Why do we always choose the same type of partner?

You know the drill. One story ends and we promise ourselves it'll be different next time. Then someone arrives who looks inviting and fresh, and after a few months the scene is the same: the same distance, the same wait, the same pain. It's not bad luck, and it's almost never a conscious choice. It's something deeper.

A story that repeats itself

Karla is thirty-four years old and has just ended a relationship with a charming and elusive man: present when he wanted her, unreachable when she needed him. She said, “Never again.” Six months later he met Mark. He's brilliant, he makes her laugh, he looks after her with intensity; then, suddenly, he disappears for a few days. Karla feels something in her stomach, she checks the phone, she wonders what went wrong. And in the meantime she is increasingly attracted to this situationship.

Karla is a fictional character, the question that arises, however, is real and very common: why do I always end up with the same type of person?

It's not bad luck: it's familiarity

We’re used to thinking of attraction as something mysterious, a chemistry that just happens. Part of it is. But that chemistry is not born out of nothing: often it is the signal that we have recognized something already familiar.

The mind tends to prefer and gravitate towards what it already feels it's familiar, even when it knows what's familiar hurts. The familiar is predictable, and the predictable, for a large part of us, is more reassuring than the unknown. So, without realizing it, we approach the people who rekindle an emotional climate already lived: often the first we have come to know, that of childhood.

What are schemas

Schema Therapy, developed by U.S. psychologist Jeffrey Young, offers a precise explanation of this mechanism. Its central concept is the early maladaptive pattern: a weave of memories, emotions, bodily sensations and beliefs about oneself and others that are formed when, as children, some basic needs are not sufficiently satisfied.

They are universal needs: to feel safe and connected to someone, to be accepted for who you are, to develop autonomy, to be able to express what you feel, to have clear and realistic boundaries. When some of them are missing in a repeated way, the child draws conclusions that help him to orient himself: “the people I love leave”, “my needs do not matter”, “there is something wrong with me”.

As adults, those conclusions don't seem simply ideas to us: they seem to us the reality. They work as colored lenses that we don't know how to wear: we don't see lenses, we see the world through their color.

The chemistry of a schema

Young and his colleague Janet Klosko described a phenomenon they called schematic chemistry: we are drawn the strongest to people who activate our schemas. The partner who at the first meeting makes us feel “at home” is often the one who, with time, will make us relive the same wounds. There are at least three reasons.

Confirmation. Like any deep conviction, the schema seeks what confirms it. A partner who treats us as we expect to be treated gives us, paradoxically, a feeling of consistency.

Intensity. When a schema is activated it produces strong emotions, such as anxiety, desire and expectation, which are easy to exchange for passion.

Hope of repair. Part of us hopes that this time will go differently: that the distant person will approach, that the criticism finally approves of us. It's the attempt to rewrite the old story with a new protagonist, but with the same script.

Some frequent scripts

Young described eighteen schemas. Some appear with particular frequency in couple relationships:

Even doing the opposite can repeat the script

When faced with a known schema we react in three ways, which Schema Therapy calls coping styles. We can give up, choosing partners and situations that confirm it, as Karla does. We can avoid it: no deep bonds, short relationships, work or commitments always in the first place, so that the wound is never touched. Or we can overcompensate it, doing the opposite in a rigid way: those who fear to be controlled - control, those who have been neglected - demand continuous attention.

When the right partner looks boring

There is a paradox that surprises many people. When they meet someone who does not activate their schemas, a person present, consistent and respectful, the first reaction can be lukewarmness: "He's cute, but nothing triggers inside me." The absence of anxiety is mistaken for lack of desire.

Young suggested not to immediately discard those who arouse a moderate attraction, the intimacy that arises from security needs more time to make itself heard than that which arises from the excitement. At first, calm can seem flat. With time it turns out it needs room to grow in.

Three questions to recognize your script

Take a few minutes, maybe grab a pen and paper. You don’t need to find the right answers right now: just look at what arises.

Think back to the relationships that made you suffer the most. What repeats itself: the way they start, the way they make you feel, the way they end up?

Is that emotion familiar to you? Try to remember a moment in your childhood when you felt the same way. Who was there, and what were you missing?

When someone attracts you very much instantaneously, what does that feeling make you believe? And what does it remind you of?

If the answers draw a common thread, that thread probably has a name. Recognizing it is the first step.

How do you snap out of it

Understanding where a schema comes from helps, but it is rarely enough. Many people know perfectly well why they choose certain partners, and why they keep choosing them. The pattern does not stem from reasoning: it lives in emotions and body, and is activated before the mind is given enough time to intervene.

For this reason, Schema Therapy also works on the emotional and experiential level. Through the imaginative techniques we return to the scenes in which the schema was formed and space is given to the needs that have remained unmet. Through the internal dialogue between the different parts of oneself, one learns to recognize the voice that says “you do not deserve more” and become aware of it.

The goal is not to stop feeling attraction, nor to choose the a myriad of pre-calculations. It's recognizing the old music when it starts playing again, and finally having the freedom not to dance to it.

And Karla?

Karla still feels that squeeze in her stomach when someone walks away. But she learned to recognize it: not as the sign of a great love, but as the voice of a little girl waiting for someone who did not arrive. Sometimes, when she recognizes it, she chooses to wait before chasing. And in that space, for the first time, there is room for her true choices too.