The last guy I dated had a very specific superpower: he could make me feel like an inconvenience while still calling me “babe.”
He didn’t ghost me — that would’ve been too obvious. He slow-faded. Like a radio station going fuzzy mid-song. We went from daily check-ins to three-day silences, from long voice notes to dry “lol” replies. Still, when I confronted him about the shift, he said he was just “going through a lot.” Aren’t we all?
Here’s the kicker: he reminded me of someone. Actually, several someones. His flakiness had a familiar flavor. His hot-and-cold affection stirred the same stomach-drop sensation I’d felt before — like I was auditioning for love instead of participating in it.
That’s when it hit me: I wasn’t just unlucky in dating. I was loyal to my own emotional patterns.
There’s a thing we do — all of us, to some degree — where we mistake repetition for chemistry. We say things like “I always fall for the wrong people” as if it’s a coincidence, not a pattern. But our attractions aren’t random. They’re often emotional homing beacons, drawing us back to what feels familiar, even if it’s harmful.
Psychologists call this repetition compulsion — the unconscious drive to reenact emotionally unresolved dynamics from our past in an attempt to master or fix them.
“We don’t just fall in love with people who make us feel good,” writes psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb. “We fall in love with people who feel familiar. Sometimes that means we’re falling for what we know, not what we need.”
If you grew up equating unpredictability with passion, you may chase people who keep you guessing. If you learned that love had to be earned, you might find yourself magnetized to those who make you work for crumbs.
It’s not always trauma. Sometimes it’s just deeply learned emotional choreography. You know how to dance this dance — even if you hate the music.
I once dated a guy who was charming in that “everyone likes him but no one knows him” kind of way. He was witty, emotionally evasive, and disarmed discomfort with jokes. Being with him felt like trying to solve a puzzle without all the pieces — which, of course, made me try harder. I mistook the effort for intimacy.
Later, in therapy, I realized he reminded me of my emotionally distant father — someone I had spent most of my childhood trying to impress. I hadn’t consciously chosen someone like my dad. But my nervous system knew the rhythm. The inconsistency. The constant need to prove I was worthy of attention.
“The nervous system prefers the known to the unknown,” explains trauma therapist Resmaa Menakem. “Even if the known is painful.”
This is the trap. Familiar dysfunction doesn’t always feel bad at first. It feels exciting. Tingly. Like a high-stakes game you might win this time if you just do it right.
Yes, the details change. Maybe one wears leather and the other has a Roth IRA. Maybe one’s emotionally unavailable because of commitment fears, the other because he’s just “really focused on his startup.” But the emotional blueprint is the same.
Here’s a quick gut-check I started using:
If the relationship feels eerily familiar, ask yourself — does it feel safe, or just recognizable?
Safe is slow. Safe is mutual. Safe doesn’t require you to constantly decode or shrink or self-abandon to keep things going. Recognizable might feel magnetic — but it’s often a magnet to your old wounds.
Let me disappoint you up front: recognizing the pattern doesn’t make it disappear. But it does give you a choice. And that choice — even when you still slip — is powerful.
I started noticing when I was more attracted to the chase than the person. I stopped glamorizing hot-and-cold behavior as “mysterious.” I got bored — literally bored — by the guys I used to be addicted to. That boredom, by the way, is healing. It means your nervous system is starting to crave something else.
I also had to confront the parts of me that secretly liked the drama. The parts that equated emotional hunger with love. The parts that felt safer proving my worth than receiving care without performance.
These realizations didn’t turn me into a dating goddess. But they did make me slower. Softer. More curious about the people who made me feel calm instead of high.
Let’s zoom out for a second. Our dating culture encourages this cycle. Swipe apps turn people into prototypes. Romantic comedies romanticize the exact kind of emotional unavailability we’re trying to heal from. And Instagram therapy posts — even the good ones — make us self-diagnose in real time while we’re trying to fall in love.
There’s a deep loneliness baked into the modern dating scene, and in that loneliness, it’s easy to return to what’s familiar — not because it’s good, but because it gives us something to hold onto.
Even pain can be a form of structure when we’re desperate not to feel untethered.
I still get the occasional pang when someone charismatic and inconsistent shows up in my orbit. There’s a shimmer to those people — a shine that taps something ancient in me. But now I know: that shimmer isn’t chemistry.
It’s history.
And I don’t have to repeat it.
So if you’re wondering why you keep dating the same person in different shoes, maybe start there. Ask what it feels like. Not what it looks like. Not what your friends think. Just... what it feels like in your body.
And then ask whether that feeling is love — or something you've been rehearsing for a very long time.
