Why are we attracted to people who remind of us of our primary caregivers?

Have you ever heard that expression ‘if there was a room full of men or women you can bet your bottom dollar I’d be attracted to the most unavailable one in the room.’ Could this even possibly be true? Well actually yes it could. Within 5 minutes of meeting a person they will remind us of our relationships with a primary caregiver. If you have suffered either physical or emotional abandonment as a child there will be people whom we meet that we immediately feel attracted to. There will be something about them that reminds us of a feeling we had as a child. This feeling may not even be wholly conscious. Usually this will be an uncomfortable feeling but we probably will not recognise it as this. We are more likely to recognise it as a feeling of wanting to get closer to this person. The mind is incredibly complex in the way it processes information. Across the room it may look like to an observer that you are just having a friendly chat with someone you have just met. In fact your mind is quietly thinking I recognise this person, I know this feeling, I want to get closer to this person as there is something about this feeling that has not been resolved from my past. This attraction you are feeling is in fact the minds way of trying to solve what was a traumatic event to you in childhood. It will be trying to get you to form a relationship with this person who reminds you of that primary caregiver who either physically or emotionally abandoned you. The reason for this is that the mind thinks if it gets you close to this person then perhaps you can rewrite history by making this new person stay in relationship with you. The problem is that the whole reason you have been attracted to this person in the first place is because they are unable to be emotionally available. So history repeats itself. You try to get close to this person but due to their own issues they
will ultimately abandon you just as that primary caregiver did.

Have you ever experienced the above. Do you find yourself attracted to the same type of person over and over again to find that the result is always the same. Pain and abandonment. It can be extremely helpful to understand your patterns in order to change them. Once we become aware of why we are attracted to certain individuals we can start working on ways to change that.

Please contact me on 07983726647 or at victoriaabadi66@gmail.com if you would like to start changing self defeating patterns of behaviour.