Why do I keep dating the wrong person?
Do you ever wonder why you keep finding yourself in the same pattern? Why you keep dating the same person, time and time again? Why your relationships seem to keep ending the same way? And you start asking yourself, what’s wrong with me? Why does this keep happening? If this sounds familiar, I might be able to shine some light on why your dating life is one big groundhog day.
The answer lies in what we call ‘schemas’. It’s a fancy psychological term for maladaptive beliefs, or put even more simply, ‘lifetraps’.
‘Lifetraps’, a term coined by cognitive therapy masters Jeffrey Young and Janet Klosko, refers to a pattern of behaviour that started in childhood and has continued throughout your lifespan. It began because something happened when we were young and developing our sense of self. Circumstances, primary caregivers, our peers, our experiences all helped to shape the beliefs that we hold. We may have been abandoned, overprotected, excluded, abused, criticised or even deprived — in essence, we were damaged in some way. And the thing is, when these things happen over and over again, they shift from being someone’s opinion, bad luck or a horrible home environment, to beliefs about ourselves that we see as factual. They are. We are. And that starts to make things a little tricky for our love life.
How does that translate into our relationships?
Well, the short answer is that long after we’ve left home, we continue to create the situations in which we were mistreated, ignored, criticised or controlled. We continue to repeat the pain of our childhood. And to make matters worse, we are naturally attracted to these kinds of individuals, because, they reinforce these beliefs. We even can have really high chemistry with them - like a moth to a flame! Furthermore, there’s a comfort in it. It’s safe, because it’s what we know (I know right?!)..
Alternatively, if you’ve managed to find yourself in a healthy relationship, one that doesn’t mimic the past you knew, then you may start to self-sabotage. To create the hurt that you feel you deserve.
Let me give you an example. Let’s say you have an ‘Abandonment' lifetrap , for example, your father died when you were young. Now these might be some of your “danger signs” in your partner or in the early stages of dating…
Your partner is unlikely to make a long-term commitment (they might be married or involved in another relationship);
Your partner is not consistently available for you physically and/or emotionally (they might travel a lot, live far away, be depressed, drink a lot);
Your partner is a Peter Pan who insists on their freedom to come and go and doesn’t want to settle down.
To further illustrate this, lets imagine that you’ve managed to find a healthy relationship but your partner does FIFO (fly-in-fly-out work) or travels away on business a lot. If you have an abandonment lifetrap, you might find that everytime they leave for a trip you get upset. Really upset. You feel terrified and alone. It doesn’t matter what they say, the intensity of those feelings doesn’t shift. You call or text constantly whilst they’re away, just wanting to hear their voice and to know that they’re okay. Then once they’re back, you’re angry. How could they put you through this? And that’s the irony of the whole situation. Once they are finally home, with you, you’re angry at them for leaving you in the first place and you don’t even want to see them!
Now you can imagine how that repeating pattern of behaviour would start to play out. The partner who works away would start to dread coming home. It would put a tremendous strain on your relationship. Time together would always be plagued with tension. Disagreements might start to ensue. And then the cycle starts all over again because it’s only a matter of time before they go away again. You can see, without intervention, what the outcome of this relationship is likely to be.
Why? Why? Why?
I bet you’re asking yourself why? Why on earth would anyone do this? Why would we re-enact our pain? Repeat it? Prolong our suffering? Why would we not instead escape the misery of our past and build better lives for ourselves? Good question. Really good question. So I’ll leave the answer to the experts.
“Schemas are deeply entrenched beliefs about ourselves and the world, learned early in life. These schemas are central to our sense of self. To give up our belief in a schema would be to surrender the security of knowing who we are and what the world is like; therefore we cling to it, even when it hurts us … they make us feel at home”.
What do we do from here?
Well Freud was the first to start gaining insight into this phenomena, but the psychodynamic approach isn’t great at changing anything. Don’t get me wrong, it’s vital that you understand the origins of why you are the way you are. To understand how you got there, but that doesn’t mean you will stop repeating the same mistakes. It won’t necessarily help you on that first date when the chemistry is sky high, despite the fact that a little voice inside your head is telling you that this person is not good for you and that instead of accepting that next date you really should run!
So my recommendation is — start by reading “Reinventing Your Life” by Jeffrey Young and Janet Klosko (there’s even a quiz to help you work out what life traps are applicable to you) and then your next step (if you need more than the book) is to see a clinician who is trained in Schema Therapy. It’s really worth it. Just imagine what it would look like if you had a healthy relationship? If your partner treated you the way you’ve always dreamed of being treated? Or that if you finally found that person, that you stopped yourself from self-destructive behaviour and ruining something wonderful!
Trust me, it’s worth the investment — because, between you and me, I’ve been there. And I can honestly say, I am married to the most amazing man (I know, I’m totally biased!!) and we have a relationship that I’m proud of. For me, it took that investment in myself to get there, to stop repeating my negative relationship patterns, and by gosh it was worth it!