Do you find that you are caught in a cycle of falling for people that you fancy the pants off, yet they are not right for you in other ways?
There is an art to making our attractions work for us that most of us have never been taught, and usually we learn after several heartbreaks. The following three insights might help you understand the pattern that you have been in and how you can move away from attractions that deprive you in some way and towards relationships and connections that inspire you and give you what you deserve.
First our attractions often act as a mirror and the other person can reflect back the core vulnerabilities that you might not be aware of in yourself and also that you haven’t acknowledged or value. For example, commitment, if you are attracting people that are emotionally unavailable or unwilling to make a commitment to you, what might this tell you about a) your own availability in relationships and b) the lack of commitment that you are also offering to yourself by accepting such crumbs. Our attractions reveal so much about who we are and therefore every relationship that hasn’t worked out, can tell you something about where you are at in your life, or were at that time…if nothing else use them as educators…something needs to come from the hurt at least!
Second, using the knowledge you gain, you are then in a position of power to change the people you attract and invite into your life. I wasn’t always happily married and spent years understanding my attachment style, my core vulnerabilities and what my relationships were teaching me, before I swept my path clear so that my gorgeous husband could walk into my life and reflect back to me availability and being deserving of love. I know that sounds easy with words, yet actually it was years of angst and heartache to get to that point, and repeating the same game with myself, before I finally got the message! Once you know how to cherish and nurture your own vulnerabilities and almost be in partnership with yourself, then you will invite the same energy into your life and begin to demand love and respect as oppose to disappointment, rejection and pain. You are worthy of being loved and if people haven’t treated you as so in the past, then this informs you where you were then, yet doesn’t mean you always have to accept that. Once you begin to value yourself more, and demand more, you will lose your appetite for people that diminish you or cannot be there for you ( and how unattractive is that!). You can educate your attractions. You might continue to attract those previous patterns of relating, yet that’s because you are attractive sweetie not because you want to accept that anymore!
Thirdly, learn the difference between those attractions that will stimulate you and nurture you and the ones that deprive you. Then be brave and resist the temptation to allow the ones that deprive you into your space. When we are hungry for connection and love, and sometimes when we are starved we all make limiting decisions around food. Nourish yourself with activities, good friends, exercise, being a companion to yourself in the dark times of loneliness ( rather than reaching for the unavailable companion in the love hour). Good food feeds you for longer, whereas processed food will only make you hungry again in an hour…sound familiar?
Trying to get love from people who don’t cherish us, and our vulnerabilities is an act of self-punishment. In addition to the pain of the relationship, they inflict on us that the aspects of ourselves that we don’t value are further reinforced as so through their behaviour, thus compounding everything we believe about ourselves to be true. We reject ourselves by our flight into such relationships and then we are further rejected.
Yet, these attractions are so exciting people tell me, so why are they so hard to give up? Such attractions are what behavioural theorists call “intermittent reward”. In such dynamics you get rewarded sporadically and you have no idea when the reward is coming, which is part of the subconscious excitement and can become addictive. Gambling is a form of intermittent reward and such patterns are not easy to break, yet possible.
We have just watched Bridget Jones for the millionth time, and discussing why Bridget is drawn to Daniel Clever. As a result of her own self -worth and perhaps fear of commitment, Bridget believes that Daniel is the “perfect” man for her, as she describes to her dad. I imagine Bridget’s mum was not entirely available to her, so this may have offered Bridget a template early on where she had to work harder for love and therefore Daniel mirrors her own unavailability in love, until that significant moment where she realises that she is worth more…enter Mark Darcy!
Connections that are nurturing and aligned with your true values of how to treat people will feel warm and easy. I am sure you have friends like this? Sad, how we accept less from our intimate relationships often that we would from our friends and yet most of us describe searching for our best friend. In these relationships the difference is that we return the care rather than trying to win the care. Our partners might challenge us to be better, or we want to be the best version of ourselves, yet fundamentally they love us for who we are. They are fuelled by the sense of well-being that the relationship creates in us, not by the unrelenting itch for something that’s denied in us. They make us feel love not desperation. These are the only relationships to build a life around, the only ones that deserve the gift of our most intimate self. And I promise you, they are out there…start sweeping that path and clear the way for someone wonderful to come into your life…you So deserve it. 