Why Your Intimate Relationships Are Mirrored by Your Emotional State

An emotional state is the most common emotion you find yourself in.

Anger, fear, grief, shame, guilt, etc…

Or you’re emotionally constipated because you have unprocessed trauma to work through.

As such, you unconsciously look for people on your “level.” That’s why, to some degree, certain people are attractive to you and others are not.

Even if the “unattractive” people may be better partners. The love you’re seeking could be toxic and unhealthy. In attachment theory, this explains why people attract each other on the equal, but polar opposite spectrum.

Moderately avoidant people attract moderately anxious people (in general).

Don’t believe me? Next time you have a moment, audit your previous relationships. What subtle, but eye-opening patterns can you find?

Are needy and clingy people drawn to you? Or do you chase commitment-phobic avoidants?

Either way, you attract the opposite of you, but in other ways, you are also drawn to relationships that mirror your past, your current state, or trigger things in you that you’re meant to address.

How you re-create “stuck” emotional states

I found myself perpetually angry in my last long-term relationship. The relationship itself wasn’t necessarily a “cause” for it. But it brought out the worst in both of us.

We triggered each other, and it soured the relationship.

Besides anger or other emotions, your partner is usually a manifestation of unresolved childhood issues.

My partner’s father was neglectful and verbally abusive. And so was my grandmother. My mother had to leave me with my father on the weekends for visitation.

When I was with him, he often left my brother and I to fend for ourselves.

What’s strangely interesting is my ex behaved like my mother. She was frequently away on weekends, and I could tell she didn’t care about the relationship.

On my end, I wasn’t always kind to her. I said things to her I never would have imagined I could say to anyone. Almost as if we were “recreating” this dynamic of our childhoods.

It’s not like people consciously choose partners who bring out the worst in us or choose people who are neglectful or apathetic, but we find attraction in familiar patterns.

Deep down, we want to heal, we just don’t know how.

A partner or a relationship seems like the best solution.

You’re looking for the right moment to let go

Sometimes it’s not the same pattern. Sometimes you conquer one thing only to find yourself mirroring someone else differently.

This time it was grief. It took over a year to “get over” the end of that last relationship. A year later I dated a new girl. But I could tell very quickly she wasn’t over her exes.

And neither was I. She talked about them all the time. That seemed like the “green light” to dump all my issues with my ex too.

We stopped dating after a few months, but it wasn’t until AFTER it was done, that I finally admitted I hadn’t let go, and that I preferred my ex over her.

In a “relationship” like this, we were still stuck in the past. And that’s where the relationship stayed. We mirrored our inability to move on and we lived a lie.

Your partner makes you realize you attract toxicity

Recently, another of my “exes” suffered from depression and anxiety. While it’s not uncommon for people to suffer from these issues she reminded me a lot of my grandmother.

I always had unresolved conflicts with my grandmother and her abuse. My grandmother had — what I would consider — to be anxiety. She couldn’t relax and often went “off the rails” easily.

As such, this girl’s vibe was familiar to me.

I’ve always been “high-strung” or prone to anxiety. And she brought out the worst parts of it in me. Not her fault, but the things she did triggered a lot of soft spots in me.

I invited her to hang out with my friends and me. Understandably she was nervous, and I reassured her it would be okay. But her anxiety was “through the roof” when we showed up at the house.

One person’s anxiety can trigger another’s. That’s what happened. I absorbed her emotions, and let it get to me. When she inexplicably left the “relationship” weeks later, my anxiety skyrocketed.

Eventually, I moved on (for the most part), but I didn’t get the closure I needed until I confronted her one day when we bumped into each other in public.

It can be frightening or unsettling to confront people who trigger the worst in us, but confronting things despite the “icky” feelings is the key to letting go.

To suffice, we unconsciously choose partners that match us on an emotional frequency. Wherever we’re at in that moment of our lives. We do it because it’s familiar, we’re trying to heal or learn a valuable lesson.

Usually, a combination of all three.

In my case, I experienced:

Anger and neglect: We carried unresolved anger from childhood into the relationship.
Unhealed grief: In the second relationship, we both had unresolved feelings for exes we weren’t willing to admit. At least not until it was over.
Anxiety and confrontation: Similar to the first relationship, but this time it was anxiety. We absorbed each other’s anxiety. Rather than being open about it, we swept it under the rug and pretended it was normal.

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If you haven’t noticed by now, relationships are an excellent catalyst for personal growth or healing. But if you ignore the signs, or blame your partner, you’re only perpetuating a toxic, destructive cycle in your life.

And if you’re not careful, you WILL attract the wrong people by telegraphing your “internal state” — your emotions.

Love will always be a challenge if you do not become more self-aware.

To get the “right” people, you have to get “right” yourself.

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