5 Reasons Why Most People End Up With the Wrong Partners

That’s all you want. You want to have a great relationship. When you’re in a healthy and satisfying relationship with the right partner, all the pains and frustrations of other failed relationships become worthwhile.

Because one of the essential human needs is to develop and maintain romantic relationships, we all know this need has never been easier to fulfill.

That’s why a lot of us have, in some way or the other, tried to put in a considerable amount of hard, loving endeavors of commitment in almost all the relationships we’ve ever found ourselves in. But shit happens. Life messes us up in so many ways. In fact, we all have, at one time or another, heard the phrase: “bad things happen to good people.”

And as curious creatures, our curiosity often leads us to seek explanations for things that happen to the people around us and us.

We often find ourselves or people around us in a messy and disastrous relationship, and we can’t help but wonder how such tragedies happen.

Sometimes we are tempted to assume that we or others are simply unlucky in love because we find ourselves or others in a series of bad romantic relationships, but that’s not always true.

Here are a few reasons why most people end up in messy relationships with the wrong people.

1. They have the most toxic combinations of compatibility & chemistry.

Suppose your relationships, at some point, often begin to feel more like bad news than otherwise. In that case, it has something to do with the proportion or ratio of compatibility to the chemistry you usually have with your partner(s).

Usually, when a couple has a significant imbalance in chemistry and compatibility, their relationship will likely become a disaster.

This usually becomes apparent when a couple is in reasonably good alignment, especially regarding their lifestyle choices and core values, but lacks a strong physical, emotional, or sexual connection. As a result, their relationship will likely turn out to be a very boring but comfortable one.

In fact, it might be so comfortable that they’ll quickly become complacent, fall into the “roommate syndrome,” and eventually grow apart.

In the same way, you can also notice the same disastrous pattern in a relationship where a couple shares a very strong chemistry. Still, it feels like they’re worlds apart, as their behaviors toward each other are often irrational and toxic.

The relationship will be more or less like an emotional rollercoaster. One moment it’ll feel like they love each other to the moon and back, and the next moment it’ll feel like they hate each other with so much passion and in ways that are just not normal.

But to enjoy a relationship that doesn’t feel too wrong to be satisfying, you’ll need to find a sweet spot—that great balance between intimacy and practicality.

Mind you, finding someone with whom you’ll share a 100% compatibility and chemistry ratio is practically impossible.

But you’ll stand a better chance of enjoying a better relationship once you find a special someone with whom you have a fair amount of similarities, complementary or mutually tolerable differences, and a pretty good physical/emotional connection.

In addition, you’ll have to be significantly close to what you both want in a partner. This brings us to the next point.

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2. They project their desires on a love interest.

Almost everyone who’s aware of themselves, even in the least possible way, knows what they want and desire in a romantic partner. But the problem is that some people often project their desires and wants onto people who often turn out to be the wrong partners.

Whereas people who always value their self-worth and emotional/mental strength over a wrong relationship will always evaluate a potential partner’s true character and even hold them to certain moral or behavioral standards.

Most people who often end up in an unbalanced, incompatible, and wrong relationship always attribute to someone traits and characteristics that aren’t anywhere close to what that person really is.

They’ll somehow rub their desired characters on the face of a love interest and, in the process, give these people the opportunity to pretend to be their desired partners for a while before revealing their true colors. The reason why I hate the popular question, “What do you want in a partner?”

In some cases, instead of just walking away, someone will take things further with someone who’s obviously nothing like their desired partner. But they’re hoping that someday that person will magically change into their desired partner, and they’ll become happily ever after. Well, that’s one hell of a way to subject oneself to a prison of unhappiness.

That’s why people less inclined to end up in overly wrong relationships know better to look beyond all the respectful, thoughtful, and caring treatments they receive from a potential long-term partner during the early days of courting.

They’ll never live in the delusional hope that someone will keep treating them better than they treat others. Because they know that if someone isn’t treating everyone around them with respect and kindness, then that’s probably not how they operate. And in no distant time, they’ll receive the same treatment as others.

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3. They don’t have well-developed ideas of what they want in a relationship.

This may or may not be obvious to you yet, but let me spell it out for you: Your happiness and satisfaction in a relationship depend significantly on what you initially seek.

That’s why your relationships will often feel too wrong and unhappy if you don’t have a well-defined idea of what you want in a relationship.

You’ll have an endless litany of wrong relationships when you aren’t looking for a relationship of mutual trust, respect, open and effective communication, authenticity, compromise, and shared values.

When you’re driven by a high speed of attraction into a relationship without paying attention to what you have in common, like interests, ethics, etc. (see point 1 above), the relationship will most likely be a disaster.

But people who always enjoy deep, intimate, and satisfying relationships often have a well-defined idea of what they want in a relationship and never settle for less than they deserve. In fact, they seek out relationships where deep understanding and respect for each other are a priority.

However, if that doesn’t look like what you want in a relationship, your happiness and satisfaction will always suffer in any relationship you find yourself in.

Because you won’t always be able to tell if someone is good enough for you, you’ll often find yourself trapped in unhappy relationships instead of just walking away because the relationship isn’t right for you. But how can you even do so when you don’t know the type of relationship that’ll be right for you?

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4. They think love only is enough.

Love always brings two people together, but it’s not what keeps them together in the long run. And so many marriages and relationship breakups are attributed to the ignorance of this fact.

Nowadays, many people hold on to this hyperbolic belief that “Love conquers all”; hence, they adopt this notion that everything will work out fine as long as they love their significant others enough. But on the contrary, counting on love to make up for or fix all the hardships, imbalances, and incompatibilities in any relationship is the perfect recipe for unhappiness.

Love alone can not maintain a strong and healthy relationship because love does not conquer all. Instead, a relationship must be rooted in the fundamental pillars of healthy relationships to stand the test of time.

That’s why you shouldn’t even consider marrying someone or staying in an unhappy relationship simply because you’re in love. There’s so much more than love in every successful relationship.

Relationships take time; that’s why love is not always enough. Respect and understanding of each other’s needs and individuality win where love fails.

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5. They are so drawn to familiar feelings.

In general, people who enjoy great and compatible partnerships are emotionally and mentally strong enough to recognize and walk away from obviously undesirable situations.

And not get stuck in some kinds of toxic situations simply because such situations seem familiar, like the emotionally and mentally weak ones who always end up in wrong partnerships.

The people who tend to allow the feelings of familiarity with negative and undesirable situations to rule their choices of partners are held captive by the shackles of their past hurtful relationships.

Attraction to the familiar is indeed a pervasive pattern in all of us. But people who are familiar with relationships with kind, compassionate, and loving people have higher chances of enjoying healthy and compatible partnerships.

And if you so desire to enjoy deep, meaningful, and compatible relationships. In that case, you don’t need to hate or blame yourself for engaging in such relationships or allowing such unhealthy patterns to continue if this is the case for you, learn how the familiarity principle of attraction works. Then, you’ll gradually begin attracting the right people in your life.

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But does this mean that there’s such a thing as a perfect relationship? Of course not, but there are relationships where deep understanding and mutual respect for each other’s individuality exist.

Cultivating strong, intimate, and healthy relationships is a challenging task. Because they happen through hard, loving work, but taking the inversion approach might be the easiest way to achieve them.

By this, I mean instead of trying to figure out how to build healthy and extraordinary relationships, one might try to avoid mediocre relationships when he avoids things that make people end up in such relationships.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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