Why You Keep Attracting/Creating the Same Kind of Relationship Patterns
How early wounds and nervous system patterns recreate familiar repeating patterns and dynamics.
Sculpture seen at Burning Man
In a session late last week, a client shared about her recent separation with her partner. She had been with a man she deeply loved for a number of years, but he wasn’t ready for the kind of commitment she was longing for. While he also loved her, he had asked her to wait for him to be ready, and she was becoming increasingly unhappy - frustrated that the relationship simply couldn’t meet her needs.
Eventually, she made the brave decision to leave.
Shortly after they separated she met another man with whom she felt a mutual attraction. Over coffee he shared with he that he was married, and very unfulfilled in his marriage. He revealed he was interested in her, thinking about separating from his wife, and asked her if they could take it slow whilst he figured things out.
She came to me mortified, having set a firm boundary with him immediately after recognising the pattern. How is it that just after making the decision to honour herself and leave a man she loved, who was unavailable to meet her needs, was there an attraction to someone who was also unavailable?
How could this happen again, so soon? Of all the people to be attracted to, why was she attracted to such a similar pattern again? Why would she be attracted to one man, and not other? What creates attraction?
Deep and burning questions.
These are the kind of questions I hear often.
Why do I keep ending up in the same dynamic?
Why do I attract unavailable people?
Why does this always happen to me?
Why do these patterns keep repeating?
This is emotional imprinting.
The relationships we form as adults, the dynamics and patterns that arise within them, don’t exist in a vacuum, they emerge from the emotional imprinting of our early experiences. From trauma and early conditioning.
They reflect what our nervous system learned to expect in relationship:
The Role of the Nervous System in Relationships
Beneath our conscious awareness, the nervous system is always scanning for cues of safety and danger. When we are young, the experiences we have in our primary relationships shape what our body comes to recognise as normal. If for example, love came with inconsistency, distance, or emotional unavailability, those qualities become familiar to our system. And in the world of the nervous system, familiarity equals safety, even if that familiar pattern is painful.
This is why you might find yourself repeatedly drawn to unavailable, dismissive, or critical partners. Or why you keep making decisions that have you end up repeating similar patterns. Your nervous system is orienting toward what it knows. It’s trying to keep you safe by leading you toward the relational terrain it has already mapped. The unfamiliar, even if it’s healthy, present, and loving, can feel foreign, suspicious, even threatening, because your system doesn’t yet know how to predict or navigate that kind of connection.
The science of neuroception, a term coined by Dr. Stephen Porges (creator of the Polyvagal Theory), explains this beautifully. Neuroception is our nervous system’s automatic and subconscious process of evaluating whether a person, environment, or situation is safe or unsafe. When something feels unfamiliar, even if it’s objectively safe, it can register as a threat simply because it doesn’t match the old imprint. This can activate a stress response: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. So we avoid the unfamiliar, and feel drawn to the familiar to stay safe.
So often, we think we’re making conscious relationship choices, but really, we’re following the guidance of a nervous system that’s trying to protect us from the unknown.
The work is not to shame ourselves for repeating patterns, but to bring awareness and regulation to the nervous system, so it can learn new pathways of connection and begin to recognise true safety, not just familiarity, as the place where we can rest.
Until we do the work, our relationships will mirror our early life and inner world. Always.
And our early pattering quietly shapes who we’re drawn to, how we show up, and what we tolerate.
None of it is by accident.
Meeting your Younger Parts
When you find yourself triggered or stuck in problematic patterns, whether in intimacy, family, friendships, or work, consider it a signal from your system that something deeper is seeking your attention.
An invitation to turn towards yourself.
Often, what we call ‘triggers’ in relationship are actually activations of younger parts, just like the image above, the ones who were hurt, ignored, misattuned to, or had to shut down to stay safe. These parts carry unmet needs for love, respect, consistency, and safety. And they are still searching for resolution.
That’s why your reaction to someone withdrawing or being critical might feel disproportionate, because it’s touching something much older. A wound that was too much to feel at the time. A place in you that learned to adapt by shutting down, fawning, striving, numbing out etc.
You may spiral, shut down, lose your voice, rage, or binge on food, alcohol, sex, scrolling etc. and beat yourself up afterwards thinking that there is something wrong with you, but there isn’t.
There is never. anything. wrong with you.
What is happening is a younger part has been hijacked by unresolved pain that is too much to bear. And that part of you reacts in the only way it knows how to keep safe and get its needs met.
That’s the emotional imprint playing out in the now.
The most important thing I want you to know is that these patterns arise to help you heal.
That co-worker who ignores you and makes you feel unseen.. when was the first time you felt that?
The partner who dismisses your voice.. where did you first experience your voice being silenced, or learn that your needs didn’t matter?
Your friend or colleague who disrespects you.. when was the first time you felt disrespected?
Bring curiosity to these experiences.
I speak about triggers a lot because triggers are gateways. Each trigger is an invitation to meet yourself in a new way, to return to the parts of you that didn’t get their needs met early on, and offer them what they’ve been waiting for all along:
Your presence, understanding, love and care.
This is a powerful pathway to healing, and back to your True Self.
When we meet the parts that are activated or triggered in your relational life, we are actually meeting the conditioned self who learned to survive…
The one who learned to stay silent
The one who protected herself by becoming independent so she never felt abandoned again
The one who became the caregiver so she felt needed
The one who became the people pleaser…
It is always an opportunity.
These conditioned parts of us are our masks. The way we have learned to be in the world, to get our survival needs met. But they are not the true you.
Our greater work in this lifetime, is to discover which masks we wear, and peel them back to find our way home back to the true you. The one who knows how to feel, how to speak, how to receive, how to love; without abandoning yourself. The one who knows that you are enough, that you deserve love, care, tenderness and connection. Just because you exist.
Back to the one who knows that you are love.
Recognising the Intelligent Design
Lastly.. most importantly… your bodymind is a self-healing organism.
Think about it.. when you cut yourself, there is nothing you need to do to activate the healing forces necessary to heal that wound. We have an innate intelligence that is always oriented towards healing. Towards wholeness.
This is also the same with our emotional and psychological healing. The orientation of our inner intelligence is always towards resolution. So a silent but potent part of us is always looking for opportunities to help us heal the ruptures of our early years, dismantle the false self and all of our survival patterns, and return to what is deeply true.
This is why we keep coming up against people that push our buttons.
It is by design. Unbelievable intelligent design.
The minute you realise this, you will see everyone in your life as a mirror to your internal world, and as an opportunity to show you were you need to look within, to meet the parts that still need your care.
Whatever that person triggers in you, get curious and ask yourself ‘when was the first time I felt this’… I can pretty much guarantee that there will be some historical material in there.
This coming month at The True Self Project, we’ll be diving into the deeper waters of relational healing.. looking at trauma and early conditioning, attachment, nervous system repair, emotional imprinting, and how to build safe, clear, loving relationships from the inside out.
Because relationships are important. Connection is important. Safety in connection is important. And you are important.
And the most important relationship you’ll ever have.. is the one you have with yourself. So this is what we focus on.
When that relationship heals, everything else begins to change.
With love and care,
Maraya
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Honestly, the "familiar is safe" explanation is kinda a lazy one and it doesn't make much sense. I've read this many times.
The familiar seems to be preferred by our nervous system but I doubt that safety has anything to do with. It's an economical choice. Less effort, less work is required. Neural pathways already established and they work just fine. We know the drill, the new subject simply fits in the established frame of work.
You go to the supermarket and you grape that bag of chips. You have done it hundreds of times. It's almost effortless, you do it without thinking. Try changing that to buying ingredients for an actual meal, making that meal, eating it and cleaning up afterwards. It involves A LOT of work, conscious work, effort sucks. and that's regarding a trivial thing like a meal, so imagine the amount of effort it would take to change neural pathways of relating to other humans. Of course you gonna grape that bag of walking toxic behavior shaped as a human being. You just need to rinse and repeat, no effort. Automated processes.