Why we choose the wrong people and build bad relationships

How the brain uses past experiences

Our brain is a very energy-consuming organ. The analysis of information takes a lot of time and resources of the body. And in order to reduce energy waste, all new stimuli are processed using past experience.

This feature helped our ancestors to think faster and survive in dangerous situations. If yesterday the stirring bushes were a sign of a predator, today a person will not hesitate for a long time before rushing away.

The connection of new information with previous experience occurs non-stop and works in all spheres of life, including communication.

For example, if you asked a stranger with a question and he was rude to you, next time you will be wary of approaching new people. If this happens again, you would rather get lost and stay overnight on the street than ask a random passerby for directions again.

This rule works at any age, but in childhood, when the brain is extremely plastic and new neural connections are created especially quickly, the experience of communication and attachment is of great importance. That is why psychotherapists so often turn to childhood experience: there are the reasons for many problems with relationships.

Childhood attachment carries over to adult relationships

In early childhood, when a child is not yet able to look for food and defend himself on his own, he especially needs a person who will take care of him. As a rule, it becomes a parent.

If an adult is always there, satisfies all the child's needs and provides him with a sense of security, a safe type of attachment is formed. If the child's needs are not satisfied, for example, they are left alone, they are not taken in their arms, they are not given what they need, they develop a restless type of attachment.

One experiment investigated the reaction of one-year-old children to separation from their parents. The kids were left alone for a while and their behavior was observed. The children were divided into three groups according to the type of attachment:

Safe(60% of children). Such children worried when they did not see their parents, but as soon as they returned, they joyfully reacted to their appearance and quickly calmed down.
Restless-resisting(twenty%). Children fell into severe stress, and when their parents returned, they could not calm down for a long time, they clashed with adults, punishing them for their absence.
Anxious-avoidant(twenty%). Such children did not seem to notice the absence of their parents. They were distracted by objects in the room and weren't particularly happy when the adults returned.

In another experiment, it was found that the type of attachment also exists in adults. Participants were given three simple descriptions and asked to determine which was best for them:

It's easy enough for me to get close to others. I feel comfortable when I depend on them, and they depend on me. I am not worried that someone has become too close to me, and I am not afraid that he might betray me.
I feel uncomfortable with being intimate with other people. It's hard for me to trust them completely, it's hard to allow myself to depend on them. I get nervous when someone gets too close. Often others want me to be closer to them than is comfortable for me.
It seems to me that people are reluctant to get close to me. I worry all the time that my partner doesn't really love me or doesn't want to stay with me anymore. I want complete intimacy with my partner, and sometimes it scares people off.

The researchers found that the responses were distributed in much the same way as in children:

60% of people had a safe type of attachment (answer 1).
About 20% are restless-avoidant (answer 2).
About 20% are restless-resisting (answer 3).

This suggests that childhood attachments carry over to adult relationships. The working model - whether it's avoidance of intimacy as a defense mechanism against injuries or excessive dependence on a partner and the fear of losing him - is fixed in the person's consciousness and affects his future life.

Of course, each person is individual and does not fully correspond to any particular group. Scientists have derived two criteria by which one can judge the quality of attachment:

Attachment-related anxiety.
Attachment-related avoidance.

You can check your scores for these criteria in this questionnaire.

The less anxiety and avoidance, the stronger relationships a person will build and the more satisfaction they will receive from them. High anxiety scores will make him constantly worry about whether his partner loves, afraid of parting, suspicious and jealous. A high avoidance rating will make it difficult for the person to let their partner get closer and allow them to take care of themselves.

However, this does not mean that childhood experiences completely define your relationship.

The experiment showed that the correlation coefficient between the type of attachment to parents and to partners ranges from 0.20 to 0.50 (0 - no connection, 1 - maximum connection). That is, the relationship is either small or medium.

Parents are certainly important, but as you grow up, you interact with a lot of other people, and they also contribute.

You use familiar relationship patterns, even if they are bad

Your relationships with people are influenced not only by your parents, but also by other significant people: brother or sister, friend, teacher, neighbor. When you develop an emotional connection with someone, they change your brain. In neural networks, new connections arise about how to behave, what is expected of you, what the consequences of certain actions will be.

We can say that every significant person changes your personality, creates a new image, which will then be used in communication with completely new people. This concept underlies interpersonal cognitive theory.

When you see a new person, he, consciously or not, is recognized as similar to one of your significant people. You can find matches for any reason: gender, age, figure, manner of communication, smell. And even the way he squints his eyes when he smiles or straightens his hair.

If you identified him with one of your significant people, a transfer occurs: a set of templates is automatically included, how to behave with him, what to expect, how to assign roles in relationships.

However, despite your inner feelings, the person may not live up to expectations at all. Let's say you recognized your father as a new partner. Subconsciously, you expect him to take care of you and, for example, walk with you in the park on weekends. At the same time, your partner hates walking and is not very caring. This will cause dissonance, quarrels and frustrations.

At the same time, this transfer leaves people suffering from a decadent relationship for years. For example, if a close relative or first partner of a person was violent, indifferent, or helpless, upon meeting a stranger with similar qualities, the person may unconsciously transference and form attachment.

Moreover, when interacting with it, a ready-made pattern of behavior will be automatically applied every time. If it includes, for example, submission and not complaining, you will behave in the same way with a new acquaintance.

How to retrain your brain and deal with negative patterns

First of all, this requires awareness. To get rid of patterns, you must first discover and track them further throughout life. Here are some tips on how to do it.

Briefly describe all the significant people in your life and your pattern of behavior with them. Consider if there is a correspondence between them and those who are close to you now. Evaluate how you behave with these people, whether you like your behavior.
Ask directly what your loved one expects from you. Perhaps you are unknowingly attributing to him the expectations you learned while interacting with another important character.
If people close to you repeat some negative patterns, remember which significant person in your life had similar behavior. If you find a parallel, you may need the help of a psychotherapist to get rid of unwanted attitudes and form a healthy relationship.

Remember, if you are not happy with a relationship, you can always change it. But you are unlikely to be able to change the person with whom you are trying to build them.