Have you ever wondered why beautiful, intelligent and seemingly reasonable women are attracted to men that have heartbreak written all over them?
Do you keep picking men who break your heart? Do you love someone who is incapable of loving you in the way that you need? Do you attach yourself to emotionally unstable men? Do you focus on saving him more than he wants to save himself? Does he convince you that his needs are more important? Does he struggle with depression, severe anxiety, and/or addictions?
Do you repeatedly find yourself with men who appear charming and seem to have great potential? Yet, they end up being emotional, manipulative, clingy, needy, controlling, unhappy, jealous, aggressive, volatile, unstable and unable to cope with aspects of their life? They end up cheating and lying?
Your job is not to get them to stop being unstable, needy, controlling, addicted, cheating, lying, and so forth. Your job is to leave.
When you don’t feel deserving of love or when you question your worth, you typically attract someone who is not worthy of your heart and time. If you constantly question yourself or your value to the world as a person or if you don’t feel good enough, chances are, you’re going to attract men who make you miserable. While questioning your self-worth, it is common to set yourself up for self-sabotage by picking someone who will ultimately let you down, reinforcing the story you have about yourself and your unworthiness.
Why do we love people who hurt us?
You act out what you experienced in childhood in adult relationships. You learned a coping style that taught you that in order to get love, you have to do so by pleasing, sacrificing and by making someone else feel good about themselves.
The formula is simple. The giver is attracted to the taker. It is deeply embedded in your psyche. The psyche doesn’t care about good or bad as much as it cares about familiar and unfamiliar. As human beings, we are drawn to the familiar. So, the unconscious direction is for you to look for a familiar pattern with men of pleasing and sacrificing.
Therefore, no amount of changing your outside circumstances such as behaving differently, dressing differently, or picking different men is going to fix a broken picker. You need to change what is going on with you on the inside. What needs to change is not the men, but how highly you value yourself.
Relationships are not about filling a void of emptiness with anyone. It is about connecting with someone in a way that further enriches your life. Confidence is key in attracting quality partners who you deserve and are deserving of you.
I know it can be tricky, but I urge you to go after relationships that are rewarding instead of repeating the familiar ones that don’t bring you the happiness you deserve. Knowing that you need to change who you have in your life is the way to begin. Therapy is a great place to start this process.
Carrie
I would Love to have the tools to break the cycles encoded in my psyche. I have always Overcompensated, and showered the ultimate “takers” with gifts of “Oxygen”. And, always end up feeling played and betrayed.
I absolutely just love this, my past relationship I had with an alcoholic. All I felt I wanted to do was make him happy so I wasn’t walking on egg shells. Even so, it still wasn’t enough. I’m very glad I got out of that, he called me names and used me. I learned a lot from that and reading this just made me smile.
Awww Thank you so much Alicia. I am so glad you found the strength to leave. Sometimes those situations can leave us with the best life lessons.