Seven Failed Relationships Later, I Finally Saw the Pattern

I used to think every relationship that fell apart was proof the other person had done something to me. Seven relationships in, at forty-two, I finally saw what was actually happening — and it had almost nothing to do with them.

Where the Pattern Started

My childhood years were shadowed by alcohol-fuelled arguments whenever the extended family got together. Nothing as visibly traumatic as some of what I've talked about before, but exposure like that over decades leaves a mark. Once you're exposed to something like that, you can't be unexposed. You don't have the awareness to name it at the time — you just learn what "normal" looks like, and yours is different from everyone else's.

I remember the specific feeling of arguments starting to brew the second the drinks came out — a kind of mental bracing, getting ready for the inevitable. As a kid, you don't have the tools to process that. You just bury it. And we all know where buried things end up.

By primary school, that buried frustration was already coming out sideways — lashing out physically at whoever was closest, whether they deserved it or not. By twelve, I was already a big kid, and I'd learned that violence solved problems fast. It showed up in sport, with mates, with family. You get forced into solving things the wrong way, and once it works a few times, it becomes autopilot.

Confronting It Is the Only Way Through

I don't have this all figured out. I'm not fully healed and probably never will be. What I do have is awareness, and a set of tools I didn't have before — and the only way to get either of those is confronting the past directly, not managing around it.

My past covers abuse, violence, substance use, and growing up in commission housing. It's not a pretty history. Before I did any real self-development work, all I had was the vague sense that something was wrong — usually delivered by mates after I'd gotten into another fight, telling me straight: "You've got a problem, we're not doing this anymore." That's the first glimpse most of us get. It's nowhere near fixing anything. Actually revisiting it and doing something with it takes courage, accountability, and a fairly big ego death.

Through my teens and twenties, it only got worse — more bad relationships, worse friendships, the same family dynamic on repeat. You do something enough, you get good at it. That was me with aggression. It became complete autopilot, the kind where your brain shuts off conscious thought and runs on survival mode instead. It's not weakness. It's your mind doing exactly what it's built to do when it thinks it's under threat.

The Relationship Pattern

My first long-term relationship, at twenty-one, is where I saw it most clearly in hindsight. I watched my mum hold everything together and abandon herself completely for the family — and without noticing, I did the same thing. I had goals and dreams of my own, but the second I was in a relationship, all of it went out the window, because some part of me believed I wasn't doing enough unless I was there every waking moment.

Labels like "anxious attachment" have their place, but they mean nothing until you actually deal with what's underneath them. I still don't know exactly what my label is. I've stopped worrying about naming it and started focusing on not letting the past bleed into my future.

Here's the part that actually shifted something for me: until someone in the family line stands up and says no more, it gets passed down. Not in some abstract, meditation-retreat sense — literally, generation to generation, unless somebody interrupts it.

Looking back at seven failed relationships, I can see I was reacting to partners as though they were trying to strip me away from my mum, or sabotage me — because that's the pattern I'd absorbed watching my aunt and uncle's relationship growing up. I was looking at every relationship through a broken lens. And when I finally got honest with myself, I realised maybe seventy percent of what I'd labelled "manipulation" over the years wasn't manipulation at all. It was my own perception, running on a threat-response that had nothing to do with what was actually happening in front of me.

Where I'm At Now

I own all of my past behaviour. No one else is at fault but me. It takes two people to make or break a relationship, but the only behaviour I can control is mine — and now I've got standards and a code that didn't exist before.

I'm single by choice right now. I don't need a relationship until I've got this fully under control, and I'm close. Going back through my own material with the people in Self Mastery has actually sharpened this further — watching other people work through the same patterns shows me things about my own that I missed the first time round, back when I was doing this alone.

If there's one takeaway: confront your past. There's no silver bullet, no single insight that fixes it overnight. I ran from mine for decades and didn't get on top of it until I was thirty-five. Show up for the kid who never had anyone show up for him. Let him know he doesn't have to react that way anymore — because now he's got you, and he's safe.

Related reading: You've Been Saying Yes for So Long You Don't Know Who You Are Anymore and Eight Relationships, Cheated On Six Times

Explore Self Mastery at theunbrokenmind.com →