Why Your Relationships Don’t Last

If you’ve been in search for “love” for years now and don’t understand why everyone else seems to “find” the right people, but when it comes to you, it’s one disappointment after another. You may want to take another look at why love eludes you. Sometimes it’s not lack of places to meet men/women or lack of skill on how to attract them that is the problem. Sometimes the root of your problem goes back to your roots, to the patterns you learned during early formative years.

If you can identify and understand how this hidden patterns sabotage your efforts then you can change how you react to certain experiences and situations. This is not about “blaming” your parents for all your relationship problems but but rather understanding the developing self and current struggles.

1. Growing up, you were never made to feel like you were loved or wanted or special.

As an adult you still don’t feel good about yourself or believe that you are lovable or worth of other people’s time and effort. You have difficulty expressing what you want or how you truly feel and don’t know how to accept love when it’s given. And even if what you so much want is to be nurtured, cared for, and loved you send signals to others that you are not important enough to be loved or respected. Most times people treat you like you don’t exist and don’t matter.

2. You were neglected or abandoned in some way through divorce or adoption, or just left alone most of the time because your parents were busy working or paid more attention to other siblings.

As an adult you are always anxious, worried, and fearful that you will be abandoned or ignored. Most of the time you either open up too soon, open up to people who don’t intend to stay, and/or cling to people who are unstable or emotionally unavailable. You may even be an excellent flirt and easily draw but soon the fascination wears off, and tension grows because you want to be constantly reassured that you are safe and wanted. This drives people away pretty fast.

3. You grew up with parents who were so needy and depended so much on you, but left you feeling invisible and pushed into the background.

As an adult you feel a compelling need to control how people feel and respond by doing too much to try to keep someone in your life, and then act hurt when people don’t recognize your efforts. You also become confused when the other person complains about feeling controlled and smothered because as far as you are concerned, all you are doing is wonderful things that should make him/her feel loved and cared for. But instead the other person feels like the “pedestal” you put them on is a trap because there are so many expectations to live up to. They distance themselves because they feel that they can never make you “happy”, and eventually want out.

4. You were raised by parents who were cold and emotionally detached/distant.

As an adult you feel very lonely, isolated and dissociated most of the time. Trust is a basic issue and intimacy feels alien and scary. You keep people too far away and never allow yourself to get too close or feel vulnerable. You want so much to be able to drop your guard and allow intimacy into your life but are afraid to seek intimacy. You may from time to time permit other people to be attracted to you but without letting them get too close. And even when you find yourself in intimate situations, you feel uncomfortable, awkward and threatened, so you push others away. Soon people get tired of the emotional and sometimes physical distance and leave.

5. You were raised by overly lenient, overprotective and permissive parents who spoiled you.

As an adult you have are more interested in yourself than in others. And because you are accustomed to having things done for you, you have unrealistic expectations, are demanding, inconsiderate and can become manipulative. You want what you want and want it now, and when you don’t get your way you become defiant, curse, backtalk, scream insults and go into uncontrolled outbursts. People end up running away because they feel that they did not signed up to baby-sit a spoiled child.

6. You grew up feeling controlled, pushed too hard to succeed and never allowed to make your own decisions.

As an adult you are too serious, task oriented, short on conversation and socially awkward. Because you never learned to have fun and play for play’s sake, you do not know how to lighten up, let go and accept flexibility in your relationships. You may also be a perfectionist who feels burned out and stressed out most of the time. The people you date or have a relationship feel that you are rigid or demanding and not much fun to be around. They leave you for someone — not up to your level – but who is more interesting and more fun to be around.

So if you seriously want to attract love but despite your best conscious intentions nothing seems to work, you might want to seriously step back and look at the powerful influence of the imprints left in you by how you were raised.