Overcome negative relationship patterns

Do you keep going out with  the same kind of man / woman ? Do you feel stuck in a rut where you keep on repeating the same mistakes over and over again and end up broken-hearted ? Find out what type of "relationship repeater" you are.

THE IDEALISER:

• You are drawn to partners with a particular physical type, appearance, professional status (whether it’s a great job or no job at all), level of ambition, or age.
• You prioritize external characteristics above all else.
• You place more importance on sexual attractiveness than emotional attractiveness.
• You see your partner as a reflection of yourself.
• You harbour the fantasy that someone with the appearance or professional status you are drawn to will be enough to make you happy.
• You eventually end up feeling like you have little in common with your partner by the end of the relationship.
• Your relationship consistently end because you don’t place a sufficient priority on the internal, emotional characteristics of your partners.

ASK YOURSELF: 

1. How would someone describe your professional and physical type? Write down these external characteristics.
2. Has anyone ever idealised any of your external characteristics? Did you feel truly appreciated when they did that?
3. Why do you think it’s tempting to idealise external characteristics?
4. Can you think of people you know who repeat this pattern?
5. What are some emotional attributes that are worthy of more attention in the beginning of a relationship?
6. Write them down and keep this list for later.

THE EMOTIONAL CHASER:

• You tend to have partners who ultimately won’t commit and settle down, who cheat on you, or whom you put on a pedestal.
• You are usually more emotionally committed to your relationship than your partner is.
• You feel like your partner has all the control and power in the relationship.
• You often feel less worthy than your partner, as if your partner were more interesting or desirable than you
• You believe you have to work hard to keep them interested because you feel that they could very easily slide through your fingers and slip away.
• You try to shape yourself into being what you think your partner wants.
• You notice that your partners always seem to have excuses for why they can’t make more time for you or why they don’t want to take the relationship to the next level.
• You feels like you're waiting and hoping for your partner to realise that you are the one they really want.
• You have a hard time imagining yourself settling for a love that is anything less than romantic and intense.
• You see your partners as too good for you, better than you, or unattainable.
• What motivates you is the prospect that if you can attain the love and affection of your lover you can finally experience the bliss of feeling good enough.
• You are trying to prove to unavailable partners that you are good enough, that you are worth settling down for, you are on a mission to win the love of unavailable partners.

ASK YOURSELF

1. Whose affection and love you have worked hard to get but have never fully received?
2. How did the chase end? Did you get what you wanted?
3. What was the most difficult part of the situation to accept?
4. Looking back, was the chasing done in pursuit of a specific person, or did it become about something bigger?

THE RESCUER:

• You regularly attach yourself to partners who are emotionally unstable in some way.
• You focus on and worry about your partner more than they do about themselves.
• You repeatedly finds yourself with partners who at first seem to be sweet and have great potential (while also being slightly helpless or misguided), but before long reveal themselves to be emotionally volatile or unstable, aggressive and controlling, unhappy, or unable to cope with some aspect of their lives.
• You often believe that love trumps everything and that ending a relationship would mean giving up on or abandoning the person you love.
• You desperately try to help your partner but, at root, you are trying to change them
• You tend to have partners with histories of anxiety, depression, or substance abuse.
• You come from a family in which you felt the need to take care of a parent or sibling, or in which there was a high level of turmoil and drama.
• You have invested all of your energy in the fantasy of who your boyfriend / girlfriend could become in the future as opposed to banking on who they are in the here-and-now. You have a fantasy that your love could transform them.
• You don’t realise you're supposed to be a partner — not a therapist or a life coaches.
• You eventually start to feel crazy or to doubt yourself thinking the problem might lie in you.
• You tend to be very strong, resilient, highly intuitive, sensitive, and giving .
• You seek partners that are emotionally broken and dysfunctional, helpless,  who can never ultimately rise to the occasion,  wounded souls that can also be controlling, erratic, and emotionally volatile.

ASK YOURSELF 

1.  Have you ever tried to rescue a wounded soul? If so, which type? If not, why do you believe this is one pattern you wouldn’t fall into?
2. Can you recall a time when you got to know someone and could see that he or she was emotionally broken? How did that affect your developing friendship or relationship? How should it affect your developing relationship?
3. What might the appeal be of forging a relationship with a wounded soul? Why would a person fall for someone who is broken?
4. What are the essential differences between a wounded soul and the average man with typical imperfections?
5. Do You Have a Fix-It Mindset?

THE SACRIFICER:

• You repeatedly have partners who verbally, emotionally, sexually, or physically abuse you.
• You have noticed that your partner’s moods tend to leap, without warning, from one end of the spectrum to the other.
• You often fear that one wrong move could trigger your partner to get angry and begin an abusive cycle.
• You see yourself as trapped and betrayed in your relationships; you feel too guilty to leave and too afraid of what your partner might do if you tried to do so.
• You try to excuse your partner’s abusive behaviour by saying things like, “It only happened once,” or “He/ she only does it when he gets mad.”
• You eventually begin to wonder if you're going insane, because your partner does such an able job of putting the blame on you
• You lose your grasp on what normal behaviour in a relationship looks like and fear that the abuse has damaged you to the point that future healthy lovers wouldn’t want to be with you.
• You believe your partner is treating you the way you deserve to be treated..
• The constant abuse convinces you there is nothing you can do to avoid it.

ASK YOURSELF 

1. Has anyone ever mistreated you verbally / physically / sexually ? If not, how have you avoided relationships with such partners?
2. What would you do if someone new were to abuse you in some way ?
3. What do you think is the hardest type of abuse to spot in other people's relationships ?
4. What would be the hardest type of abuse to spot in your own relationship ?

In the next article I shall look at what causes these relationship patterns to come about and what to do to move away from them and discover the love you deserve.

This article was inspired by the book : Dr Seth Love Prescription. Overcome Repeated Relationship Patterns by Seth Meyers