If you find yourself making the same mistakes over and over you might want to look at your relationship patterns.
Relationship patterns are the patterns we tend to replicate in our relationships with other people. I've talked about family roles before. This is one type of relationship pattern that can be replicated. If you were the Lost Child or the Hero or the Scapegoat in your family of origin you will probably replicate that role in your adult relationships; your friends, your marriage, your colleagues at work.
But other patterns can be repeated as well. If you grew up in a house with domestic violence odds are you will replicate that pattern in your adult relationships. You may identify with the abuser and enter into relationships with victims over and over. Or you may identify with the victim and enter into relationships with abusers over and over.
If you grew up in a family with substance abuse you may grow up to be a substance abuser yourself who is attracted to enablers, or you may be the enabler who is attracted to alcoholics and/or drug addicts. If you grew up being sexually molested you may grow up to be a molester or you may be attracted to people who sexually abuse you in the same way you were abused as a child.
There is an old saying in this field that men tend to marry their mothers and women tend to marry their fathers. This is so accurate, but it is not written in stone. I worked with one client who had married the "perfect" man. Someone she had scoured the Earth and managed to find a man who represented all the problematic behaviors of both her mother and her father. All in one person! We tend to be attracted to people who represent the parent with whom we had the most issues and/or problems. If you are a woman and you have unresolved issues with your mother, you may tend to pick out friends who are like her. Likewise for men. If you are a lesbian, you may be attracted to women who are just like your mother, especially if she was abusive. Gay men are often attracted to men who treat them like their fathers, especially if they were abusive.
The reasons we do this are not so insane.
1. We are trying to work out the issue we had with the original parent in order to get the love from our partner that we never got from our parent. It's like a puzzle we are constantly trying to solve. If we can only get it right, we can get them to love us. Unfortunately, it does not work that way.
2. Our gender roles are primarily learned from our parents. We also pick up messages from the culture in general, but our primary sources of information about how to be a man or a woman come from our parents. So if father is cold and distant and mother is raging, a young man may grow up to be a cold and distant husband with a raging wife.
3. It's also a familiar pattern. If you are a woman who grew up with an alcoholic father and an enabling mother, this is how you understand marriage to be. Odds are you will marry an alcoholic man and be an enabling woman. We do what we know and we know the rules for living with an alcoholic. This feels comfortable and "normal" for us. We start dancing to the music before we even realize it is playing.
You aren't doomed to live like this though. It can be changed, but first you have to be aware of what you are doing.
Look at your relationship patterns. Who are you really having relationships with?
What part are you playing in replicating this pattern? Do you constantly play victim to abusers? Do you play the part of an enabler to an alcoholic? Do you play caretaker to the sick? It takes two to tango. You can't attract abusers unless you are playing victim. You can't attract the sick unless you play caretaker. Abusers aren't attracted to strong, intelligent, independent people. They are looking for a victim. If you stop being an enabler or a victim or a caretaker you will stop attracting their counterparts.
Recommended Reading:
For Domestic Violence survivors:
For Female Sexual Child Abuse Survivors:
The Courage to Heal 4e: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse 20th Anniversary Edition
For Male Sexual Child Abuse Survivors:
Victims No Longer: The Classic Guide for Men Recovering from Sexual Child Abuse
For General Information about Relationship Patterns:
Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples, 20th Anniversary Edition
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