As the author of, Lessons from the Needle in a Haystack, I did years of research into dating, relationships and toxic love patterns. I learned some fasinating facts on a variety of different aspects of dating, that I will share with you in this article.

• The Origin of the Love Pattern

• Examples of Toxic Love Patterns

• Breaking the Toxic Love Patterns

The Origin of the Love Pattern

The first aspect of love patterns is to understand the origin of where it started. Believe it or not, the love pattern starts in childhood. How we learned to love from birth to seven years old determines the type of person we will connect with as an adult. We tend to connect with this same type, over and over again, until we break the pattern, which is possible.

There are 4 very important developmental stages of a child. The infancy stage is the co-dependent stage from 0 to 2 years old where we are completely dependent on our parents for survival. This is the stage where we need a lot of care, nurturing and love. It’s a time in our lives that we depend on our parents for survival.

The preschool age from 2-4 years old is the stage of counter dependence. This state is often referred to as “the terrible two’s.” This is a time where the child wants and needs to assert its ability to interact with its environment. The child is gaining its autonomy from co-dependence.

From 4 to 7 years old is the Independence stage. At this time a child doesn’t need his parents to do everything for him and the child becomes more independent of them.  At 7 years old the child is at an inter-dependence stage of being, which is much more independent from their parents. All of these developmental stages are a crucial time in a child’s life and if one doesn’t get their fundamental needs met then there are issues later on in adulthood. All or some of these different stages come up during relationships in one form or another.

Examples of Toxic Love Patterns

The way you learned to love from birth until 7 years-old is what you are programmed to attract into your life as an adult. This is a subconscious thought that is imbedded in your subconscious mind. If you receive a lot of love and attention in those formative years then you might not be as bad off as someone who grew up with parents who may have been on drugs or heavy drinkers. So, let’s explore this whole idea, because it has a strong impact on your adult relationships.

Let’s take an example of a friend and how she interacted with her family from birth to 7. She remembers her father worked a lot and was hardly ever home and how she really missed him, especially in the summer when her friends were going on outings with their family. She longed to be with her father. She had a younger brother who seemed to get a lot of attention from her mother. She also had to live with the staunch reality that her parents didn’t get along. Her parents seem to fight all the time. It’s so crucial for a girl to get a lot of attention from her father. It sets the stage for future relationships. An absentee father gives the message to a little girl that she is not worthy of time and attention. Furthermore, a little girl feels abandoned. And the most important aspect of this situation is the little girl does not feel loved. 

Fast forward to her early twenties and her dating life. She was very needy and wound up sleeping around with men to get that inner child need met of feeling loved,  which was not fulfilled from her father. She craved attention and love. She wound up marrying a man, exactly like her father who was a workaholic. And throughout the 10 year marriage she longed for a true relationship with her husband, the same way she longed for a good relationship with her father. They wound up divorcing in her early 40’s and for the next 15 years she floundered meeting the same type of man as her father with a different face. She would meet men who would be very disappointing and emotionally unavailable. Her whole love-life was dictated by her fathers workaholism and the effect it had on her entire childhood. Of course, she had no idea why she kept attracting the same type of man as her father, but sometime in her 50’s she started therapy and doing inner child work and it all made sense to her. However, at this stage of her life it is good to have some reasoning as to why all her male relationships failed, on the other hand it is sad to realize she wasted so much time in bad relationships because of her upbringing.

Let’s take another situation with Tom. Tom grew up as an only child in a family that worshipped him. His mother did everything for Tom as he was growing up. In fact, she spoiled him and actually made him the center of her world. Even into his late teens, his mother was still doing his laundry, making his bed, and doing everything she could for him. He never really detached from his mother and bonded with his father, because at the age of 12 his father and mother divorced. His parents fought a lot and his mother was verbally abusive to his father during these arguments. His father met someone else and got married and got busy with his new family. Tom didn’t have a good relationship with his father because his father didn’t always come around on weekends to have visits with Tom. It made Tom a very angry young man. If a boy doesn’t bond with his father at around at 12, adverse effects follow into adulthood as you will see.

Fast forward to Toms early twenties and his dating life. Tom became a full blown narcissist and felt the world revolved around him. His first relationship was a disaster. He met a very timid and kind woman who bent over backwards for him. She was, well, like his mother, always doing things for him. Tom was very happy, but his girlfriend was miserable. Tom was not only self absorbed, he was verbally abusive to his girlfriend and had a short temper. His unresolved anger from childhood for not having a good relationship with his father would rear its ugly head into the relationship. His verbal abuse was intense. You see he picked up this verbal abuse from watching his mother treat his father in an abrasive way. As you can see Tom was a total mess and desperately needed therapy and inner child work. I might add that now his ex-girlfriend also needs therapy and inner child work.

And one last example. As a middle child from a moderately dysfunctional home, in order to get attention and love from her parents, she would offer to shine her father’s shoes, do the dishes for her mother, and other chores. This gave her a sense of love and attention. Now fast forward to her early forties when she met a man who pretty much decided to sit back as she jumped over hoops to get his attention in a love relationship, by offering to help him get custody of his children, and by helping him move, helping him sort out his finances and his work issues. By the end of the relationship she was exhausted from trying to get his attention and love. You see she attracted what was familiar in her childhood. Her subconscious love-pattern attracted a man who would sit back and not really engage in the relationship, due to all his issues, and let her do all the work. She was jumping over hoops to make the relationship work. A relationship that is one sided is equivlant to putting a square peg in a round hole. It is not a good fit. What she finally learned was true love doesn’t have conditions and both partners need to be equal in the give and take area. However, before she could move forward in a healthy relationship, she had to own my part of giving so much to receive so little. She had to work on herself, because that is the only person she can change. There are 10 gallon people in life and there are 100 gallon people. Her ex-boyfriend was a 10 gallon man, he couldn’t give her what he didn’t have.

The key is to change yourself so you stop attracting the same man/woman with a different face.

Breaking the Toxic Love Patterns

There are ways to break the subconscious love-pattern to a healthy one. Before you can attract a true soulmate, it is imperative to recognize these childhood/adult patterns and break them. It is a matter of looking at the pattern from childhood and associating that with adult relationships. Once you can see a pattern you can break it with various rituals and techniques. I outline a step by step guide in my online course, Break the Toxic Relationship Pattern. I will teach you everything you need to know about these love-patterns and give you the tools to break the pattern and clear the channels. This course will put you way ahead of the game in dating and give you a clear edge, since knowledge is power.

Wishing you true unconditional love with the soulmate of our dreams.