Relationship Patterns
Why relationship patterns tend to repeat across partners, friends, and family, and what can help them change.
Many people notice that the same kinds of situations happen again and again, such as choosing partners who are unavailable, feeling overlooked in friendships, or ending up in the same argument with a different person. Recurring patterns can be discouraging, and they often lead people to wonder what is wrong with them. A more helpful question is usually what the pattern has been trying to accomplish.
Patterns tend to follow what feels familiar. Our early relationships taught us how to cope with closeness, conflict, and distress, and those strategies often continue in adulthood even when they no longer fit. We also tend to move toward people and situations that match what we know, which can reinforce the same cycle.
In Emotionally Focused Therapy, relationship difficulties are often understood as cycles in which each person's protective response triggers the other's. One person may pursue and criticize while the other withdraws, and each response makes the other more intense. In EFIT, we look at your side of these cycles, at the emotions beneath your responses, and at the needs they point toward.
Patterns that developed over many years tend to shift gradually. As you experience yourself and others in a new way, there is often more room to choose how you respond. You can read more about anxious attachment strategies and avoidant attachment strategies.
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