Is it my fault that I keep choosing the wrong people?

It's Sunday night. Another weekend spent on your own, while everyone around you seems to have someone. I used to really dislike Sundays.

Your mind goes, as it always does eventually,  into that topic. You're not sure why your last relationship blew up. Or why you always seem to want someone more than they want you.

Or the opposite: why does anyone who get too close suddenly feel unbearable. “Where did all the normal people go?” - you ask.  

I've been in this situation for about 10 years. And what changed everything for me wasn't a dating app algorithm or learning about my attachment style that got so over-popularised.

Keep reading as I explain this further.

What is an attachment style, and why did it become so popular?

Back in the 1950s, a British psychiatrist named John Bowlby started noticing something nobody had put into words before: the way we bond with our earliest caregivers becomes a kind of emotional blueprint. It shapes how we expect love to feel. How safe we think intimacy is? Whether the connection feels like home, or like chaos.

Decades later, that research made its way into adult relationships. And it turns out we don't leave those blueprints at childhood's door. We carry them right into every relationship we ever have. Unless, of course, we work on it.

So there are three main attachment styles:

Secure:

You feel comfortable being close to someone and comfortable with your own space. Love doesn't feel like a test you might fail.

Anxious:

You crave closeness deeply, but you're always a little braced for the moment it gets taken away. You read into silences. You need reassurance, a lot of it, and feel guilty for needing it.

Avoidant:

Intimacy makes you want to bolt. Not because you don't feel emotion, oh no.  You feel plenty. But closeness triggers something that reads as danger, and your instinct is to pull back before anyone pulls away from you first.

Nowadays, there is also an Anxiously Avoidant style, a mix between the two:

The anxious person craves closeness, which triggers the avoidant partner to pull away, which in turn intensifies the anxious partner's panic, a painful loop that many couples know all too well.

Where does common advice fall short?

The common advice on attachment theory, most famously from the book Attached, tells you to identify your style, find a secure partner and communicate your needs. 

And while that's a kind starting point, it has a fundamental flaw: it places the responsibility for your healing and happiness on someone else.

If your attachment wound makes you need twenty texts a day to feel loved, a secure partner might send texts without drama, but the wound remains exactly where it was. However, you risk losing that healthy partner, because they might realise that you still need a lot of healing to do, hence you are not what they are looking for long term.

What actually worked for me?

I was a serial dater. But I was very insecure in relationships. I was constantly checking my phone, thinking about the guy I was dating and hoping this time things would work out.

But they didn’t. Even though I was lucky to meet truly wonderful and understanding men, I would eventually scare them away.

Until I have done an enormous amount of work on myself.

I had to understand why the anxiety was there in the first place, resolve it and learn to meet enough of my own emotional needs so love and relationships could finally feel like a choice, not a salvation.

It is crucial to address the part of you that believes love is conditional, or suffocating, or always about to disappear. And you have to work on your own relationship with yourself.

Coaching has literally transformed who I am for the better, forever.

When you start to feel secure about yourself and love in general, not because your partner texts back in under three minutes, but because you've built a relationship with your own emotions, then and only then something shifts -

You stop needing someone to report to you. 

You stop feeling upset every time they want an evening alone. 

You start trusting that love doesn't have to be earned every single day from scratch.

What we all need in a partner is beautifully simple: someone who loves us and can show it. Someone supportive, caring, present, while still being their own person. Someone who lets us be ours. A relationship rooted in mutual respect, genuine affection, and the grace to let each other be individuals, together.

That's the whole thing.

And that security is a skill, not a personality trait

So the next time you're sitting alone on a Sunday night, wondering why it never quite works, maybe the question isn't, "Why do I keep attracting the wrong people?" Maybe it's: what would it feel like to stop needing the right person to make me feel good?

That's where it begins.

Not with them. 

With you!

In my “Love Made Easy” Online Coaching Program, we make love life fun and enjoyable again!

With love & solidarity,

Jelena