Are You Stuck in an Unhealthy Relationship Pattern? Part Two

This is part two of Are You Stuck in an Unhealthy Relationship Pattern? The last post examined your usual choice of romantic partner, which stems from early childhood relationship experiences and the faulty belief system you learned about relationships as a result.

Ultimately, the self-doubts and self-defeating beliefs you have about yourself and relationships are obstacles to having the kind of relationship your rational mind wants. Whether you’re aware of them or not, they shape the relationship choices you make. For example, do you believe that:

• You have to work hard to earn someone’s love?
• You have to prove that you’re “good enough” for someone to love you?
• You must be perfect to deserve someone’s love?
• You have to go along with, like, or agree with everything your partner likes or wants?
• You need to ignore or hide your needs and feelings in order to meet all of your partner’s needs?
• Your partner should “magically” know or intuit how you’re feeling and what you want without having to tell him or her?
• Your partner should be able to meet all your needs?
• Your partner should enjoy doing all the things you do and like all of the same people you like?
• Your partner should prove he or she cares by spending money on you and paying for trips, dinners and gifts?

Whenever we make statements that use the words should, always, must, never, or have to it usually means we’re placing unreasonably high expectations on others and ourselves. This usually leads to anger, disappointment, hurt and frustration, which makes it difficult to have good relationships.

A faulty relationship belief system, which is tied to our fears and self-doubts in a self-reinforcing loop, perpetuate our poor relationship choices. For example, do you worry that:

• You’re unlovable?
• No one would love you if they really knew you?
• You’ll eventually be rejected?
• You don’t deserve love?
• You’re cursed?
• You’re not attractive enough?
• You’re not thin enough?
• You’re not smart enough?
• You don’t make enough money?
• You’re boring?
• There’s something wrong with you?
• You don’t deserve respect?

It’s hard to feel good about yourself and have confidence in your ability to be an attractive partner to others with this kind of self-defeating garbage floating around in your head. We develop our beliefs and fears about relationships from observing our parents’ or caretakers’ relationships as children and by how they treated us. In many cases, they weren’t ideal relationship role models. These beliefs cause us to choose people who treat us in ways that make us feel bad, which reinforces these negative feelings and doubts.

It becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that can make us believe that we’re doomed to be alone or unhappy in relationships. As a result, many of us learned unhealthy relationship beliefs as children that still control our behavior to this day. An effective way to counter these faulty beliefs and fears is to challenge and reality test them to see if they’re true. Otherwise, you’re allowing what happened to you “way back when” to control your “here and now.” You don’t have to allow your adult life and the course of your adult relationships be defined by what happened to you as a child or teen.

You can take control of your life now. You don’t have to be dependent on the approval of others who aren’t likely to give it to you. You can let go of your old beliefs and adopt new ones. In some ways, it’s like flipping on a light switch in your mind. When you do this, you may see some things from the past that you’d rather not deal with, but they will continue to control you and lead you to make poor relationship choices until you do.

Next week, I’ll post part three in this series. It will focus on problematic relationship behaviors and coping strategies that tend to do more harm than good and contribute to staying stuck in an unhealthy relationship pattern.

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Counseling, Consulting and Coaching with Dr. Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD

Dr. Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD helps individuals work through their relationship and codependency issues via telephone or Skype. She specializes in helping men and women trying to break free of an abusive relationship, cope with the stress of an abusive relationship or heal from an abusive relationship. She combines practical advice, emotional support and goal-oriented outcomes. Please visit the Schedule a Session page for professional inquiries.

Want to Say Goodbye to Crazy? Buy it HERE.

If you find the information I provide free of charge helpful and valuable here on Shrink4Men, please consider making a donation via PayPal.

Related content:

• Are You Stuck in an Unhealthy Relationship Pattern? Part One
• Men Have Emotions, But Women Don’t Listen
• Are You My Soul Mate? Defining the One
• 12 Signs You Should Break Up with your Boyfriend or Girlfriend or Spouse
• Why We Stay in Bad Relationships
• Ending a Painful Relationship and Starting Over
• How to Make Changes in your Relationship and Life
• 3 Dating Tips for Having a Healthy and Successful Relationships
• The Secret to Happy, Long Lasting Relationships
• How to Have a Healthy Relationship After Being With an Emotionally Abusive, Borderline or Narcissistic Woman

Photo credit:

Man on hamster wheel on MarkYoungTrainingSystems.

Are You Stuck in an Unhealthy Relationship Pattern? Part One

Are you stuck in an unhealthy relationship pattern? Do you repeat the same relationship choices and behaviors that ultimately lead to the same unhappy conclusion: conflict, unmet needs, disappointment and loneliness?

If so, the first thing you need to do in order to break your unhealthy relationship pattern is to consider the kind of romantic partner you typically choose. Do you have a habit of choosing women or men who are:

• Unavailable
• Unfaithful
• Emotionally abusive
• Physically abusive
• Totally self-centered
• Still involved in other relationships
• Too dependent
• Jealous or controlling
• Unable to commit
• Unable to express and receive love

Do you choose women or men who:

• Have substance abuse problems
• Have a lot of emotional problems
• Get serious too quickly
• Run hot and cold

Logically, you probably know that you won’t be able to have a loving and enduring relationship with the type of woman or man you’re usually attracted to; while your emotional reasoning and the “thrill of the familiar” pulls you toward the same type of relationship time and again.

Is it possible that you’re stuck in a dead end relationship pattern with the same type of person because you’re recreating earlier relationships from childhood or adolescence? Until you gain awareness regarding your choice of adult romantic partners, you’ll tend to be attracted to a certain kind of person because the way you interact with them and the way they treat you feels familiar, especially if it makes you feel bad.

Why would anyone voluntarily choose to feel bad? Seems crazy, right? But that’s exactly what many of us do; we choose to pursue and have relationships with women and men who make us feel bad. In a way it is crazy, but there’s a kind of warped logic to it.

These people are familiar due to your early childhood and adolescent relationship experiences. Because it’s what you know, you don’t realize that there are other ways to be in a relationship and  other kinds of people who are open to relationships and will value you rather than shut you out, reject you, or, in extreme cases, demean and abuse you.

When you’re stuck in an unhealthy relationship pattern, it’s usually because you’re trying to get a different outcome in your adult relationships than you had with your family and other people who hurt you or didn’t meet your needs often enough when you were a kid. This is why you choose people who are no more capable of meeting your needs and loving you the way you want to be loved than your parents, family, or your first intimate relationship partners were.

Choosing the same kind of person, even when it’s self-destructive, protects you from the realization that perhaps you didn’t have the best parents in the world or that they treated you in ways that weren’t always loving, damaged your sense of worth and affected your ability to give and receive love. It confirms your faulty relationship beliefs by setting you up for the same bad relationship result. It also keeps you from facing residual painful memories and hurt feelings that may be lingering from childhood. Consequently, your faulty beliefs, self-doubts and fears about relationships that lead you to make choices and behave in ways that support your beliefs and fears, which perpetuates the unhealthy pattern.

Next week, I’ll post the second part of this series in which I’ll explain how self-doubt and fears contribute to unhealthy relationship patterns.

 

Counseling, Consulting and Coaching with Dr. Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD

Dr. Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD helps individuals work through their relationship and codependency issues via telephone or Skype. She specializes in helping men and women trying to break free of an abusive relationship, cope with the stress of an abusive relationship or heal from an abusive relationship. She combines practical advice, emotional support and goal-oriented outcomes. Please visit the Schedule a Session page for professional inquiries.

Want to Say Goodbye to Crazy? Buy it HERE.

If you find the information I provide free of charge helpful and valuable here on Shrink4Men, please consider making a donation via PayPal to help me maintain the site.

Related content:

• Men Have Emotions, But Women Don’t Listen
• Are You My Soul Mate? Defining the One
• 12 Signs You Should Break Up with your Boyfriend or Girlfriend or Spouse
• Why We Stay in Bad Relationships
• Ending a Painful Relationship and Starting Over
• How to Make Changes in your Relationship and Life
• 3 Dating Tips for Having a Healthy and Successful Relationships
• The Secret to Happy, Long Lasting Relationships
• How to Have a Healthy Relationship After Being With an Emotionally Abusive, Borderline or Narcissistic Woman

Photo credit:

hamster on a wheel by Walala Poncho on flickr.