Patterns in love

People love finding patterns with everything, even when none exist.

When we experience something, we judge, classify, label and file that away to cope with a vaguely familiar experience in the future. I suppose it makes us feel more in control of our experiences?

To be in control - one of the many illusions of this universe, no?

A few days ago, a friend wrote to me:

I am hopelessly attracted to this man, but turns out he has some serious commitment issues, much like every man I’ve ever dated. Why do I always fall for such men? What is wrong with me?

Was there really pattern to this? or was this a narrative that she’d come to convince herself? Even if it were made up, why did she choose to believe in this exact storyline?

It is true that most men she’d dated were not particularly committed, but there were so many layers to her experiences with them, and she’d only picked the bits that formed a nice narrative, leading her to believe that if she somehow fixed herself, she’d be able to attract the opposite - men who would commit.

We all want to be in control of our outcomes. It’s frustrating when we have the best intentions, try different things, yet keep failing to manifest our desired outcomes. If we can’t be in control of our outcomes, we at least want to be in control of the narratives of our failures.

We start believing that just because a certain outcome repeated several times, it is the only guaranteed outcome in the future, irrespective of our actions. By anticipating this outcome, we find ourselves feeling more secure about the future, even its bleak.

We silently give up on our actions, or putting any thought into it.

Whether you believe it or not, our experiences in relationships follow a binomial distribution. Every relationship is independent from the next. But if we choose to anticipate a certain outcome and carry the burden of our narrative through different relationships, that’s an entirely different matter - it’s self sabotage, maybe?

Instead, what if we are able to see that every partner is a new individual and our relationship with them is unique, subject to so many variables, would we be more likely to see different outcomes with each of them?

After the first couple of coincidentally similar outcomes, my friend had started anticipating these outcomes from her relationships. This anticipation gave her more comfort than embracing the uncertainty of each independent experience.

Before she knew it, she found herself investing more energy into familiar interactions rather than pursuing those that she truly desired, those that would enrich her life and fill it with much love.

Our understanding of love, and response to it starts developing at a very early age, as infants. We develop very strong sub-conscious programming and conditioning around trust, identity, purpose and relationships before we reach legal adulthood.

So, if we’ve been nurtured in less than ideal environments, which is the case with most people, we develop unhealthy coping mechanisms that keep us trapped in familiar environments, that may sometimes be toxic for us.

As children, we don’t know any better. That’s how we learn about the world. Most social learning is Bayesian. But the problem with Bayesian learning is that real life is rather complex, and children unfortunately only see in black and white. Hence, they’re more susceptible to confusing noise with signals.

However, as adults, we are more than capable of discerning the context, combing through the noise and assessing the effectiveness of a coping strategy. There’s no reason for us to stay trapped in familiar patterns, because life is full of discrete independent events.

But the problem is that so many of us have our scared (or scarred) little child selves trapped within us (storing all the programming), and they are determined to keep us safe whenever faced with dangerously unfamiliar situations.

If only, your adult self could hold that child self and assure them that unfamiliar doesn’t mean bad, it only means unknown. It can be a good or a bad unknown and you’d never find out if you didn’t try. And, that it’s not scary at all.

Staying trapped in familiar patterns is like gambling. You keep losing, yet you continue to bet more and more in the hope that you’re entitled to a different outcome (a victory), after having lost so many times.

It’s an illusion of being dangerously close to a victory, without any change in strategy. Unfortunately, chasing this illusion is an addiction.

And no, it’s not will power that you need to rid yourself of this addition. What this needs is an honest acknowledgement of your programming and asking yourself if this conditioning can serve you in the face of an important decision.

Try it, and tell me if you continue to seek familiarity even when you become aware that it is no longer serving you.

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100th Edition

If you’ve read so far, then I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge that this is the 100th Edition of the Shapely Gal. I want to thank you, my dear readers, for being a part of this journey over the last 4 years.

It might seem like a big deal to publicly like, share or endorse someone’s views on the internet, but those of you who unabashedly did it - thank you. Your likes, comments, shares and emails have provided ample supply of encouragement.

I would love to write more and have my writing commissioned in a cool magazine or publication someday, may be even write a book on Marriages in India. But since I’ve no clue how to write a book or be published, I suspect this “someday” is a while away.

Until then, I will continue to work with married couples, so I can develop more insight into marital relationships and write about what makes Marriages in India work (or not).