Why You Keep Attracting the Same Relationships
You meet someone new and you feel the spark. There is chemistry between you two. This person just enters your life, but it feels like you have known him for years. It all begins with deep eye contacts, endless conversations, jokes, and laughter forming the strongest bond. Then it all goes down, the spark starts blinking, constantly disappearing and appearing. In the moment, you get deja vu. “Have I ever been here before?”. You might have!
Our minds are drawn to what they know, even if it’s painful, because brain works in a way that labels familiarity as safety. It develops internal schemas, deep-rooted beliefs about who we are, what we deserve, and how relationships must work from your early experiences that become some kind of blueprint.
From the moment we are born, we begin forming attachments, deep, enduring emotional bonds with the people who care for us. We attach to feel safe, manage stress, and regulate emotions. These early bonds shape what psychologists call “attachment styles”, also known as internal working models, that influence how we view ourselves, others, and future relationships throughout life. Attachment styles shaped in childhood fall into four main categories: secure, anxious-preoccupied, avoidant-dismissive, and disorganized. Actually, it is very hard to fit into 1 specific style, so, it is more like a blend: you might lean secure in friendships but become anxious in romantic connections. Fortunately, our attachment style isn’t fixed, so, if you work on it, it can evolve over time. If you don’t try to rewrite it, you keep building your relationships from the same foundation.
At those times, it is not about who you really like and choose. It is about who your brain think is “right” for you, and it’s someone who makes you repeat these patterns you have in yourself. Freud called it repetition compulsion: our subconscious desire to recreate past dynamics in the hope of finally rewriting the ending. For example, if you once longed for a parent’s approval but never got it, you might keep falling for emotionally distant partners, chasing the same validation in a different body.
We’re drawn to situations that mirror our unhealed wounds because some part of us wants to understand, fix, or finally be seen. And unless we’ve done the work to process that pain, the cycle repeats like a familiar song we don’t remember choosing.
How To Break The Cycle
Be Aware
Healing begins with awareness. Try to sit and look back at your past reflecting and learning from life. Certain experiences happen to help you grow into a new version of yourself. Challenges and pain are here to teach you, to turn you into who you are. Meaningfully think about your past connection, even if they made you feel small or bad. Reflect, find the root and go on.
Pay Attention To Your Emotional Triggers
Your body talks and you should learn its language. Pay attention to the moments that give you anxiety and make you feel unseen or unworthy. These reactions are the way your body signals about older wounds asking to be acknowledged. Again, here you should dig the past, back to the childhood. Think about what you had witnessed as a child, how people around you expressed care, conflict, or emotional absence.
Examine Your Beliefs & Define Your Values
Some of your thoughts are reflections of old pain. Notice the quiet narratives you tell yourself: “I always attract the wrong people. This is just how love is.” Challenge yourself because those thoughts aren’t truths. To break the cycle, you have to break the sequence of negatives beliefs about yourself. Try affirmations. Begin replacing those thoughts with conscious affirmations rooted in what you actually want. To do that you should define your values. You can think about what you want to experience in a relationship or even write it down. Don’t forget about what’s non-negotiable, what you’re no longer available for!
Set boundaries
If you love and respect yourself, you have to have healthy boundaries. Boundaries are not the walls that nobody can climb on. They are more like a door which opens if the person is good for you. Get clear on what you’re no longer willing to accept and communicate those limits without guilt. You’re not being difficult; you’re finally choosing yourself. So, trust yourself the next time red flags appear.