Why You Keep Attracting the Same Type of Person

You're three months into a new relationship when the realisation hits: this is the same dynamic you just left. Different person, different face, maybe even different specific problems. But the pattern underneath? Identical.

Maybe it's another partner who's emotionally unavailable. Maybe it's someone who needs constant managing. Maybe it's the person who creates chaos you spend all your energy trying to calm. Or maybe it's the opposite, someone so conflict-avoidant that you never actually connect.

And you're left asking: how did I end up here again?

If this feels familiar, you're not broken. You're not cursed. And you're definitely not "attracting" these people through some cosmic law. What's happening is far more interesting, and far more workable, than any of that.

You're Not "Attracting" Them (Let's Be Clear)

Let's get something straight right away: this isn't about the law of attraction or manifesting or any of that. You're not sending out signals that make certain people magnetically drawn to you.

What you are doing is recognising and choosing what feels familiar. Your nervous system plays a huge role in who feels "right" to you, who generates that pull, who you give a chance to versus who you dismiss before things even start.

And here's the thing: your nervous system is ancient survival machinery. It doesn't care about your happiness. It cares about your survival. And to your nervous system, familiar equals safe, even when familiar is actually painful.

Internal Working Models: Your Relational Blueprint

From your earliest relationships, you developed what attachment researchers call internal working models. These are blueprints for how relationships work, what you can expect from others, and crucially, what you need to do or be to receive love and connection.

If love felt conditional in your early life, if it came with requirements or disappeared unpredictably, if closeness felt dangerous or distance felt normal, those patterns got encoded. They became your template for "this is how relationships work."

What felt normal in your family of origin becomes what feels right in your adult relationships. Not right as in healthy or good, but right as in recognisable. Your nervous system knows this territory. It has maps for this terrain.

How this shows up daily/weekly: You feel instantly comfortable with someone who has similar emotional patterns to your caregivers. People who are securely available might feel boring or "too much." You get anxious with people who are consistently present. You feel chemistry with people who are inconsistent. Healthy relationship patterns feel foreign or wrong somehow.

This isn't conscious. You're not thinking "ah yes, this person reminds me of my emotionally unavailable parent, perfect." It's operating at a much deeper level than thought.

The Familiar Hell vs Unknown Heaven

Here's something I often share with people in my practice: your nervous system will keep you in a familiar hell instead of an unknown heaven.

This isn't self-sabotage. This isn't you being stupid or broken. This is your nervous system doing exactly what it's designed to do: keep you safe by recognising and choosing familiar patterns.

Familiar pain is predictable. You know the contours of it. You've survived it before. You have strategies for managing it, even if those strategies don't work well. Unknown health, by contrast, feels genuinely dangerous because your nervous system has no reference points for it.

If you grew up with emotional unavailability, consistent availability in a partner can feel suffocating or suspicious. If you grew up managing chaos, calm relationships might feel boring or make you anxious, like you're waiting for the other shoe to drop. If you learned love through performance, unconditional acceptance might feel untrustworthy.

Your nervous system isn't prioritizing what's good for you. It's prioritizing what's known. And that distinction matters enormously.

How this shows up daily/weekly: You feel most attracted to people who create familiar anxiety patterns. Secure partners feel "off" even when you can't articulate why. You create problems in healthy relationships without meaning to. You feel most alive or connected in relationships that recreate familiar pain. You leave relationships that feel "too easy" or "too good."

Repetition Compulsion: Trying to Solve Old Problems

Freud called this repetition compulsion, and it's one of the more interesting concepts in understanding relationship patterns. There's an unconscious pull to recreate early relational dynamics, not because you enjoy suffering, but because your psyche is trying to solve an old problem.

It's an attempt to "get it right this time." To finally make the unavailable person available. To finally be enough for someone who can't give you what you need. To finally get the love or validation or security that was missing early on.

This is unfinished business seeking resolution. And your system genuinely believes that if you can just make this version of the pattern work, you'll heal what was broken the first time.

The problem, of course, is that you're trying to solve a childhood wound with adult relationships that recreate the conditions of that wound. It's like trying to heal from a burn by touching the hot stove again and again, hoping this time it will feel different.

But it's not self-sabotage. It's your system trying to heal. It's just using a strategy that can't actually work.

What "Type" Actually Means

When people talk about having a type, they usually mean physical characteristics or superficial traits. But your actual type has nothing to do with how someone looks or what they do for work.

Your type is about relational dynamics and emotional patterns. It's about how someone relates, how available they are, what role they need you to play, how conflict gets handled, what kind of emotional labor the relationship requires.

Maybe your type is emotionally unavailable people who you spend enormous energy trying to reach. Maybe it's chaotic people whose crises become your responsibility to manage. Maybe it's people who need you in specific ways that feel essential. Maybe it's people who are so afraid of conflict that you never actually connect beneath the surface.

How this shows up daily/weekly: You're drawn to partners who need fixing or managing. You feel most connected when someone needs you intensely. You pick people who can't actually meet your needs but who are familiar in their limitations. You dismiss people who are available and interested as "not your type." The relationships that feel exciting are the ones that recreate familiar pain patterns.

Your Childhood Template

What you learned about love, connection, and your own worth in your earliest relationships created a template that still runs in the background of your adult choices.

If love felt conditional, if you had to perform or achieve or stay small to receive it, if it came with criticism or withdrawal, if closeness felt dangerous or distance felt normal, those patterns inform who you choose now and how you relate to them.

If your caregivers were inconsistent, you might find yourself drawn to partners who are hot and cold, because that inconsistency feels like love to your nervous system. If your caregivers were overwhelmed and you became their emotional manager, you might seek partners who need managing because caretaking feels like connection.

If conflict in your home was explosive or dangerous, you might choose partners who avoid all conflict, recreating a different kind of disconnection. If your needs were treated as burdens, you might choose partners you can give to endlessly without ever asking for anything back.

This isn't about blaming parents or caregivers. Most people are doing their best with their own unresolved patterns. This is about understanding that you adapted to the environment you were in, and those adaptations are still influencing your choices.

The Selection Process You Don't See

Here's what's happening beneath your conscious awareness: you're filtering potential partners through your internal working models. You're running unconscious compatibility tests based on your early templates.

When you meet someone, your nervous system is asking: "Do I know this territory? Is this familiar? Do I have maps for this?" And the people who pass that test, who feel familiar and recognizable, those are the people who generate attraction or chemistry or that pull to get closer.

The people who don't match your template, who offer different relational dynamics, those people get filtered out. They might be dismissed as boring, too available, not interesting, or just not generating that feeling you associate with attraction.

How this shows up daily/weekly: Red flags feel like green lights. Concerning patterns in early dating feel exciting rather than cautionary. You're more interested in people who are hard to reach than people who are consistently available. You dismiss interested, available people quickly. You chase people who are ambivalent or unavailable. Warning signs from friends don't land because the person feels right to you.

You're not consciously choosing dysfunction. You're unconsciously recognizing familiar patterns and experiencing that recognition as chemistry or connection or "this feels right."

When "Chemistry" Is Really Familiarity

That intense pull you feel toward someone? That immediate chemistry? It might not be passion or deep connection. It might be your nervous system recognizing familiar relational patterns.

When someone recreates the emotional dynamics of your earliest relationships, there's often an intense feeling of rightness or connection. But that feeling isn't always about compatibility or health. Sometimes it's just about recognition.

Your system is saying "I know this dance. I have moves for this. I understand the rules here." And that familiarity gets experienced as chemistry, attraction, or feeling like you've known this person forever.

Meanwhile, someone who offers secure attachment, consistent availability, healthy conflict resolution, these people might feel flat or boring or like something is missing. Not because they actually are boring, but because your nervous system doesn't recognize this territory. You don't have familiar moves for this dance.

How this shows up daily/weekly: Secure people feel predictable in ways that don't excite you. You feel more alive with people who are inconsistent or create anxiety. Healthy relationships feel too easy or make you suspicious. You confuse anxiety for passion. Calm feels wrong. Drama feels like connection. You're waiting for the relationship to start feeling like your template of what love is supposed to be.

The No-Conflict Relationship Problem

Here's a pattern worth understanding: if you grew up in an environment where conflict was explosive, violent, or dangerous, you might find yourself drawn to partners who avoid all conflict. And on the surface, this seems ideal. Finally, peace. Finally, someone who doesn't create chaos or volatility.

But here's what happens: no conflict doesn't mean healthy relationship. It often means no depth, no real intimacy, no capacity for repair. It means living on the surface, never addressing real issues, never actually connecting in vulnerable ways.

When two people avoid all conflict, problems don't get solved. Resentments don't get aired. Needs don't get expressed. Repairs don't happen. What you get is a peaceful but distant relationship where both people are performing safety by never risking honesty.

Healthy conflict isn't about explosiveness or volatility. It's about being able to disagree, express different needs, work through problems together, and repair when things get difficult. The skill of repair matters far more than never disagreeing.

But if your template is "conflict equals danger," you might choose partners who also learned to avoid conflict at all costs. And you both recreate a different version of disconnection, this time through avoidance rather than chaos.

How this shows up daily/weekly: You and your partner never fight but also never connect deeply. Issues get avoided rather than addressed. Resentments build silently. Both of you walking on eggshells to maintain surface peace. Feeling lonely in the relationship despite no obvious problems. Relationships that look good from outside but feel hollow from inside. Neither person being fully honest about their needs or feelings.

Breaking the Pattern

Understanding these patterns is crucial, but understanding alone doesn't break them. You can know exactly why you're choosing familiar patterns and still keep choosing them. This is because the patterns live in your nervous system and body, not just in your thinking mind.

Breaking the pattern requires getting comfortable with unfamiliar, with that "unknown heaven" that your nervous system perceives as dangerous. It requires choosing differently even when it feels wrong, and staying with that discomfort long enough for new neural pathways to form.

This means sometimes choosing the person who feels too available instead of the person who creates familiar anxiety. It means staying in the relationship that feels too easy instead of leaving it for feeling boring. It means practicing healthy conflict if that's what you've been avoiding.

Practical steps: Notice who you're drawn to and why. When you feel intense chemistry, get curious about what's familiar rather than assuming it means compatibility. Give people who feel "off" or "boring" more time to see if that feeling is about unfamiliarity rather than genuine incompatibility. Work with your nervous system's responses rather than just your thoughts. Practice staying with discomfort when healthy patterns feel wrong. Get support to process what comes up when you try to choose differently.

How this shows up daily/weekly: You notice the familiar pull and pause instead of acting on it automatically. You give second chances to people who don't immediately create anxiety. You stay in conversations or situations that feel uncomfortable because they're unfamiliar, not because they're unsafe. You practice tolerating someone being consistently available. You work on being honest about your needs instead of only giving. You notice when you're about to leave something healthy and explore why.

Building new templates happens through experience, through having relationships that feel different and discovering you can survive them, through your nervous system learning that unfamiliar doesn't mean dangerous.

When Professional Support Helps

These patterns are deep and often need more than self-awareness to shift. Attachment patterns live in implicit memory and nervous system responses. You can't think your way out of them.

Working with someone who understands attachment, repetition compulsion, and how early relational templates shape adult choices can make an enormous difference. This work often involves helping your nervous system feel safe enough to try something different, processing what comes up when you do, and building new relational experiences that can compete with old templates.

In my practice here in Sydney, I've worked with many people navigating exactly these patterns. What I've seen repeatedly is that understanding why you choose the same type is important, but creating new experiences of relationship is what actually changes the pattern.

This isn't quick work. Your current template has decades of reinforcement. New patterns take time to feel natural. But it's absolutely possible to break these cycles and choose relationships based on what's actually good for you rather than what's familiar.

If you're recognising

yourself in these patterns and feeling ready to understand why you keep choosing the same type of person, you don't have to navigate this alone. Breaking repetition compulsion and building new relational templates is possible with the right support. Ready to explore what different relationship patterns might look like? Reach out to www.nextsteps.au today and let's talk about creating change that lasts.