I always thought all my exes were so starkly different to one another that if they ever had to meet, they would literally have nothing to talk about. I always praised myself on not having a type and being open to dating people across race, economic class, culture, and even gender.
Although of course, there are certain things that I would find particularly attractive, it never stopped me from exploring a very diverse dating pool.
Not having a type is not the same as not having standards, however. It is just my standards would not rely so much on physical attractiveness. Although I still went for guys that I found attractive — after all, appearance is the first thing we see — their inner qualities were always more important as perhaps they should be.
After a few failed relationships, my preferences changed: some qualities came to the forefront while others stopped to matter as much.
But the other day I had an epiphany. I have realized that there is a common theme that runs through all my relationships. In fact, there is one fundamental thing all my exes have in common. The thing that wouldn’t become a topic of conversation if they ever were to end up in the same room together but nonetheless the thing, if you observe hard enough, you might notice.
They all were insecure.
And while all of us have our own insecurities about certain things, not all of us are insecure. Not all of us have a low self-esteem. You can have a fairly high self-esteem and still have few insecurities but neither they would make you insecure, nor they would manifest themselves in the same way as they would for somebody with a low self-esteem.
At first, I thought finally I figured it out. It is time to update my list of standards and bring ‘confidence and high self-esteem’ to the top of the list.
Then I realized that I wasn’t realizing anything new. With past relationships ending I knew that some of these guys were insecure, and yet I still went for the insecure ones.
I wasn’t good at detecting it, I thought. After all, their insecurity manifested itself in various ways and on such different levels that sometimes I could even mistake it for confidence. But it was that type of confidence which actually comes from insecurity. Confidence that makes you think “you are better than everyone else”, which is not really confidence.
Unlike my past self, I didn’t resort to beating myself up for being a bad detective, nor I sat down to think through a plan on how to avoid this outcome in the future. Instead, I got curious.
Why is it I always choose guys like that? It cannot be a mere accident. And more importantly, why are guys like that attracted to me?
Of course, I would like to tell myself that it is my confidence that attracts them — that which they don’t have but so badly desire. But I would be lying.
I have learned a while ago that every person and every relationship is a mirror. People come into our lives to show us aspects of ourselves.
This idea is central to many spiritual teachings and self-help books but also is a fundamental concept in psychology.
Carl Jung, the father of modern psychology, for instance, once said:
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
Usually those things that irritate us bring up these emotions because they represent the rejected parts of ourselves, and since we have rejected them, it is painful to see them in the other.
Osho, an Indian mystic and spiritual teacher, in his book Love, Freedom and Aloneness explains conflict in relationships from this angle.
“You can see your face in the mirror and the other can see his face in your mirror. And both are angry, because both see ugly faces. And naturally both shout at each other, because their natural logic is, “It is you, this mirror, which is making me look so ugly. Otherwise I am such a beautiful person”.”
I too remember walking out of my last relationship, telling my ex: “It is you, not me”. While still acknowledging it takes two people to tango, in my head I didn’t see how his actions were reflecting something deeper within myself.
After all, I thought, I would never do what he has done. But it wasn’t about the context or actions per se, but where they stem from. In the case of my ex, it was insecurity.
Being caught up in the midst of emotions that inevitably come with break-ups, it was hard for me to see how his sense of insecurity was reflecting my own.
Realizing it on the level of one event and one relationship however is not as profound as realizing this as a pattern that runs through all of my relationships. I can no longer dismiss it as a coincidence or even a phase in my life.
Clearly, there is some subconscious mechanism that is running the show and making me pursue insecure guys.
In my therapy, whenever I discover a pattern or a negative belief I hold about myself, and feel some resistance or difficulty in moving past it, my therapist asks me to reflect on what function this belief serves in my life.
We don’t adopt beliefs just because.
Our mind adopts a belief and builds a pattern because it works. Because it serves some kind of function that makes our life easier in some way. It of course cannot account for everything, like how dating someone who is insecure can in fact lead you to that heartbreak pain that you are trying to avoid in the first place.
Usually we develop these beliefs in response to some traumatic events or stressful situations in order to protect ourselves from experiencing these painful feelings again. As a result, we are also forever avoiding to confront our issues.
My insecurity, for instance, activates the flight or fight response in the situations where it doesn’t feel safe, and for me, it doesn’t feel safe when I am around confident people with a high self-esteem. Why? Because these people seem to be powerful. These people have boundaries and can tell me ‘No’, prioritize their own selves before me, but my insecure self cannot handle that. It perceives this kind of actions as a personal attack.
To protect me from the perceived danger, my mind developed its own of protection mechanism, which led me to choosing insecure partners. And not just insecure, usually the requirement is that they have to be more insecure than I am. That ensures my own insecurity wouldn’t be revealed, as they are always there to compare myself against. Whenever their insecurities start to come out, I could tell myself that I am such a long way past it.
Realizing what makes you attract a certain type of people and not others is crucial because you can take responsibility for your own life.
It is no longer about the right person not coming around, but it is a process of self-discovery that first of all, helps you to be the right person yourself. And having time and space to do this outside of a relationship is as crucial as in a relationship itself.
Having the awareness that everyone is just reflecting back to us that which we carry inside can make any encounter into a gift of knowledge. The knowledge that is essential to build long lasting happiness and live the life you truly want to live.
It all really starts within.
. . .
One of my favourite spiritual teachers, Eckhart Tolle, goes as far as to say:
“Your perception of the world is a reflection of your state of consciousness. You are not separate from it, and there is no objective world out there. Every moment, your consciousness creates the world that you inhabit.”
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This post was previously published on Hello, Love and is republished here with permission from the author.
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