Short answer: We do not choose similar partners by accident: the psyche is drawn to what feels familiar, even when it hurts. A repeating pattern is built from childhood experience, family loyalties and beliefs about love. You can break it once you see the pattern, understand the hidden benefit it gives you and consciously choose a new way of behaving.

"He is just like the last one. Only with a different face." I hear this sentence in sessions so often that I could fill a book with it.

One does not keep his word. The next one disappears. The one after that belittles you. You change cities, friends, even your appearance, and the story stays the same. Let us look at why.

To our psyche, "familiar" means "safe", even when the familiar is made of coldness, waiting and anxiety. If love had to be earned in childhood, an adult woman unconsciously "recognises" a man next to whom she has to try hard again. And she mistakes that recognition for chemistry and fate.

In this pattern a calm, reliable man often seems boring. Not because he is bad, but because the familiar programme does not switch on next to him.

In my work I see three main layers:

• Your childhood model of love. What attention from your mother and father felt like: warm, conditional, unpredictable.
• Family loyalties. "In our family women carry everything", "men cannot be trusted". We stay unconsciously loyal to rules like these so as not to betray our family.
• The hidden benefit. This is the most uncomfortable question. What does this pattern give you? A way to avoid real risk? The right to be the rescuer? A sense of control?

Try a simple exercise. Take a sheet of paper and write down three men who mattered to you. Next to each one, answer:

1. What hooked me at the start?
2. What hurt me most about him?
3. Who did I become next to him?
4. How did it end?

The pattern usually shows up by the second column. And as a rule it looks very much like something from childhood.

Awareness matters, but it is not enough. For the pattern to stop repeating you need to:

• find its source and live through the feelings behind it;
• recognise the hidden benefit and find a healthy way to get it;
• learn to notice that "recognition" in the moment and pause before choosing;
• build inner support so that your worth does not depend on a man's reaction.

In an in-depth session I combine classical psychology with a criminal psychologist's analysis of behaviour. We look at exactly how you choose, which signals you respond to and what you do that keeps the story on its familiar path. This is not about finding someone to blame. It is about getting back your right to choose.

You can notice it yourself, for example by writing down what all your significant partners have in common. Hidden benefits and family loyalties are usually easier to uncover with a psychologist.

Insight often comes in the first in-depth session. New behaviour takes root gradually, usually over a few months of practice.

No. A pattern is not a fault, it is the way your psyche once learned to survive. Responsibility begins when you see it and can choose differently.

Recognised your situation? In-depth session online, or a written consultation in English, $130. Book on Telegram

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