Getting Complete with Past Relationship Partners

The people who are unavailable or ambivalent toward forming a relationship will only attract others experiencing the same ambivalence. If you are having trouble attracting a great partner and forming a wonderful relationship, you may be unavailable or experiencing ambivalence yourself.

This may be true about you on a very subtle level, without your realizing it. And, if it is true, your lack of availability or ambivalence will often come from unresolved, unfinished past relationships.

There are three primary ways in which your past relationships hold you back from attracting your ideal relationship.

Past Hurt

Most people, once hurt, will try to avoid a situation that threatens such hurt again. It is the self-preservation instinct, no different than touching fire, feeling it burn and becoming averse to touching it again. Same thing happens in relationships. If you express yourself and get hurt for it, you will have trouble expressing yourself as freely the next time, be it with the same or a different partner. If you ask for what you want and get rejected, it will be harder to ask for what you want again. If you trust and get betrayed, trust will be more difficult the next time.

To allow your self-preservation instinct to shut you down more each time there is emotional hurt, is to guarantee you will never experience a great relationship. There is hurt, however slight, in every relationship. The self-preservation instinct, unchecked, could lead into complete shut down and mistrust. In fact, this is what leads to breakup in many relationships and what leads to a complete lack of dating for many singles.

Will a great partner be attracted to you if you are shut down? Probably not. Will you be able to form a great relationship when you are fearing hurt? Definitely not.

The antidote to the dilemma of shut down from the self-preservation instinct is completion. Simply put, if you do not complete with the person who caused you pain, you will tend to be afraid of getting hurt in the same way by any new partner. If you do complete, the memory of the hurt will be attached to the one partner who did hurt you.

Once you complete with the past partner, you will feel less compelled to guard against hurt in the future - you will be more open, more attractive, and much less ambivalent.

A point needs to be made about learning from your experiences vs. blindly going into self-preservation instinct. Learning is not the same as fear or shut down. To learn something, to observe it and to make a decision about it is not the same as helplessly being less and less yourself. nnn