold calculation (love as transaction)

· Itachi's condition (love tangled with fear)

· Venus negotiations (rejection, being "not enough")

Attachment Behaviours:

· Walls, distance, coldness

· Constant testing of trust

· Using body as transaction

· Retreat at first sign of threat

· Inability to believe he is wanted for himself

· Performance as protection

Naruto - Secure with anxious tendencies

Core Strengths:

· Assumes he is lovable

· Capable of deep loyalty

· Persists even when pushed away

Vulnerabilities:

· Takes love for granted

· Avoids difficult conversations

· Lies to protect (himself and others)

· Learns through failure, not instruction

· Prone to heroic self-concept

I think and this is very interesting to me as the author because people feel the need to take sides in this ‘argument’. Why? Why do we need to take sides?

Both characters are problematic in the story what happens is this conflict of how they behave leads to a pursuit and withdrawal cycle.

So let’s go through this

It starts with connection➡️ Naruto or Sasuke reaches out, offers warmth Briefly allows connection ➡️ (desert, gate, sofa)

Threat Does something careless (lie, omission) ➡️ Perceives threat to self

Sasuke's Response 🛑 Withdraws, becomes cold, tests

Naruto's Response 🛑 Pursues, tries to fix, gets confused

Sasuke's Deeper Response ➡️ Feels pressured, retreats further

Naruto's Deeper Response ➡️ Gives space (feels like rejection this interpretation is a major factor into why they’re having issues and why communication is so essential for relationships) —

Sasuke's Interpretation ➡️ “He's leaving. I knew it."

Crisis Both hurt, both confused Both hurt, both confused

Because Sasuke is so traumatised due to his family relationships where he basically had no secure relationship he tests Naruto all the time.

Naruto passes the big tests but fails small ones, because Sasuke sees this through the lens of someone who is traumatised it doesn’t matter to him. All failures mean the same thing to him, even if in reality that’s not the case at all. All failed tests reinforce Sasuke’s deeply held belief that he is unlovable and that at some point, Naruto, who he has grown to attach feelings to will leave, because that is what he understands.

This is exhausting for Naruto, it would be for any partner. BUT the difficulty Naruto has in understanding Sasuke is Naruto is an only child and had a very one sided relationship with Hinata - this means he has never had to work for love, and that really symptoms when he has to have difficult conversation. He actively avoids them and seems to learn only when he’s failed - but because Sasuke is so brittle, he doesn’t understand that actually a romantic partner will fail you. It’s inevitable. The real relationship comes from two people who work through the failure.

Conflict to Sasuke is catastrophic - he does not engage with it, he completely retreats. It’s been interesting to read people’s responses to this as if Sasuke should be handled with kids gloves because if this, and I say no, absolutely not. Call him out on it. Naruto cannot continue to walk on eggshells and be harshly judged for every tiny (or not so tiny misdemeanour) because it is going through the lens of Sasuke’s trauma. Every time Naruto gives Sasuke space, Sasuke interprets this as rejection.

Thus you get — and do you know what I’m sure people have experienced this because I wouldn’t be getting comments about it otherwise, but there’s this triggering cycle between them of advance, withdraw, repeat.

So in conclusion I would say don’t tally up their marks, that’s beside the point. What I would encourage the reader to do is to look at their relationship in the broader context of how they behave and actually try and work out their relationship dynamics without trying to prove which partner is in the ‘more right’. I don’t actually think either is more right, I think it’s just the context of how you look at them and trying to recognise right, the behaviour stems from this, it causes X to do Y.

This video might be helpful to think about Sasuke’s responses better, I also think it explains why Sasuke was more likely to accept Sasori’s treatment of him, because that was how he expected to be treated:

If the world is burning I’m cooling catching a tan

In the SPF a milli im really not scared

I’m saying if the city’s shaking

I’m not safe up in this room

And the walls are built of trust and they’re closing up on me soon

I got no way out

Don’t know where I’m going but it’s better off than staying where I’m at now

Took too long to figure out we should find a city ‘round

The city’s shaking, outside

People are running for their lives

But I’m looking at you and you’re looking at me

Coulda saved this whole place but we let the bleed

If they opened their eyes

They’d see right through our hollow lies

But I’m saving myself from the tragedy