What Really Happens In Unhealthy Relationships

Breaking up is hard to do because it is hard-wired, all about patterns formed in childhood.  It’s what we did in order to survive in our family of origin. We choose a partner we can run our story with, or rather is a good fit with our story. For example, if in your family of origin, no one paid any attention to your feelings, you will innately feel that you do not matter. You may then chose a partner who is unemotionally unavailable to you and when that person treats you the way you have always been treated there will be something about the interaction that is familiar to you .

It's what Freud calls repetition compulsion. We pick a person from the get go who reminds us of someone in our family of origin with the assumption being that if only I can get that person to love me then finally I will be lovable. But the person we pick doesn’t have the ability to love – we set it up that way at the beginning.

In your family of origin you had to figure out what you had to do to get love; it was a matter of surival.  As a child, you had to figure out a way to get love from an unavailable father; that was your job and you became addicted to the struggle.

We repeat that pattern as an adult. Perhaps we keep choosing men who are unavailable, not able to make a commitment to us. If our story is that we don’t matter – we will choose a partner who is emotionally unavailable to us and when we are around them and they don’t pay attention to us, we will feel that we are right and we will see that our story is true and  then we will complain about the other person. We will never look at ourselves. Instead of taking responsibility for our unhappiness, we project it onto our partner and say he/she is the cause of it. That is not true. We are responsible for that big hole inside of us – we can’t lay it on someone else.

There’s only 1 way to break an unhealthy relationship, and that’s to understand it’s just about YOU and no one else. You need to understand that no one can make you do anything. You are not unhappy because of anyone else but you are really unhappy about the choices you have made. But just like you made those choices, you can make new ones as well.

Comments

[SystemsThinker]

I'm glad to see you talk about this topic, the repetition compulsion in relationships, because it is so powerful and important. So many people suffer in these repetitive relationships without ever understanding why they keep happening. However, understanding is still not enough, I've found.

I think it's a really tricky paradoxical situation trying to figure out how to respond even once becomes aware. I wrote about this in my post Choosing Intimate Partners: To Repeat or Not to Repeat?. I'm hoping to open up more dialogue there about this topic at

http://www.systemsthinker.com/blog/2008/04/choosing-intimate-partners-repeat/

Thanks for addressing it. We need it brought up more widely.

[amabayag]

Thanks for the post. Indeed it is really unhealthy and it can also affect your decision in life. Through meditation we can look deep into ourselves, we can look what is the deep hole inside us.

[Anais]

Chandra, my question for you then is ... how do we fix our chooser? When I selected my last ex-boyfriend, he seemed like the opposite of unavailable. He was doting and sweet and always seemed ready and willing to talk about things. He wasn't as warm and outgoing as I was, but he didn't seem unavailable to me, just aloof. Well, his lack of availability eventually began to come out as the relationship deepened and became more serious, he seemed to withdraw and i became frantic trying to get him to pay attention to me. I blamed myself for everything. I have spent the time since we broke up trying to figure out how I can fix my chooser. I have stopped dating and have been working on myself, being alone, getting things in life down that i need and just really trying to figure out how to fix my chooser. Are there any signs to be on the lookout for? I gather someday I will want to get back out there, but I just don't trust myself anymore!

[Chandra Alexander, MSW]

When you say "trying to fix your chooser" are you referring to attempting to fix the person you have selected? If that is what you are referring to - that will never work. We can NEVER fix anyone else, only ourselves. The minute the "franticness" sets it, that is a good indication that you are going down the wrong path. The reason we become "frantic" is because we cannot do it for someone else, cannot control how someone else behaves. Good strong healthy realtionships are the opposite of frantic - they are relaxed, laid-back, at ease. The minute you feel someone pulling away, you need to address the situation in a dignified and respectful way but with firm boundaries letting the other person know that behavior is unacceptable.

[Hennely]

Great subject and great post! I'm only 23 but I've been trying to start a blog about relationships and just anything else in general that I learn about in life. Would you mind if I reposted your post on my blog, and added a link to your blog site? You can visit my site at hennely.blogspot.com. Let me know. Thanks! :)

[Chandra Alexander]

Sure - go ahead and post the entry if you feel it will be of benefit to your readers. Would appreciate a link back to my blog. Thanks - Chandra