39: How not to keep choosing the wrong partner

So I'm here to talk about how not to keep choosing the wrong partner, especially if you choose narcissists. My name's Heather Garbutt and I'm a love and relationship coach. Please give me a like or a a hashtag replay and I'll know that you'll see me and it gives me an idea of who's here and what you need. So I'm going to talk about how you break the pattern of choosing the wrong partner. I want you to be able to see them coming and know who is a good fit for you and who isn't.

I receive this beautiful message from a really gorgeous woman, body and soul. And she keeps attracting the wrong kind of person. So the message was I experienced a lot of trauma in relationships. Not saying this from a victim standpoint, it's just to explain my father was emotionally unavailable and possibly a narcissist. My ex-husband was abusive in many ways and since then, I've only chosen men that use me or are emotionally unavailable. I managed to get out after the fact, but I wanted to identify the feelings or underlying tones that pull those that hurt or are unsupportive to me. I know this is intense, but I believe a lot of women experience similar things and eventually give up on love. I almost don't want to desire a partner because I somehow feel that I will attract the past.

So courageous, so beautiful, and I think very common, very common, and people experience this now. So how do you choose the right partner and create a relationship free of the old patterns, especially ones that are potentially abusive? Well, first off, let's look where these patterns come from. Most of us have experienced some emotional trauma in life, emotional trauma or neglect in childhood, and where there's trauma, it could be emotional, it could be mental, physical or sexual. Could be financial, could be the roof over your head, could be bereavement, all sorts of things. All of these things have an effect on us. And previous generations just didn't have the emotional education we have now. So they passed on their coping mechanisms to us.

So they could not recognize your feelings, not able to comfort you, spend time with you, see how you might be affected by anything. They could actively have silenced you because that's what they did with themselves. They could have abused you because that's what they received, thinking that the only way of discipline is violence and not being able to manage their own feelings. So lashing out, feeling triggered and traumatized when there's any stress in life. So they lashed out.

So if you had that in your life, you, you would have a choice. I'm gonna look at two ways today. So here are you watching and there's trauma happening. There's a big row happening, or you've just been rejected or you've just been shamed or ridiculed. You're likely to go over here, which is the flight and freeze part of trauma reaction. So you're likely to make judgements about, oh, right, so when that happens, this is how I feel. I never wanna feel like that. So I'm going to go over here and freeze and run away.

And from that place, I'm gonna reflect and work out what all the dynamics were that created that situation. And I'm going to start making sure that I protect against that in the future. So the other side that you can go to is the driven side, likely to be domineering and grabbing, more likely to be in the abusive side of things, doing what the parents did or the the bully did in order to feel powerful. Over here, we know about feelings.

We're reflective, we don't know about feelings. We're really avoiding them and getting other people to look after us to help us not feel our feelings. Over here, we are more likely to see our feelings in somebody else. We deny our feelings and project them outwards and then look after them in somebody else. So how you first experience the connections with your parents or your caregivers or other people is likely to be what you think Love is what you think a relationship is. And it's all unconscious. It's, it's not a sensible thinking. So if you say experience a father or mother who is unavailable, distant, critical, self-centered, then you are likely to believe that it's your role in relationship to placate. Please avoid upsetting, just plain be quiet and hidden so as not to intrude upon them and create the trauma again that you most fear.

So you'll be diminishing your own feelings and needs because they create danger, danger of upset, or you feeling rejected, unsafe in pain, generally in pain you'll probably have become quite empathic and careful watching and vigilant trying to predict those behaviours that you see in others and keep the peace you'll possibly become. Selfs, sacrificial and compulsively. Putting the needs of others first. What you want and need may not even make your list of priorities.

So what does this mean in terms of relationships?

Well, until we resolve the old patterns, we are likely to repeat them. So in dating, you're likely to choose people to take care of. They might not always look like they need taken care of in the first instance. So you need to be very careful about getting involved quickly. Narcissistic people really work out what your longings are and we'll look to promise you those. Even give you those in the sort of love bombing early stages. So you've gotta test, you've gotta test the reality of that. Can they sustain it? A friend of mine's father told him, it's okay, you only have to be well-behaved for six months and then you can do anything you want. You'll have got them then. So be careful. It may not take you six months 'cause you're gonna be a bit wiser. But in dating, if you're in this old pattern, you need to take your time. You really need to take your time and really see who the person is. See if they ask about, understand and prioritize your feelings, see how they treat other people. See if they're competitive or contemptuous of other people's needs. If they're competitive, do they have to make somebody else feel worse so they can feel better? Do they take responsibility for their actions? Are they always in victim mode? Somebody takes their car parking space. Do they go up in arms about it, really feel outraged, like the world's against them? Watch for those sorts of things. People in victim mode can be really traumatized and not evolved enough for you.

So your first task is to really tune into you so that you know what your feelings and needs are so you can feel if they're dismissed or not, so that you can really champion yourself moment by moment. So if, if you are say on a date and you need a bathroom, and he says, or she says, oh, you can wait a bit longer. Red flag. If you are choosing your wine and he wants red wine and you want white wine and he orders a bottle of red, red flag and you order yourself a glass of white or you leave, you know, do you want to spend any more time with somebody that is so dismissive and it may be more subtle, it may be more pressurized. Oh, come on, just try this red. Okay, I will once. But not if it becomes a pattern.

So you have to really tune into what you need so you can feel when there's that crosscurrent to what you need. Doesn't mean you have to be selfish, of course you can choose how you behave. Of course you can, but too much compromise will put you out of integrity with yourself and it becomes sacrifice and you lose yourself. And that's not what I want for you either. So part of what you need to be doing, is balancing. You need to take some of this active self that's been denied because you wanted to keep small, safe, and hidden over here. You need to get some more active self and be driven for your good. When you truly care for yourself, you nurture yourself in the moment and you plan for the future. You most desire, you hold to your goals and intentions. So whenever you are with somebody, you can then measure, does this person really meet with my intention for myself, for the future with what I want Now?

Do they really live their life in a way that's rich and fulfilling?
Do they have something to give me? Do they want me to fill in all the gaps?
Do they want me to do the cooking, cleaning, shopping, old role things?
Do they want me not to have any other friends?
Do they want me just to be there for them?
Do they get overly jealous?

Watch out for those behaviours. And if you can feel any of those that is taking you away from your intention for true love, respectful, supportive, mutually beneficial love with somebody that you adore, you won't adore them for very long if they're the nasty type, but you need to be more active about it. You can't stay in that passive place. You need to be more active. And once this new active way becomes a bit more ingrained of self-care, you'll be able to see who is a suitable mate and who isn't. You'll likely be much calmer in yourself and you'll be intuitive in your body. You'll notice when you feel tight in your solar plexus or whether your throat tightens, whether your eyes close, whether you hold your tongue to the roof of your mouth in tension, whether you lift your shoulders, whether you curl your toes tackled onto the ground. You'll notice, you'll notice those small sensations that mean there's a red flag here.

When you are calm, you'll notice any ripples in your calmness that happened when you were around other people. And you'll also pick up on their imbalance, their emotional charge, their stress levels, and fear. You'll notice when they prioritize themselves over you and dismiss your feelings and needs as invalid or not important. And you'll see they're driven, controlling and land grabbing, centre stage grabbing behaviour, and you'll be spontaneously able to turn away and know that person is insufficiently evolved for you. It's lovely, lovely. I love seeing when that happens.

To know more, Email me: heather@heathergarbutt.com