Why We Repeat Painful Relationship Patterns (And How to Break Them)

There’s a belief at the heart of Adlerian psychology that can stop you cold the first time you really hear it:

You create your own reality.

Go ahead, let that land for a second.

It’s a tough pill to swallow, especially when you’re deep in a situation that feels completely out of your control. When you’re in it, the idea can seem almost absurd. How could something this painful be something you chose?

And yet, when I look back at my own life with the clarity that years of personal work have given me, I see it more and more clearly.

I also wrestle with the flip side. I’ve built a life I genuinely love—one filled with meaningful work, beauty, and a relationship that feels steady and nourishing. And sometimes I catch myself wondering:

How did I get so lucky?

But luck and choice aren’t quite opposites.

So today I want to share both sides of that coin, the painful stories and the beautiful ones, in hopes that they might invite you to look at your own life a little differently.

The Tornado in a Forest Fire

It’s 2013. I’m freshly out of college, living in New York City, and I’ve just fallen headfirst into the most toxic relationship of my life.

I thought I had decent taste in men.

I did not.

What followed were five long, turbulent, soul-depleting years with someone who knew exactly how to unravel me. Looking back now, the most honest thing I can say about that relationship is this:

I wouldn’t change any of it.

Because I don’t think I would have changed without it.

The moment that crystallized everything happened in the summer of 2016. We were in Capri, a place I had always dreamed of visiting.

Our first night, we went to a Michelin-starred restaurant on a cobblestone street overlooking the sea. I ordered expensive wine and spent most of dinner crying. My boyfriend found it funny enough to photograph.

I still have that photo on my phone. Hollow eyes. A strange deadness in my gaze. And behind me, one of the most beautiful places in the world.

The next morning he went through my phone over an innocent message from a male friend.

An hour later, while he was in the shower, I did the same.

I almost wish I hadn’t.

What I found shattered me. A vault of messages, photos, evidence of a life he had been living alongside ours for months.

I ran.

Out the door. Down the stairs. Three steps at a time. Onto the sun-drenched streets of Capri.

He followed.

A taxi driver stepped in when he saw the fear on my face and the tears streaming down it. A circle of holidaymakers stared. My cheeks burned.

Eventually, I gave in. Got in a boat with him. Sat there numb and hollow, too exhausted to fight anymore.

We broke up that Christmas. Though it took another six months to fully sever the tie.

He would wait outside my yoga studio. Outside my office. In the foyer of my apartment building.

And somehow, every time, he managed to wiggle his way back under my skin.

I lost almost all my friendships during those years. As one person gently told me, I had become like a broken record, playing the same song over and over again.

Nobody wanted to listen anymore.

Why We Repeat Painful Relationship Patterns

This is where Adlerian psychology becomes uncomfortable.

The Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler believed that we are not simply products of our past or our circumstances. We are active participants in creating the patterns of our lives, often in ways we don’t consciously understand.

The relationships we return to.

The cycles we struggle to break.

The choices that look irrational from the outside.

Adler believed these patterns serve a purpose. They meet a psychological need, even when that need is rooted in old pain.

Looking back, I can see that something in me craved being fought for. Loved so intensely that someone would show up outside my door.

It was a script I didn’t realize I was running, one written long before I met him.

That doesn’t excuse his behavior. Manipulation and emotional volatility are real.

But healing eventually asked something different of me.

It asked me to look at my part in the dance, not with shame, but with curiosity.

Why did I keep choosing the door back in?

The Hidden Role of Self-Worth

A few years later, I hit a different kind of low.

By then I was running retreats and doing work I genuinely loved. But behind the scenes, I was running them at a loss.

I had told myself the money would follow the passion.

Instead, I had maxed out my credit cards.

One afternoon in New York City, a place that once felt like home, I realized I didn’t even have enough money in my account for a subway ticket.

Money was due to hit my account in a few days. I had simply miscalculated.

But in that small gap, something in me spiraled hard. I started having suicidal thoughts.

A dear friend, thankfully trained in psychotherapy, lent me money and held me emotionally through that moment. I don’t know what I would have done without her.

Later, working with a financial coach, I began to see another pattern.

My relationship with money was tangled up in my relationship with worth.

At some deep level, I didn’t believe I deserved abundance.

And so, unconsciously, I kept myself just out of reach of it.

The pattern of worth keeps showing up. In love. In money. In the small cracks that aren’t obvious at first.

The difference now is that I notice it faster.

And I keep working on it.

Breaking the Pattern

Today my life looks very different.

I’m in a relationship built on pillars I once wasn’t sure existed: honesty, growth, compassion, and mutual respect.

I run retreats that sustain me, both financially and creatively.

And most mornings I wake up with a quiet sense of gratitude that still surprises me.

Did I get lucky?

Or did I create this?

I think the truth sits somewhere in between.

But the luck didn’t come from nowhere.

It came after I did the work

.

After I walked directly into my own shadows.

After I stopped casting myself as the victim of my own story and began asking different questions.

Questions Worth Sitting With

I’m not suggesting that everything painful in your life is your fault.

That’s not what this is about.

But there is quiet power in asking:

• Where in my life am I running a script I didn’t consciously write?

• What need is being met by a pattern I say I want to break?

• What part of me keeps choosing this situation—and why?

You don’t have to answer those questions immediately.

But let them sit with you.

Because the moment you stop asking “why does this keep happening to me?” and start asking “what part of me keeps choosing this?” — something shifts.

That’s where the real work begins.

And in my experience, that work is one of the most worthwhile things a person can do.

These are the kinds of patterns we explore inside 1:1 coaching and KAKUN retreats—the subtle scripts shaping our relationships, our sense of worth, and the direction of our lives.

Often, the biggest shifts begin simply by seeing them clearly for the first time.