si dawson

I've been giv­ing a lot of thought to how we attract peo­ple into our lives — who we end up in rela­tion­ships with, and so on. This applies both to inti­mate rela­tion­ships, and more impor­tantly friend­ships (since we gen­er­ally have far more & are less dis­crim­i­nat­ing with friends than lovers)

It's pretty obvi­ous (in hind­sight) that while a bunch of fac­tors deter­mine our part­ners — very few of these are actu­ally at the con­scious level. You want a guy who treats you well, and yet some­how always end up with angry drunks? Huh?

Here are some of the rea­sons why this sort of thing happens:

Your Pat­terns
If you look back over all your rela­tion­ships, what recur­ring themes can you see? I don't mean obvi­ous things like age dif­fer­ence, or hair colour.

I mean things like — were you meet­ing dam­aged peo­ple & try­ing to fix them? Were you with peo­ple who sup­ported you as much as you sup­ported them, or was it all one sided? Did they respect you? Do you often find your­self in rela­tion­ships with peo­ple that were self­ish or self-centred? That have no money them­selves but lots of ideas how to spend yours? Peo­ple that are angry? Rude to wait­ers? Lazy?

The prob­lem is — whether you're aware of these pat­terns or not, what­ever it is inside you that is cre­at­ing them will con­tinue to cre­ate them — at least, until you heal the pat­terns or oth­er­wise clear them out.

For exam­ple, I know that until very recently I've had a very deep need for approval (Thanks, great-great-great grandma! For­tu­nately this is sorted now). As such, I've reg­u­larly got in rela­tion­ships with "bro­ken" peo­ple — not bad peo­ple per se, just those with a lot of issues I could then help them with. As I help them, they're grate­ful, and voila, my need for approval is fulfilled.

Now, I saw this vividly in my very first rela­tion­ship — with a sui­ci­dal bulemic — and swore I'd never do it again. At a con­scious level, I chose to stay away from these sit­u­a­tions, and yet — they con­tin­ued to echo through my life regard­less. Despite my best con­scious atten­tion, I've been involved with a vio­lent alco­holic, an anorexic, socio­pathic liars & many seri­ous abuse vic­tims. Most inter­est­ingly, none of these attrib­utes were vis­i­ble in the early stages of the rela­ton­ships. There was no way I would know until it was too late.

At some level, I was draw­ing these sit­u­a­tions to myself, despite my best (con­scious) intentions.

Their Pat­terns
There are two peo­ple in every rela­tion­ship (well, ok, exclud­ing polyamory), so it's worth remem­ber­ing that any char­ac­ter­is­tics you have will attract peo­ple look­ing for those attributes.

Think about it this way — what­ever you dis­like most about your­self? There will be peo­ple who are drawn to that (for many rea­sons). You will be part of com­plet­ing their deep­est desires — even if it's a part of your­self you don't par­tic­u­larly want to be shar­ing with anyone.

Your Fears
One of the most mad­den­ing aspects of life is that you not only attract things that you desire, but also things you hate, or fear.

It breaks down like this — any­thing you place atten­tion on — whether pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive — is drawn to you. Yeah yeah, law of attrac­tion, etc etc.

So how does this pan out in rela­tion­ships? Well, if you have (as I have for years) a fear of being used for your dosh? Sooner or later (or worse — very often) you're going to end up with some­one who is mostly there for the bling. Have a deep fear of jeal­ousy — you're going to end up with peo­ple who make you jeal­ous. Trust me on this — like crazy. Afraid of being cheated on? Your part­ners will cheat on you. Afraid you might be a loser? You'll attract peo­ple who believe you really are.

And so it goes.

pic by McNeny

What To Do About All This
This could get frus­trat­ingly depress­ing very quickly. Hold your han­kies though! There is, as always, good news!

The first is to be aware that you always have choice. With the excep­tion of fam­ily, every sin­gle per­son in your life is there because you (at some point) chose them to be there. So, you can also choose for them not to be.

It's also impor­tant to realise that unless you're VERY care­ful (on an ener­getic level) every per­son you inter­act with will affect you, at some point. Your friends that you see all the time? They're going to have a huge, cumu­la­tive effect on your life. Your boyfriend gets angry at the traf­fic? You're going to end up road rag­ing along with him.

So, it's worth think­ing about who you want near you. It's an impor­tant deci­sion, and needs to be made for every sig­nif­i­cant rela­tion­ship you have (not just your inti­mate partners)

Sec­ondly, once you fig­ure out the worst of the pat­terns, merely being aware of them will help you avoid the most egre­gious exam­ples. While I may have not have suc­cess­fully avoided girls with eat­ing dis­or­ders, that was the last time I spent time with any­one (friend or part­ner) who was aggres­sively sui­ci­dal. These are small but impor­tant steps that will still save you a world of hurt.

Thirdly, by see­ing the pat­terns, you'll be able to track them back & heal them. There are tons of tools for doing this of course (heh, I feel like I'm always say­ing that — but I do keep dis­cov­er­ing more of them every week).

Even just giv­ing some thought to your most recent rela­tion­ship — or your clos­est cur­rent friends, you'll be able to see def­i­nite pat­terns. If you were using EFT, for exam­ple, you could start with some­thing really gen­eral like "Even though I attract peo­ple that don't respect me..". Some­thing non-specific like that prob­a­bly won't clear the prob­lem out com­pletely, but it will def­i­nitely give you enough trac­tion to really find out what's going on, & then kick that junk to the curb.

pic by Mark_2000

The great­est thing is this — if you're, say, 30 now, you may live another 100 years (yes, the typ­i­cal life expectancy for 30 year olds today is 125–150 years).

So, how many friends will you have in the next 100 years? If you make 5 new friends a year, that's 500 friends. If you have one new part­ner every 5 years, that's another 20 inti­mate rela­tion­ships. So, even just clear­ing out one neg­a­tive pat­tern will mean you straight away get 500 bet­ter friends & 20 bet­ter part­ners. How awe­some is that? (answer: unbelievably!)

And if you really get into it? Why, the sky's the limit! Awe­some rela­tion­ships all round, on the double!!