Relationships & Love
The experience of recognising a pattern — of seeing, clearly, that you are in the same dynamic you have been in before, with a different person — is one of the most demoralising in relational life. Not because you are weak or unintelligent, but because the pattern persists despite the recognition.
This is because patterns are not changed through recognition alone. They are changed through the work that recognition makes possible.
They are adaptive. The relational patterns you bring to adult relationships were formed in early relational contexts — primarily in your family of origin — as adaptive responses to the specific conditions you encountered. They made sense then. They are now automatic.
The familiar registers as safe. Even when the familiar is genuinely difficult, it registers as known and therefore manageable. The unfamiliar — the genuinely different relationship — can register as threatening even when it is actually better.
They are maintained by the choices made in the present. Each choice that recreates the pattern — the same type of partner, the same avoidance of conflict, the same accommodation — reinforces the pattern rather than disrupting it.
The pattern must be named specifically. Not "I keep ending up in bad relationships" — but the specific pattern. "I tend to be attracted to emotionally unavailable men and then pursue the relationship more intensely as they withdraw." The specific pattern is the thing to be changed.
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The early root must be understood. The pattern has a history. Understanding where it came from — the early experiences that produced it — provides both insight and compassion, and begins to loosen its grip on the present.
The discomfort of disruption must be tolerated. Changing a pattern requires acting differently from what the pattern suggests — which is uncomfortable, because the pattern's pull is real. The woman who usually pursues the unavailable person must feel the pull and not act from it. This requires tolerance for a specific form of relational discomfort.
Different choices must be made consistently. Change is built in repeated small choices — choosing the person who is available, choosing to speak rather than accommodate, choosing to leave rather than pursue. These consistent choices gradually build a different relational history.
Support is usually necessary. The patterns that most reliably repeat are the deepest ones — rooted in earliest attachment. These respond best to therapeutic support that addresses both the cognitive and the experiential dimensions.
Related: The Woman Who Loves Too Much · Self-Worth and Relationships · What a Secure Relationship Actually Feels Like
Change is possible. It is not fast and it is not easy — but it is real. The Good Girl Delusion is the beginning of the work that makes different choices possible.
Nancy GLO
Reflective storyteller & style curator for women becoming
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