#205: How to Process a Sudden Break-Up (AKA the "Avoidant Discard")
Few things feel as destabilizing as a breakup you never saw coming. If you’ve been through this, you know just how painful, confusing, and disorienting it can be. And if the person who ended things had avoidant tendencies, you may have stumbled across the term “avoidant discard.” And while I deeply understand the hurt that phrase tries to capture, I also believe it can keep us stuck. So let’s unpack what’s really happening in a sudden breakup, why it cuts so deep, and how to move through it in a more empowering way.
Few things feel as destabilizing as a breakup you never saw coming. One day you’re sharing your life with someone, and the next the rug has been pulled out from under you—no warning, no preparation, no chance to process until it’s already over.
If you’ve been through this, you know just how painful, confusing, and disorienting it can be. And if the person who ended things had avoidant tendencies, you may have stumbled across the term “avoidant discard.”
It’s a phrase I hear more and more in online spaces—Reddit threads, YouTube comments, even support groups. People use it almost like a diagnosis: “I’m two weeks post avoidant discard.”
And while I deeply understand the hurt that phrase tries to capture, I also believe it can keep us stuck. So let’s unpack what’s really happening in a sudden breakup, why it cuts so deep, and how to move through it in a more empowering way.
Why Sudden Breakups Hurt So Much
Breakups are always hard because they represent the loss of an attachment bond.
Even if the relationship had challenges, your nervous system experienced that person as a point of safety, orientation, and connection. When that disappears overnight, it’s like being thrown into open water without a life raft.
For those with anxious attachment, the pain is magnified. Your nervous system is wired to anticipate threats and rehearse painful scenarios as a way to prepare. It runs constant “dress rehearsals” for rejection, abandonment, or conflict.
So when you are blindsided anyway—despite all the overthinking and vigilance—it feels like the worst fear has come true. Not only have you lost the relationship, you’ve also “failed” at predicting it. This can shatter self-trust and make future relationships feel even more precarious.
It’s no wonder sudden endings can send us spiraling into grief, anxiety, and powerlessness.
The Problem with the Term “Avoidant Discard”
Here’s where I want to be gentle but firm: calling it an avoidant discard may feel validating in the short term, but it ultimately reinforces a disempowering story.
Why? Because it frames the situation as objective fact: “I was discarded.”
This language makes the other person the villain and you the victim. It fuels shame, blame, and black-and-white thinking: they are toxic, I was nothing to them.
A more self-responsible reframe is: “I feel discarded.”
That distinction matters. Saying “I feel” keeps the focus on your emotional truth (which is completely valid!) without attaching to a rigid narrative about who the other person is.
When we cling to the “they discarded me” story, we risk cementing beliefs like:
“I’m worthless.”
“People always leave.”
“Relationships can’t be trusted.”
Whereas naming our feelings opens space for healing. It invites curiosity: What wounds has this breakup reactivated? What part of me feels abandoned, and how can I care for that part?
What Really Drives a Sudden Exit
When someone ends a relationship abruptly—especially an avoidantly attached partner—it’s rarely about you being unworthy. It’s about capacity.
If they felt overwhelmed, unsafe, or unable to communicate their struggles, leaving suddenly may have seemed like their only option.
Is it unskillful? Yes. Painful? Absolutely. But it reflects their limits, not your value.
This doesn’t excuse hurtful behavior, but it reframes it as a function of where their nervous system was—not proof that love is hopeless or that you are disposable.
A More Empowered Path to Healing
Instead of spinning in online echo chambers that fuel blame, here’s what will actually help you move forward:
Grieve honestly.
Allow yourself to feel the sadness, anger, and disorientation of the sudden ending. Name what feels unfair without projecting it outward.Shift the story.
Replace “I was discarded” with “I feel discarded.” This subtle shift keeps you connected to your truth without locking you into victimhood.See their capacity.
Acknowledge that their choice reflected their overwhelm, fear, or lack of skill—not your worth.Rebuild self-trust.
Remember: one person’s unskillful exit does not define all relationships. Stay curious about how you can cultivate safety and trust in yourself, so future connections feel less threatening.Seek spaces that empower, not enflame.
Choose resources and communities that help you process, grow, and reclaim your power—not ones that simply validate your anger.
Moving Toward Acceptance
At the end of the day, you can hold two truths:
Yes, this hurt like hell. It felt sudden, unfair, and deeply destabilizing.
And also, their behavior was about their capacity, not your worth.
When you can hold both truths, compassion (and even acceptance) starts to seep in. That’s when healing accelerates, and when you become free to create the kind of love you actually desire.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:04]:
You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships. I'm your host, relationship coach Stephanie Rigg and I'm really glad you're here.
[00:00:23]:
Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, we are talking about how to navigate sudden breakups or sudden relationships ending in a way that feels really confusing and where you feel really blindsided and, you know, just kind of left in a lurch not knowing where that came from or what's going on. And obviously that can, you know, significantly increase the pain that we experience when a relationship ends. And of course, breakups are almost always painful and almost always involve a grieving process. But of course, when we add the shock, the confusion to all of that, that can obviously make things go from bad to worse. Now what prompted me to record an episode on this is that I have noticed in the past six months or so a huge uptick in the term avoidant discard flying around.
[00:01:17]:
I get questions about it all the time. I get DMs about it all the time. I have students posting about it in my course all the time and it's being thrown around as like an objective term. You know, people say I'm 2 weeks post avoidant discard as if that's just an objective truth. And I want to share a slightly different take on that today that is in no way intended to invalidate the very real hurt and pain that you may be experiencing or may have experienced in the past if you were suddenly broken up with by an avoidant person or anyone else. But I am going to be sharing some thoughts on why I find terms like that really problematic and unhelpful and why hanging out in the echo chambers of YouTube comment sections or Reddit threads where everyone's speaking that same language and pumping everyone up and fiercely nodding and telling everyone that they're in the right and the other person's the wrong and don't waste time on them and they're toxic and all of that may well be keeping you stuck. And so I'm going to offer what another more I would say emotionally mature and self responsible path forward might look like that I find to be a much more direct path to peace and acceptance than the one where we are swirling around and really kind of energetically tethered to the pain of that experience for much longer. Okay, so that's what we're going to be talking about in today's episode.
[00:02:38]:
All of that, why it's so painful and also why there might be more to the story than just feeling like you are the victim of someone's terrible behaviour. Full stop, end of story. So lots of validation and lots of hard truths mixed in together in today's episode. Now, before we get into that conversation, I do just want to remind you about my free breakup training. So if you have been through a breakup recently, or maybe not that recently, but you feel like there's still some stuff there for you to process, this new breakup training is really in depth and it goes into the things that might be keeping you stuck and three shifts that you can make to really step back into your power after a breakup so that you can actually meaningfully heal and move forward and, you know, break the pattern, break the cycle that you might be in if you keep ending up in the same kinds of relationships so that you can actually move forward and create a vision of a more healthy love. Because, you know, spoiler alert, when we just swirl around in these stories of victimhood and low self worth and this is so unfair, and why does this always happen to me after a breakup? We're not actually engaging honestly and meaningfully with not only our role in it, but, you know, what are we going to do differently next time so that we can take steps towards what we really desire for ourselves and our relationship. So I talk about all of that and more in my free breakup training and I would love for you to check that out if that's something that you're working through at the moment and you could use some extra support. And second, quick announcement.
[00:04:01]:
This is the final call for my event in London that is happening this Saturday. So the 13th of September. If you want to grab a last minute ticket, please do. I would love to see you there. I'm so looking forward to gathering with you in person, which does not happen very often, obviously, me living in Australia in person, things are very, very few and far. So it's a rare opportunity to connect in person and I would love to see you there. If you're free this weekend, grab a last minute ticket, grab a friend, come along. Okay, so let's talk about why sudden breakups hurt so much.
[00:04:33]:
Now, as I said in the introduction, breakups are painful almost always. And that makes sense because it's the loss of an attachment. And our attachment system is really designed to find safety and security in connection. And so when we lose that, even if the relationship was kind of dysfunctional or had its ups and downs and had its challenges. We are still ultimately losing a point of orientation in our lives. And that can be very, very challenging and can leave us feeling like we're just treading water and we don't know who we are. And add into that all of the potential logistical considerations around a breakup. If it was a longer term relationship and you're actually having to upend aspects of your life, your living circumstances or just your day to day routines, so many things can be thrown into disarray when a relationship end.
[00:05:22]:
Frankly, even if it were a shorter term relationship, you just suddenly don't have that same person that you are maybe messaging throughout the day or when something happens, they're the person you tell or you're the person to sit on the couch and watch Netflix with. The person that is your default person is suddenly no longer in that space. And the emptiness that can ensue is really challenging, of course, very painful. And there's a lot of grief there. Now when that happens suddenly, naturally, we just don't have the emotional preparedness. If we think about anxiety in the nervous system, really our nervous system is a predictive machine and anxiety's role in that machine is to warn us about all of the bad things that could happen. And you know, I often talk about this, that when we're in that mode of overthinking and playing out all these worst case scenarios and catastrophizing, as much as we can say like that's a bad thing that our anxiety and our nervous system does, really what that's trying to do is conjure up all of these intrusive thoughts, worst case things that could happen. And I don't know if you've noticed when your brain does that, you almost summon the feelings that you would feel ahead of time.
[00:06:34]:
And I like to think of that as your body, your nervous system trying to prepare you for that eventuality so that you can feel the feelings now, you can feel the stress, you can feel the panic, you can feel the overwhelm, you can feel the fear. And it's almost like if I'm having a dress rehearsal for that experience now, then I'm not going to be caught off guard. And I think our anxiety has such great fear around being caught off guard, around being blindsided, around being unprepared for a difficult experience. And so it works in overtime and overdrive to try and map out all of those eventualities, to try and prepare us for every possible permutation of a scary, painful, stressful scenario so that we feel more Ready, more armed and more able to protect ourselves. And so we can see that there's a really beautiful protective intent behind that now when, despite all of that overworking, all of that anxiety, all of that over functioning, we are blindsided, we are caught off guard. It can feel all the more terrifying and painful because that is the thing that we were desperately trying to prevent. And I think that that is true for a lot of people with anxious attachment patterns. A sudden change that we were unprepared for is almost the thing that we fear most.
[00:07:48]:
Feeling like we've had the rug pulled out from underneath us and we didn't see it coming. We feel so intensely vulnerable and powerless in those mom, it's like I've got nothing right? I have no way of protecting myself, of helping myself out of this. I haven't thought this through, I haven't prepared for it. And so that can feel really, really deeply disorienting. And I think oftentimes can kind of catapult us back in time to a very like young, vulnerable, powerless version of ourselves that just doesn't know how to deal with the situation. So naturally that's going to feel immensely painful and frightening and overwhelming. So I just really wanted to validate like why the suddenness, why the shock factor can feel so much worse, so much more painful than an ending that we maybe saw coming, or that was like a slow burn to the end. Because we can almost start processing the ending while we're still in it, while we're marching towards it, even while we're doing everything in our power to stop that from happening.
[00:08:47]:
A part of us is maybe resigned to that possibility and to the fact that that's on the horizon. If we don't have that time to prepare naturally, there's going to be a lot more grief and confusion. And actually, you know, as I'm speaking, you could liken that a sudden death versus someone passing away after a long illness. Those are very different grieving processes and you know, can certainly bring up different emotions. And that makes perfect sense. You know, we would never question that in the context of losing someone in that way. And yet when it comes to relationships and breakups, we tend to be a little harder on ourselves and, you know, put pressure on ourselves to just get over it when really there is some very real pain and grieving that has to happen there. I think the other piece, when it comes to suddenly being left, is that if we didn't see it coming, it can really hurt our self trust.
[00:09:37]:
And going into the next relationship then particularly if we already had a piece around not really trusting in love, not really trusting in the steadiness of relationships, then there can be this sense of. It only amplifies our hypervigilance next time. It only increases our sense of needing to be guarded or needing to be on high alert in our relationships, because you just never know when danger is lurking. And I think for a lot of people with anxious attachment, that already feels true. So to have that as the base and then to feel like you almost failed in your really important job to predict and prevent something from suddenly happening and then going into the next relationship, or if you've had those experiences in the past and naturally you've now collected a very, very powerful piece of evidence that, yes, I absolutely do need to be on high alert, because people can leave at a moment's notice and you won't necessarily see it coming. So it can certainly increase our sensitivity and our hypervigilance going forward to the possibility of being abandoned, of being rejected, of people leaving and us feeling powerless to stop it. With all of that being said, and I do really want to emphasise that, like, that pain is so real and makes so much sense. Okay, so now that we've got that piece kind of established that, like, yes, it's so painful, and it makes so much sense that it's so painful when a relationship ends suddenly, I do want to talk a little bit more about this.
[00:11:05]:
This avoidant discard thing, the language, the label, why I'm not a huge fan of it and what I would encourage you to focus on instead of just going into those Internet rabbit holes. Now, for anyone who has not come across this term, I admit I literally had to Google it recently to try and get myself up to speed, because, as I said, I'd been seeing it everywhere, and I really had to ask the question of, like, you know, who's teaching this and, like, where is it coming from and why is everyone saying it all of a sudden? And lo and behold, there are so many results of people who are using this term. And it's essentially from what I can gauge, you know, being used to describe circumstances where someone with avoidant attachment leaves a relationship very suddenly, just ends it out of nowhere, out of the blue, deactivates, pulls away, which, you know, can happen, of course, that someone can end a relationship suddenly and, you know, someone with avoidant attachment, if they get overwhelmed and decide that the relationship is not for them and they break it off, and maybe they do so very unskillfully, certainly that can happen. My issue with the avoidant discard language is that it treats that as the objective truth rather than a subjective experience. And I think it's much more self responsible to say I feel discarded, right? I feel blindsided rather than I was discarded. Can you notice the tone difference there? I was discarded, feel so emotionally charged. And there is this inherent villain victim dynamic baked into that. We are painting them as this cold heart person.
[00:12:35]:
You know, how could you do that to me? You discarded me like I was nothing. Again, of course it can feel that way. It can feel immensely painful, but it is much more emotionally mature and self responsible to say I feel discarded. I feel unimportant, I feel confused and hurt and lost and lonely. That is a much more honest engagement with what's actually happening there rather than describing the facts of the situation with very emotionally charged, projecting kind of language like saying I was discarded by them. And it's really not just about the choice of words, it's about the story that we've attached to that and the meaning that we are making. Because I think the person who's saying I was discarded is the person who is actually creating all of these stories around. I am worthless, I am valueless.
[00:13:26]:
People always leave me. Nobody loves me like I love them. People are so unreliable. People I can't be trusted. Like all of those stories spring from I was discarded. Whereas if we're saying I'm feeling discarded, we open up this whole other possibility to engage with our emotional landscape in a way that actually allows us to tend to and heal those wounds and the pain that might be sitting underneath the surface that we've been brought into contact with as a result of someone's maybe very unskillful way of going about ending a relationship. I think, you know, the other thing that needs to be said around this language is that it's. It sits in amongst this whole world of echo chambers online.
[00:14:09]:
Places like Reddit, places like YouTube, comments sections, even Instagram and TikTok where you will get a whole pylon of people cheering you on and saying like, yeah, you're in the right and they're in the wrong and just forget about them because they're toxic and all of those sorts of value judgments that again can make you feel momentarily better. And I do want to just acknowledge I should have said this at the start, I get it, because that used to be appealing to me as well. Once upon a time when I was really deep in my pain and overwhelm and a relationship with someone who was pretty avoidant and whose behaviour I Couldn't make sense of gravitating towards content like that that placed the blame squarely on their shoulders. That was juicy, right? That was exactly what I wanted to hear, was that it was not my fault, it was his fault, that it wasn't something I was doing, it was just that he was, you know, unavailable or that he was dysfunctional or that they were his issues. Right. But the problem with that kind of content is that you are sitting, trawling the Internet, watching videos for hours and hours on end, talking about how someone else is the problem. And so while that might feel like it's liberating you in some way from your own shame and self blame, it's actually keeping you stuck in the pattern because you're still obsessing over them. You're still, you know, so hyper fixated on them and understanding their behaviour and why they did it.
[00:15:33]:
Like you're still so deep in it. When you're engaging with that kind of content and when you're, you know, having those back and forths with anonymous strangers on the Internet again, I know that it can feel temporarily soothing or reassuring to feel like it's not you and you're not alone. And I'm certainly not saying, just to be clear, that it is you and that it's your fault. Instead I'm just saying that there's always more to the story than a very one sided, you know, villain, victim, Good, bad, right, wrong kind of painting of the picture. So what does a more empowered way of processing a sudden relationship ending look like now? As I've spoken about in other episodes more broadly about healing from a breakup, grief is going to be a big part of that. And part of your grief is grieving the suddenness and the unfairness and, you know, the conversations you didn't get to have, maybe the chances that you feel weren't afforded to you to make changes. You know, if someone just ended the relationship suddenly without saying that there was anything wrong, you know, there was no lead up to that. You might feel almost like a sense of injustice around that.
[00:16:38]:
Like you didn't even give me an opportunity to make changes or to know how you were feeling. And that feels like, you know, you've been deprived of common courtesy almost. And all of that's totally valid again. But what we want to be focusing on is feeling our own frustration rather than projecting it outwards. Whether that's, that's, you know, on the Internet in a random comment section or by continuing to have at this person to try and convince them of their Wrongness and why they shouldn't have done that, and, you know, how they have to give us another chance or whatever else it might be. We really need to see these sudden endings. Whether that's like in the form of ghosting, whether that's in the form of just a very out of the blue breakup that feels really kind of sudden and shocking and confusing, you need to see that not as evidence of someone's coldness or toxicity or whatever other labels you might want to put on it, but as a function of their capacity. Because no matter how it comes across to you, if someone pulls away from a relationship so suddenly and ends a relationship so suddenly, you can be certain that their system was in the.
[00:17:51]:
In such a state of overwhelm and fear that that felt like the best option and maybe the only option, that they felt so out of their depths, that they felt so confused or so overwhelmed or so afraid that having a conversation that bringing their concerns, that sharing their hesitations, any of those things clearly did not feel like viable options for them or that there was so much discomfort or anxiety around raising those things that just pulling the pin, just cutting it off, just saying, like, enough, I'm done. That was the only option that they really felt was available to them or that was the best option that they felt they had at their disposal. And you don't have to agree with that, right? Because a lot of people will say that's just childish. They need to learn to communicate. And like, I get it, right, of course, totally unskillful, no one is justifying that that was a good thing for them to do, it is just contextualising the reality that if they did it, they felt it was the best option and that their capacity constraints are as they are, right? There is no point arguing with what someone's capacity is. And so while we can absolutely be hurt by someone's behaviour, and while we can absolutely be angry that someone ended things in a way that feels terribly unfair and unskillful and, you know, lacking in respect or whatever else, right? All of that can be true. And it is always an expression of their capacity. And you know, where their system was at in terms of feeling overwhelmed, feeling unsafe, feeling totally out of their depths.
[00:19:32]:
So both of those things can be true and will be true. And that's why I think that having some curiosity and compassion is absolutely essential in a breakup as in a relationship. Now, that doesn't mean that you then have to forgive them if you don't want to. Although. Although I think that naturally, when we start to feel into what might they have been experiencing that I might not understand firsthand. That might be totally different to how I would have gone about it, but nevertheless was very real for them. I think naturally that paves the way for if not forgiveness, then at least acceptance and maybe a making peace with the situation. To me, I think that that is a much more constructive way of processing this than holding onto the blame and the how could you and all of that story that makes terrible person because I think that actually really feeds all of the cycle going forward.
[00:20:24]:
And again, what I alluded to earlier around, like we carry it into the next relationship if we've got the story of, you know, people just can't be trusted, rather than that person was struggling with their own stuff that led them to behave in this way. That's a much easier thing to carry into another relationship than people just can't be trusted. And people always leave at the drop of a hat. You know, it's much easier to process what happened when we're engaging with that, that 360 degree view rather than just sitting in our seat of pain and hurt. Okay, I'm going to leave it there. I hope that that has been validating for those of you who have experienced this as to why it's so painful. And I also hope that it has maybe gently challenged you if you have found yourself in those online rabbit holes or just in your own story of victimhood and blame, that maybe that offers you another view and another way of relating to the pain and what happened that might ultimately be facilitative of you finding more peace around the ending so that you can move forward with more acceptance. Okay, thanks so much for joining me guys.
[00:21:31]:
I look forward to seeing you again next time.
[00:21:35]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you want to go deeper on all things things, attachment, love and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com and if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a five star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
sudden breakups, avoidant discard, attachment styles, anxious attachment, relationships ending, blindside in relationships, grieving process, emotional pain, breakups and self-worth, victim mentality, breakup recovery, healing after breakup, echo chambers, Reddit relationship advice, self-responsibility in relationships, emotional maturity, self-trust after breakup, ghosting, feeling discarded, emotional overwhelm, relationship capacity, nervous system response, trauma in relationships, acceptance after breakup, forgiveness, coping with loss, healthy love, toxic relationships, patterns in relationships, moving forward after breakup
#204: Why You Keep Repeating the Same Relationship Patterns
Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in a loop—different relationships, different people, but somehow the same story playing out again and again? Maybe you’ve caught yourself wondering, “Why do I always end up with emotionally unavailable people?” or “How do I keep attracting partners who eventually pull away?” If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. And you’re not broken. There are real reasons why these patterns repeat—and understanding them is the first step to breaking free.
Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in a loop—different relationships, different people, but somehow the same story playing out again and again? Maybe you’ve caught yourself wondering, “Why do I always end up with emotionally unavailable people?” or “How do I keep attracting partners who eventually pull away?”
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. And you’re not broken. There are real reasons why these patterns repeat—and understanding them is the first step to breaking free.
The Pull of the Familiar
One of the most important things to recognize is that relationships aren’t just about what we want—they’re about what feels familiar to us. Even if that familiarity is painful, our nervous systems are wired to gravitate toward what they know.
This is why someone with a chaotic or inconsistent childhood may feel strangely at home with a partner who is hot-and-cold, unpredictable, or inconsistent. On a conscious level, they may crave stability. But on an unconscious level, inconsistency feels like “home.” It’s what their system knows how to navigate.
In other words, we don’t just seek love—we seek recognizable dynamics.
Repetition Compulsion: Seeking a Different Ending
Psychologists call this repetition compulsion: the tendency to unconsciously re-enact old wounds in an effort to resolve them. We keep being drawn to similar patterns because, on some deep level, we’re hoping that this time the story will end differently.
But unless we do the inner work, it rarely does. Instead, each repeated cycle only reinforces the old painful story—about ourselves, about others, and about love.
The Roles We Learn Early
Many of us also bring roles from our family systems into our adult relationships. If you grew up needing to be the caretaker, the peacemaker, or the “perfect child” to earn love, you may unconsciously seek out situations where those roles can play out again.
It feels safe—even if it leaves you exhausted or unfulfilled—because it’s the role you’ve always known.
Why Healthy Love Can Feel So Uncomfortable
Here’s the paradox: secure, steady, healthy love often feels less comfortable at first. If you’re used to chasing, proving, or anxiously reading every signal, being with someone consistent and available may feel… unnerving. Even “boring.”
That discomfort isn’t a sign that secure love isn’t right for you. It’s simply a sign that your nervous system isn’t used to it yet.
Breaking the Cycle
So what does it take to break free from these patterns? A few key steps:
Build Awareness
Map out your past relationships and look for recurring themes—what drew you in, what challenges arose, how you responded. Patterns become easier to shift once you can see them clearly.Take Responsibility
Ask yourself: What is it in me that’s drawn to this dynamic? This isn’t about blame—it’s about empowerment. You can’t change someone else, but you can change what you choose and tolerate.Pause the Pattern
If you notice yourself being pulled into the same type of relationship again, hit pause. You won’t heal your patterns while you’re still actively enacting them.Clarify What You’re Truly Looking For
Go beyond attraction. Write down the qualities, values, and emotional experiences you want in a relationship—and the ones you won’t settle for. Use that clarity as your compass.Build Your Capacity for Secure Love
Learn to regulate your nervous system, practise receiving care, and allow yourself to rest in consistency. Over time, your system will learn that secure love is safe, too.
Final Thoughts
If you find yourself stuck in repeating patterns, it doesn’t mean you’re doomed. It means there’s a part of you that believes safety lies in the familiar—even if it hurts. The work is about gently teaching yourself a new kind of safety, one rooted in self-worth, boundaries, and the willingness to choose differently.
It’s not easy—but it is possible. And on the other side is the kind of love that doesn’t just repeat your past, but helps you write a new future.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:04]:
You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships. I'm your host, relationship coach, Stephanie Rigg.
[00:00:23]:
And I'm really glad you're here. Foreign hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, we are talking about why you keep repeating the same relationship patterns and dynamics. So this is going to be something that a lot of people will relate to. Whether you're actively dating at the moment and you feel like you're cycling through different versions of the same person, or maybe you've had a series of long term relationships in your life that upon reflection, have a similar look and feel to them. I think that this can be a point of frustration for so many of us, particularly when we like to think that we're doing the work and we're cultivating more awareness and intentionality around it. And yet we gravitate towards similar dynamics that are maybe not in alignment with what we are desiring for ourselves and our relationships.
[00:01:20]:
And I think that that can be somewhat disheartening when the thing that we say we want is so far from the thing that we end up becoming attached to and yet this is something that so many of us will have experienced and will relate to. And so in today's episode, I want to dig into that a little more why it is that we might be drawn to. We might gravitate towards people, feelings, dynamics, patterns that are not what we say we want or that are not healthy or that are not in service of our deeper desires around partnership. Maybe you keep finding yourself going, going after people who are really, really affectionate and loving at first and then suddenly ghost you. Or you keep finding yourself in relationship with people who have a lot of unhealed trauma or other heavy burdens or untreated addiction. So many different things that again, it's not like we're heading out into the world trying to find these kinds of patterns and yet we might really consistently end up in them. And as I always say to people who kind of throw their hands up and say, I don't know why I keep att emotionally unavailable people or I don't know why I keep attracting immature, avoidant this, that and the other, my response is always to turn the question around and ask, what is it within you that is drawn to these people? Because in most cases, connections are a two way street and we are part of that equation, right? We are drawn to people as well. Something within us lights up and goes, oh yes, I feel a spark there.
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I feel some attraction, I feel some intrigue and I am drawn to that person. So taking ownership of that. And as always, this is not about blame or fault. It's just about recognition of the part that we might play and the pieces within us that might be drawn to those dynamics and getting curious as to why, as to what need that might be meeting, why that might be more comfortable for us than the thing that we say we want. And ultimately, as a good rule of thumb, our reality will always reflect what the deeper parts of us feel is safe, even if it's painful. Sometimes uncomfortable and painful are actually more comfortable than the vulnerability of doing something differently. And that's what we're going to be digging into a bit today. So before we get into today's episode, a couple of quick reminders for folks who are in or around London.
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I am going to be in town very soon on the 13th of September. I'm holding an event in London. It's going to be a lovely intimate talk, Q and A, meet and greet, a beautiful opportunity to gather with me and like minded others. It's not a workshop, so it's not something if you're a little bit nervous or shy and you don't like the idea of having to kind of talk, it's not like that. I'm going to be the one talking. And while there'll be opportunity for people to ask questions and interact, there's certainly no pressure to. So if that feels a little daunting, the idea of going along to something where you have to be visible and vocal, fear not. That is not what this is.
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But equally if you'd like that, there will be scope for you to do that too. So if you're in or around London and you are free on the 13th of September, I would so love to see you there. The link to buy tickets is in the show Notes. Second thing is just to mention, if you haven't already, I know many of you have. If you haven't checked out my free training on how to heal anxious attachment and finally feel secure in life and love everything that we're going to be talking about in today's episode is very much in keeping with what I go into in far more depth there. It's about a 75 minute free training so I definitely encourage you to check that out, register, find a time to come along because it is packed with information and insight and takeaways and I would love to Be able to share that with you if that appeals. Okay, so let's get into this conversation around why you keep ending up in the same relationship pattern. So this is a very well established trope.
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I mean, the concept of repetition compulsion goes way back to early psychoanalysis, psychotherapy. This idea that we continue to seek out opportunities to reenact our wounds and our past traumas and our unhealed stuff. Like we will continue to gravitate towards people who allow us to play out those stories in an unconscious bid to seek resolution or to find a different ending to the story. A similar concept is put forward by Harville Hendricks and Helen Le Kelly Hunt in their book Getting the Love youe Want. If you haven't read that book, I really encourage you to check it out. They're the creators of Imago Therapy, a couple couples therapy modality. And what they suggest is that we gravitate towards partners who exhibit a mix of the positive and negative traits of our caregivers. And so there's this unconscious pull, almost a magnetic force that draws us to people who have a similar imprint and who interact with our nervous system in a similar way to our earliest blueprint for what love and connection looks and feels like.
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And if that sounds a little bit far fetched to you, if you're thinking like, no, I'm definitely not just going and trying to date people who remind me of my parents, I totally hear you. I had that reaction when I first heard it. And I also had the story that my past relationships were all quite different and the people were all quite different. And that didn't really apply to me. When I looked more closely and asked some more incisive questions, it became clear that it's not necessarily about the outward traits or characteristics of the people that you're dating. It's about the deeper dynamics and the roles that you fall into and how that might be reminiscent of roles you've played before. And I think that that's really at the heart of a lot of this is of course, if we have adapted in a family system where we had to become very good at caretaking everyone else's needs, for example, or we had to always try and be good and perfect in order to be lov or to get attention or approval. And maybe if we made a mistake, we had love or connection withdrawn.
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And so we were always hyper focused on being perfect, never making a mistake, never slipping up. And now we have this really strong perfectionistic streak, or we were a really good peacemaker and learned how to attune to everyone else's moods and needs and to go around and mediate between all of the conflict and chaos that might have been happening around us. Like there are so many different roles that we can be funnelled into and ways that we can develop in a system that might be under stress or strain. And so as we get older and that, you know, becomes part of who we are in a sense in that it fuses with our identity that we are the helpful one, or we are the good one, or we are the caring one and we are the self sacrificing one, all of these different kind of traits and identities that we can take on, I think so much of the time those things can become fused with our sense of our worth and value. So if I have come to believe that my value resides in my ability to take care of everyone, my ability to not cause a fuss, not be difficult, to make myself easy to love by having no or low needs, all of these things, I think when they become intertwined with our sense of what makes me lovable, what makes me valuable to people, then it makes a lot of sense that we would end up in relationships where we get to play that out. Because on some level we believe that that's what makes me lovable, that's what's going to earn me someone's love. And I'm really well adapted to functioning in an environment where that feels true. So if I then pursue a relationship with someone who's sometimes available but sometimes not, sometimes really loving, but then sometimes really cold and aloof and confusing in their behaviour, while a person with a different imprint to me might look at that and go, I'm not really up for that, that doesn't really work for me.
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I really value consistency in a partner and so I'm not really interested in investing time and energy with someone who leaves me guessing. For me, having a background of a chaotic home environment or feeling like love was conditional, or feeling like everything could change at a moment's notice and I always had to be on high alert. Again, this is just speaking by way of example. My system might not register that person's behaviour as a problem and actually might light up and go, aha. I know how to with this. I know how to respond to inconsistency. I know how to respond to unpredictability. Like I was made for this, right? This is my sweet spot.
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This is my zone of genius, is kind of tiptoeing around and gathering information and being hyper alert and hypersensitive to any shifts in temperature. This is really like what I am so good at because I've had so much practise. And so even though it's not what we want, we might say, like, no, I want a secure relationship. I don't want to have to be so on edge all the time. I just want to be able to rest and trust and receive. We don't have much practise at resting in love or trusting in love or receiving someone's unconditional love. And so the thing that we don't have much practise in is not going to feel comfortable. And there's probably a big part of you that does not feel worthy or deserving of that kind of love and that feels much more at home with the unpredictable love, the inconsistent love, the unavailable person, all of those things.
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It's really important to recognise that if you keep ending up with that, there's something within you that feels safer and more comfortable in that than the alternative. And to be clear, if you're listening to this and feeling like I'm broken or there's something wrong with me, I just want to really emphasise that this is not meant to discourage you. It's actually meant to offer you an insight and an invitation into curiosity to ask the question of, like, okay, clearly there's some incongruence within me. There's some polarisation of one part of me wants healthy love, and yet I keep coming up against these dynamics that are so far away from that thing that I say I want. So there is another part of me, or maybe several other parts of me that are, quote, unquote, sabotaging that, which is really just to say that have their own agenda and that think that they are protecting me in some way by continuing to engage in other relationship dynamics that are less healthy. Okay. And a really neat little exercise that you can do to get a bit more clarity on this is write down a relationship timeline of your past few relationships and maybe you can write down, at the start, I was drawn to whatever traits and qualities and I felt with them, however I felt. And then when things started to shift, what were the feelings that came up, what were the challenges and how did I respond? And then as it started to unravel or those sorts of, you're just mapping out the trajectory of the relationship in terms of both what happened outwardly, but also what the feeling tone was.
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And notice if you see any patterns or trends there. And notice, like, in that, what was I hoping for at each stage? Maybe at the start I was hoping that this person was going to Be the one that was going to change everything for me. And then when they started to pull away, I was hoping that I could get things back to how they were. I was worried that I'd done something wrong and so I tried to suppress myself or try to make them happy when they started to pull away, or I worried that I wasn't attractive enough and they were losing interest in me. Like all of these things that are very rich and fertile in terms of our own understanding of self, because so much of that is about us and not them. The stories that we tell ourselves, the meaning that we make from things that happen in our relationship tells us so much more about us than it will ever tell us about them. So what does it take to actually shift this? I wish there was like a quick and easy thing that I could give you. I really think the broader work of healing, coming home to yourself, building awareness of all of these things, building your relationship skills, regulating your nervous system, like all of it kind of funnels into ultimately changing your patterns of attraction.
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I think one really big and important piece is that if you know you are actively pursuing and engaging with someone who lights your system up in these ways, who pulls you into patterns of uncertainty, self doubt, anxiety, you've got to be so self responsible about the extent to which you continue to choose to engage with those people. Because you will not shift your patterns while you are enacting your patterns. Right when you are so deep in them and you are feeling so fear driven and reactive. It's a bit of a fantasy to think that you're going to be able to grow out of your patterns while you're still really actively engaging with them. Because really think about it, if we think of these patterns as protective strategies, if we're still in the war zone, we're not going to put down our weapons, so to speak. That's probably an imperfect analogy, as most of my analogies are, but you get the point. Like if I'm still in the environment or I'm still experiencing the conditions that my protective strategies are purpose built for, why would I let them go? I wouldn't. It doesn't make sense to.
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There's wisdom in those strategies. When you are still in relationships that are marked by those traits of inconsistency, unpredictability, volatility and so on. So expecting yourself to be able to shift while you're still deep in it is probably not realistic. And that's a really important thing to realise is that every time that you reenact the cycle again with a new person or with the same person. If you aren't doing things differently, if you're just doing what you've always done and you're replaying it over and over again, you're strengthening and reinforcing the pattern because you're reinforcing all of the painful stories about yourself, about relationships, about other people. You're just collecting more evidence in favour of the old way. So there's gotta be some self responsibility and some agency that goes along with the awareness to say like, okay, I've got to do things differently, I've got to turn left where previously I would have turned right. I've got to actually take action in the direction of a new way.
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If I want to shift this for myself. And I think that so many people, I hear this all the time from students in my programmes, like I can't do it, I'm not strong enough, I can't detach, I can't let go, I can't walk away. And even though that feels really true, I think the more true thing is I don't want to because it's too uncomfortable. And I think when we can shift to a more honest thing, that then puts a spotlight on the agency and the self responsibility and it really holds a mirror up to the fact that we do have choice. It's just a hard choice to make. And I think that that can be quite a confronting but ultimately empowering thing is, rather than just saying I can't, saying I don't want to because it's too hard. So that's a really important first step is choosing to no longer engage with those patterns if you're actively in them or at least if you're in them, saying like, I'm not just going to keep doing things the old way, I'm going to set boundaries, I'm going to speak up for myself, I'm going to follow through. If I say that I won't tolerate something, I'm not going to continue to chase people or pursue people who are not showing interest in me, who are unsure about me.
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Like all of those things, you've really got to step up there if you want to shift these patterns and then secondary to all of that, perhaps if you're not in it at the moment, is going into new relationships getting so clear on what qualities you are available for and unavailable for. So again, I've spoken about this so many times, like if you don't have some sort of framework for what you are looking for in a partner and a relationship beyond attraction and they like Me, you're going to end up in those dynamics because if you are just leaving it to your subconscious to pick a partner for you, you are going to be picking a partner who slots into your old patterns, almost certainly, because that's where your attraction is going to go. Now, this isn't to say that that you have to pursue relationships with people who you feel zero attraction to. I think attraction is still important, of course, but it has to sit alongside more intentional assessments of compatibility and value alignment. So getting clear on what are my values, how do I want my relationships to feel, what are my red flags, so to speak? I tend not to use that language because I find it to be a bit inflammatory and alarmist. But what are the things that, that signal to me, both in terms of the way I am feeling and my behaviour, that this feels familiar in a not so good way? And what are the things in them that would signal to me like, maybe this is not the right person for me? Until you have clarity on that, you are going to be much more susceptible to just like, going with the flow. And the flow will probably take you to places where you don't want to be, because if we just follow those familiar feelings, we will end up in familiar places almost every time. Okay, I'm going to leave it there.
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I hope that that has been helpful in giving you a bit of a sense of, like, why do I keep drawn to these familiar patterns and people and dynamics? Even though I want a secure relationship? I do think we have to get honest around, like, am I ready for a secure relationship? And the truth is, secure relationships are really vulnerable in ways that insecure ones or dysfunctional ones, unhealthy ones kind of aren't. Again, because all of our protective strategies are kind of poised and at the ready in those unhealthy relationships because we know them so well. We can feel a little bit naked in a healthy relationship where there's nowhere to hide, suddenly we can't blame someone else. We can't point the finger and say, like, you're not paying enough attention to me, or you are not giving me enough affection, or you're so inconsistent. I never know how you feel if someone suddenly shows up and is really upfront and clear and consistent and steady, that might actually feel really, really scary for you. And so getting honest about, like, are there maybe pieces within me that aren't ready for that or that are resisting that? Because it is, is so uncomfortable in its unfamiliarity. And I do have a couple of episodes that touch more on that last piece that I'll link below. Okay guys, thank you so much for joining me.
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I really hope that this has been helpful. As always. Thank you to those of you who leave me comments and reviews and ratings. It all helps so much and I'm immensely grateful as always for your support. Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you again next week. Thanks guys.
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Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you want to go deeper on all things things, attachment, love and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com and if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a five star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
relationship patterns, attachment styles, repeating dynamics, insecure relationships, healthy relationships, emotional unavailability, anxious attachment, healing attachment, relationship coach, self-awareness, self-worth, consistency in relationships, nervous system, repetition compulsion, childhood wounds, trauma, imago therapy, Harville Hendrix, boundaries, red flags, attraction, dating, vulnerability, secure relationships, unmet needs, self-sabotage, perfectionism, self-responsibility, people-pleasing, inner child healing, relationship skills