When It Comes Relationships, Patterns Don't Lie
Many men and women know the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. Yet in spite of this knowledge, they continue to date or marry the same type of person while expecting a different result.
Most therapists are familiar with this pattern. Usually those individuals who are in “relationship insanity” only enter therapy because they are in intense pain and feeling desperate.
Often a woman will enter my office (most of my clients are women) for relief from her heartache rather than to gain insight into her problems. Most of these women (men too) want their circumstances to be different, but they often don't want to change the behavior that is contributing to their pain.
During a session, it is very common to have such a client nod in agreement when I point out WHY they are having trouble and then leave the session only to repeat the same behavior. If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be funny.
What a good therapist is supposed to do is learn from their client’s history in relationships and help them identify their particular pattern. Focusing only on an isolated incident isn't very effective because most people believe it is a one-time occurrence caused by circumstances beyond their control.
They truly believe that they are an innocent victim who is powerless over their current circumstance (usually regarding a romantic relationship). Their hope is that I will be able to help them identify the “mistake” they made with a particular man (or woman) and tell them exactly what to do to fix the relationship.
What many of these women struggle with is that their current circumstances are a reflection of a pattern in their life and until they identify their pattern and do something different, they are doomed to keep repeating the same mistakes with men.
This concept became vividly clear to me years ago when I worked as a Group Therapy leader in an in-patient hospital setting. In my group there were all types of individuals who found themselves overpowered by their day-to-day life and in need of healing.
I began to notice that within my group there were...
...many women were involved with men who were alcoholics. Their stories were different and yet they all had an eerie pattern of familiarity. They found these men "exciting" and felt an instant "chemistry" yet couldn't understand how these same men could turn out to be so mean, insensitive and hurtful.
As their time in my group progressed, some of these women found the strength (although temporarily) to set limits with or even leave such abusive men. When they did, the group cheered their courage.
Fast forward two months. In nearly every case, the same women who had left their abusive relationship would begin dating someone new. He was different, they assured the group; and in many ways the new man in their life was different – until they dated him for a few weeks or months and seemingly out of nowhere, the same abusive traits of the former boyfriend or husband began to manifest in their new man.
I saw this pattern repeated so many times I stopped counting. Usually by the third relationship, the group and I had enough "evidence" to show the woman in question her relationship pattern with men.
It wasn’t that they intentionally sought out these types of men, but that a subconscious belief was attracting them to the wrong men based on their low self esteem. Those who were willing to pay more attention to their patterns rather than their intense feelings were able to date different types of men and eventually ended up in a wonderful marriage.
Those who insisted that all they needed to do was find the right man were destined to continue their downward spiral indefinitely, regardless of the amount of relationship advice or intense therapy they undertook.
Do you know your relationship pattern? Do you know what the men you have dated have in common? It won’t be obvious, but if you take the time to look, you will be able to see a pattern. If you don’t like this pattern, you can change it.
When a person is willing to learn by accepting responsibility for their own patterns, they then have the ability to change those patterns and get the results they want because it's will always be true – patterns don't lie.
