The Doom of Choosing Lovers Based on Childhood Wounds
by Angela Perez
Most of us aren’t picking partners. We’re reenacting.
That might sound dramatic, but it’s backed by decades of clinical research in attachment theory, object relations, and affect regulation.
What feels like love is often the nervous system chasing a pattern it already knows. The child’s adaptations to survive in their family become the adult’s unconscious template for intimacy.
If your love had to be earned, you’re probably drawn to people who keep you guessing. If you grew up around volatility, you might mistake chaos for chemistry. If you felt invisible, you may now crave intense, all-consuming connection. That’s not coincidence. That’s the psyche trying to resolve unfinished business.
But here’s the trap: repetition doesn’t equal resolution.
The unconscious doesn’t care if it hurts. It just wants the story to end differently. So it pulls us back into the same dynamic, hoping that this time we’ll be chosen. This time, we’ll be safe. This time, it won’t fall apart.
We call it fate. We feel the bolt of recognition. We say it’s magic. But it’s a glitch in the system. It’s why healthy people can seem boring. And why emotional unavailability can feel like a challenge worth proving yourself to.
You can’t fix your past by fucking a variation of your mother or father. You can only recognize the pattern - and stop feeding it.
That starts with three steps:
Name the pattern.
Stop pretending it’s love.
Let calm feel safe, not suspicious.
It’s not easy. But it’s possible. The day you stop chasing intensity and start choosing peace is the day you begin to rewire your life.
Not for a partner. For yourself.
I’ve learned a few things over the years. And now, I can usually nip those patterns in the bud as soon as I feel them start to snake their way back in, whispering the same old script.
What’s that saying - doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of stupidity? Something like that.
One of the things this Substack is here for is exactly this: tracking and naming the ways we keep getting pulled back into old grooves, so we can start cutting new ones.
Stay tuned for Part 2, where I dissect the origin of my lifelong attraction to wildly charismatic, fearless, slightly crazy, nonchalant men who make or perform art for a living. All of my romantic roads are connected to the main highway of a fucked-up childhood.
From here on out, I shall start dating computer programmers who want to eat dinner at Olive Garden. And who like to go see bands like Coldplay or, if he’s feeling really wild, that band that had that record “American Idiot.” A calm, quiet fella who would never dream of being in a spotlight of any kind.
As a writer, I tend not to view men as human beings, but as interchangeable muses. But we’ll get into what actually drives that kind of behavior - it ain’t healthy, I can assure you of that, as romantic as a “muse” sounds. It’s a way to dodge the truth.
Stay tuned for that truth in the next post.
I teach other people how to change. That means I can change, too, right? - Angela
