How to Learn from Your Relationship Mistakes so You Don’t Repeat Them

May 12

Most people have been through some rough patches in their romantic lives. Relationships are far more hard work than anything else. You want a soul mate who finishes your sentences, but what kind of self-exploration are you undertaking? If you want to meet someone, but avoid familiar traps, that requires effort. Sure, mistakes are inevitable. However, you can put the odds in your favor when you commit to learning from the past. When you can hold yourself responsible for when you were not at your best, you have taken a huge step toward personal evolution as you seek a partner. If you are already in a relationship, steps like this can make all the difference in the world.

Why Do People Tend to Repeat the Same Relationship Mistakes?

Some cliches exist for a good reason - they are true. Many of our problems are rooted in our past. Our current attachment style (how we connect with others) results from how our parents and caretakers treated us as children. If you feel stuck in the same relationship cycles, it could be very much due to your earliest conditioning.

Unless you were one of the fortunate babies who got reliable, consistent nurturing that made you feel safe and secure, you have probably got an insecure attachment style. The good news is that you can change your attachment style. A strong start would involve an openness in examining your relationship patterns by:

Taking an honest inventory of your history
Recognizing recurring tendencies and habits
Naming the mistakes that haunt you yet keep rearing their ugly head
Identifying where you need to change

Common Recurring But Detrimental Relationship Patterns

Operating out of a fear of abandonment
Becoming fixated and moving things along too quickly
Expecting a partner to play a parent-like role (or vice-versa)
Engaging in constant power struggles
Unwilling to compromise or make changes
Feeling unworthy of someone’s full-time attention
Sliding into a rhythm that feels more like roommates than lovers
Unable to strike the balance of interdependence, creating an environment of either codependence or independence to the point of distance
Fear of intimacy
Being clingy and needy
Using manipulative methods to control your partner into giving you the love you did not get as a child

Predispositions like this can blur into each other. The idea is to begin peeling away the denial and instead, shine a bright light on how you were taught to connect with others. This goes for friends, family members, co-workers, neighbors, and more. Ideally, you would undergo this self-exploration while single. For anyone in a relationship, it is important to tell your partner that you are engaged in this introspective work and invite them to participate.