"I Keep Choosing The Wrong Partner"

Do you find yourself choosing a similar wrong partner over and over? This is what Laura asks about:

"How can I get past the point of choosing destructive and abusive relationships over and over just because I grew up in an abusive and dysfunctional family? Is it better to just remain single and grow with God and be a good mom and not gravitate toward craziness?"

Laura, there are a number of issues here that need to be addressed.

1. We tend to pick people like our parents and then try to have control over getting love from them.

The wounded part of you may believe that if only you can get an abusive, unloving person to love you, then it will really mean something. More than wanting a loving relationship, the wounded self wants control over getting love.

The problem is that this will never work. We cannot have control over making an unloving person be loving. As you were growing up in your abusive family, you could not allow yourself to experience the truth of this. To survive, you had to convince yourself that there was something you could do to get love from your parents. This is a huge false belief which you are continuing to operate from in your current relationships.

2. Others tend to treat us the way we treat ourselves.

Given that you come from an abusive family, it's likely that you have learned to treat yourself the way your parents treated you and the way they treated themselves. Until you learn to love yourself rather than abandon yourself, you will continue to attract abusive relationships.

3. Staying single may not be the answer

Most of us want to share love and we are lonely when we don't have anyone with whom to share love. It may not be loving to yourself to remain single.

An addition, many of our deepest issues that need healing come forward in relationships. The challenge is finding a partner who is open to learning with themselves and with you so that the two of you can journey together through your healing process. The more you open to learning with your feelings and your Guidance, the more you will be able to attract an open person with whom you can learn and grow.

The real challenge is to become the kind of person with whom you want to share love. This, more than anything, will break the cycle of attracting the wrong partner. I suggest that you take some time to do your Inner Bonding work to develop your spiritually connected loving adult self who can take loving care of your inner child. You will see that the more you learn to be loving to yourself, rather than abandon yourself, the more you will attract loving people into your life.

4. You might not be able to do this alone

When you grow up with no role models of loving yourself, you might need some help in learning how to do this. Reaching out for help in learning how to connect with your personal source of spiritual guidance, and what it looks like to love yourself is an important part of taking loving care of yourself. We all need support in shifting out of self-abandonment and into seeing and defining our beautiful essence. When you are able to define your intrinsic worth as love, and are able to see that your ego wounded self is not who you are, you will have a much easier time taking loving care of yourself.

We take care of that which we value, so the more you see and value your beautiful essence, the more you will naturally take loving care of yourself, and this will be reflected in your relationships.