My new partner is an abuser again. Why?
A psychologist explains why we keep ending up in toxic relationships we consciously don't want.
My new partner is an abuser again. Why?
On a conscious level, we want to be happy, do work we love, go to bed on time, go to the gym and be with someone who loves and values us. In reality, that doesn't happen.
A psychologist from a women's mutual-aid network explains why.
This is part of a series of materials created together with a women's mutual-aid network that provides free legal and psychological help to survivors of domestic violence.
Ask a woman in a toxic relationship whether she wants it. She'll say "no". Once she's left that relationship, ask her whether she wants it to happen again. Again she'll say "no". But it may turn out that before long she's packing her things once more to escape a toxic relationship.
The reason is that the conscious part of the brain is responsible for only 10% of processes: analysis, thoughts/plans and short-term memory. The other 90% (emotions, feelings, habits, relationship scripts, intuition, creativity) is handled by the subconscious.
Our actions, choices and motivation are driven by a part of us we don't know: events, fears and experiences we'd rather forget. Going through toxic relationships doesn't create a subconscious belief that they should be avoided. You need to look for the root cause.
Psychotherapy has a concept called the "imago". It's an image made up of a parent's good and bad traits that you remembered from early childhood. When someone who closely matches this "imago" comes into your life, you feel closeness and infatuation from the very first days. After that, subconscious scripts take over.
You either act out your parents' pattern of behaviour, or replay a childhood script again and again in the hope of resolving it: to finally "earn" love, to get the approval you missed out on, to make a different choice. But your partner isn't your parent. And acting out these scripts with them is unhealthy, to say the least.
To protect yourself from abuse, you need to recognise and work through the part of your personality that wants it in order to resolve its own unfinished task. Otherwise your relationships and partners will keep resembling each other, not in form but in substance. And you'll be stuck in an inner conflict: in your head you "don't want" this kind of relationship, but in your body and emotions you "love" it.
The way out is psychological help combined with meditation techniques and work with the subconscious.
