Unhealthy relationships cause serious damage to our psyche. This is the possibility of developing depression, and anxiety, and the likelihood of a real injury. But is it possible to stop being chronically attracted to those with whom we feel so bad?
Have you ever thought in your hearts that you “do not know how to choose” partners and constantly fall in love with “the wrong ones”? This happens quite often, and not only with women, but also with men.
Clinical psychologist Karen Nimmo recalls the story of one of her clients: a 33-year-old man experienced “toxic attraction” only to those women who deceived him, manipulated him, cheated on him. History repeated itself from relationship to relationship, and again and again the man wondered: why do we choose the same type of people, even knowing that this is bad for us?
There is no simple answer to this question: appearance, sexual attractiveness, hormones, emotions, and the attainability of the desired object, and reciprocity play a role. But the tendency to look for what we already know, what we have already encountered in the past, keeps us falling into the same trap. We – often unconsciously – strive to reproduce already familiar feelings, to repeat the previous experience, even if it was unhealthy.
And how to be? Each of us can choose the “wrong” person and end up in a destructive, unhealthy, toxic relationship at least once in our lives. But if you realize that the same scenario is repeated over and over again, it is worth considering how to break this vicious circle. Here’s what will help you do it.
- Analyze your “emotional story”. You have to look back to childhood. What were your parents like, how did they treat you, what kind of love did they give you? Perhaps the answer lies precisely in that distant time. Even if your parents didn’t leave you or be outright cruel to you, they may have been inconsistent, constantly criticizing you and comparing you to others. Or perhaps there was trouble in the family, adults were in constant stress and therefore could not behave differently. It is likely that since then love for you has been “in conjunction” with something else: with anxiety, fear, tension, expectation of evaluation or punishment.
- Think about it: are you too empathic? Perhaps in a relationship you constantly “get into the position” of a partner, try to calm him or her in moments of rage, continue to believe in the potential of this person and believe that only you can help him. Or you continue to support another at all to the detriment of yourself and your health, mental or physical.
- Learn to set boundaries. Personal boundaries are an imaginary line that marks where we end (both physically and emotionally, our feelings and needs) and where the other person begins. In an unhealthy relationship, the boundaries are blurred, usually because the toxic partner violates them grossly. Learning to set and defend boundaries is not easy, especially if you have not had such experience before, if you are used to pleasing everyone and feel guilty or anxious when you do not succeed.
- Explore what a healthy relationship should be like. Alas, no one teaches us this: there is no such subject in schools or even universities, and we have to figure everything out on our own, “rolling up our sleeves”. Parents, too, unfortunately, do not always set a good example for us. But if what you have categorically does not suit you, try to formulate what exactly you expect from a relationship, how your potential partner should and should not behave with you.
- Give a chance to relationships in which everything is going “too smoothly.” Against the background of the intensity of passions to which we are accustomed, against the background of stormy reconciliations after equally stormy quarrels, relationships without “emotional swings” may seem unusually calm and even boring. At first, we may wonder: what if this is not love at all? Karen Nimmo says that many of her clients begin to actively sabotage their first healthy relationship – too unusual a feeling that arises in them.
Recall once again: we are attracted by everything familiar, we are looking for a repetition of past experience, even if it was destructive. This is normal, natural. But this is the first thing to deal with. And do not rush to reject a new, too “correct” and “boring” partner. Perhaps he is exactly what you need.