Why You Keep Repeating the Same Patterns in Love (And How to Break Free)

By Penny Louise

You meet someone new. It feels different this time—exciting, full of potential. You tell yourself, This time it’s different. 

And then, slowly, the same patterns begin to creep in. The same fights. The same disappointments. The same cycle you swore you’d never repeat. Maybe you’re attracting the same types of people and situations over and over again. 

Why does this keep happening?

If you’ve ever found yourself dating different people who somehow bring you the same emotional pain, it’s not a coincidence. It’s a pattern and it’s a pattern because it’s happening through you. Self-awareness of this pattern is always the first step to breaking through this pattern. 

Why This Keeps Happening: The Science of Repeating Patterns

1. Your Brain Loves Familiarity (Even When It Hurts)

Your brain is designed to seek out what is familiar and comfortable (even if it feels bad), not necessarily what’s healthy and good.

If love in your childhood was inconsistent, distant, or required you to work for attention, that became your template for love. Even if you consciously desire something different, your subconscious is drawn to what it already knows. 

This is why someone who grew up with emotionally unavailable caregivers might feel bored by healthy love but in-toxic-ated with partners or situationships that are difficult. Let’s be honest with ourselves. They’re difficult. To their nervous system, inconsistency feels like home.

Your brain isn’t sabotaging you on purpose—it’s just following the script it was given.

But the script can be rewritten.

2. Unresolved Wounds Create Subconscious Attraction

We attract relationships that reflect our deepest wounds. This is goes for our sexual desires too. 

If you struggle with feelings of unworthiness, you may find yourself drawn to partners who reinforce that—perhaps by neglecting your needs, withholding affection, or making you prove your worth. 

Why? Because your subconscious is trying to resolve the original wound.  If you felt unseen as a child, you may unconsciously choose partners who make you feel the same way, hoping that this time, if you can just make them love you, it will finally heal the wound.

But that’s not how healing works. The wound doesn’t heal by repeating the cycle—it heals by breaking it. The universe will keep giving us the same situation over and over again, not to ‘get it right’ but so that we can make different choices that are more aligned with our highest good. That’s why it’s called healing. 

3. You’re Running on Autopilot (Until You Wake Up)

Most people live their love lives on autopilot, reacting rather than choosing, even though it may feel like you’re approaching it with clarity and motivation.

Ever felt instant chemistry with someone, only to later realise they were toxic? That’s not fate—it’s your subconscious recognising an old pattern and pulling you in.

Until you develop awareness, these choices feel automatic. You’ll mistake chaos for passion. You’ll mistake emotional unavailability for a challenge. You’ll mistake attachment anxiety for true love.

But once you see the pattern, you can choose differently.

How to Break Free from Relationship Patterns

1. Recognise the Pattern (Awareness is Step One)

You can’t change what you don’t see.

Reflection Exercise: Look at your last three relationships/ situationships and ask yourself:

• What similarities do they share?

• What emotions did they trigger in me?

• Where was I (honestly) approaching this relationship from?

• What role did I play in these relationships?

• What wound was I trying to resolve?

• Did I feel secure, or was I always chasing love?

Awareness is uncomfortable at first, but it’s powerful. Once you see the pattern, it’s the beginning of losing its control over you. Consistency is key and being hot on catching it next time it occurs. 

2. Address the Root Cause (Healing the Wound)

Ask yourself: What belief about love am I carrying that keeps leading me to the same kind of partner?

Common subconscious beliefs include:

• I have to earn love. “If I do this or if I do that”

• Love always leaves. “I need to do this or that to prepare incase this fails”

• I’m not enough as I am. “Maybe if I do this and be that for them, they will love me”

  
  

Now ask: Where did this belief come from? Who first made you feel this way?

Healing Exercise: Write a letter to your younger self—the version of you who first believed this. Tell them everything they needed to hear but never did.

Example:"You don’t have to prove your worth. Your flaws, your quirks, are beautiful and where true connection with others can be found. You already embody love, it doesn’t only happen when someone else approves of you.”

Your relationships aren’t just about your partners—they’re about the unhealed parts of yourself that are still searching for resolution.

3. Rewire Your Relationship Blueprint

As I said: seeing the pattern is the first step to breaking it. The next is to rewire it. Such as your attraction.

If you’ve always been drawn to unavailable partners, healthy love might feel boring at first. That’s normal.

Instead of chasing intensity, start recognising consistency and emotional safety as real love.

New Beliefs to Practice:

• I never have to chase love. I already am love.

• I feel turned on by a stable connection with someone that makes me feel empowered.

• It’s not unusual for someone to want me - I am desirable.

• Chemistry is not the same as compatibility.

Your nervous system will need time to adjust. But every time you choose differently, you are retraining your brain to seek what is good for you, rather than what is simply familiar. When you say these beliefs, can you hold them in your body and see how it feels? 

4. Make Different Choices (Even When It Feels Uncomfortable)

Healing isn’t about waiting to feel different. It’s integration. It’s about acting differently, even when it feels foreign, allowing it to work it’s way into the nervous system: how do you think the old patterns got in there?

Challenge:The next time you feel an overwhelming pull toward someone, pause. Ask yourself:

• Am I drawn to this person because they feel safe or because they feel familiar?

• Does this connection bring me peace, or does it trigger my wounds?

Choosing differently might feel uncomfortable at first, but discomfort is just a sign that you’re stepping into something new.

Final Thoughts: You Have the Power to Break the Cycle

If you’ve been stuck in painful relationship patterns, it’s not because you’re broken. It’s because your subconscious has been repeating an old story.

But you can write a new one.

The moment you start choosing differently—choosing self-worth, choosing emotional safety, choosing to heal instead of repeat—you change your entire future.

You are not doomed to repeat your past. You are capable of real love. And it starts with you.