The power of the subconscious mind has always been a central topic in my work. How and why do we attract a certain result or kind of relationship? What are we most attracted to and why? And, how can we resolve the issues that make us attract or be attracted to, things that may not serve us?
Lets start with the broad examples that many women seem to have asked over the years: Why am I attracted to “Bad Boys?” or “Unavailable Men?”
One area that holds important answers, as well as paths to resolve undesirable relationship patterns, is too look at our family conditioning or patterns, and even our prenatal experience or birth. Here, you might find that an attraction to unavailable men stems from an unavailable father or mother. If a parent didn’t want you, would have preferred that you were a boy, or was just plain emotionally unavailable, it creates wounds that are receptive to any form of loss or mistreatment.
Understanding the feelings we may have had at our birth and pre-natal experience can also help us see our issues more deeply. It can also add a more powerful view of our feelings about love and belonging. Did we feel unwanted? Like a burden? Did we feel not good enough? It also incorporates an awareness of how the physical act of childbirth can contribute to relationship patterns. I have had clients who felt mistreated or molested at birth. Being separated from our mother after birth can be the most universal beginning of our feeling abandoned.
Our subconscious recreates relationships that resemble past wounds for a variety of deep reasons. The past leaves us with beliefs or expectations and they act as commands to the universe, and the universe fulfills our expectation. We also see the world through our own perspective and we see life and people according to our issues whether they actually are that way or not. We also are left emotionally compelled to understand or love our parents, so we are drawn to people or situations that fit them or our relationship to them.
Another lens I use to address the principles of attraction is based on a psychology of selves. (Also see The Psychology of Selves in Breathing.) This model can help explain our desire for balance or wholeness. We often compensate for past wounds or are attracted to things that we lack. Here one would be attracted to bad boys because they have rejected their own inner bad boy, or because they felt emotionally abandoned in a stable relationship. It helps to see this if you look at what energy a bad boy would mean to you. What energy are you attracted to and why? I have heard the bad boy to subtlety represent energies like power, independence, spontaneity, sexuality, and freedom. You may have been attracted to bad boys because you feel too indentified with, or at the effect of responsibility, emotional suppression, or caution.
The issue of unavailable men is somewhat the opposite. You may have picked an emotionally or physically unavailable man because you were recovering from abuse or a chaotic past, or because you feared you own inner chaos, spontaneity, freedom, or sexuality. It can be very powerful to see that our loss of sexuality is an aspect of our fear of emotion, spontaneity, or freedom. When we need safety and security we often throw away sexuality because it can be subconsciously connected to our fear of loosing control.
This is also a beginning outline for how we loose intimacy and passion in our relationships. Men have parallel issues. The easiest to name is that most men are afraid of being bad. They have been taught it is bad to hurt women and in their desire to be good, most have thrown away their instinctual power. To reclaim it takes a lot of personal development, just as it takes a lot of development to want to be taken. It is hard to learn or admit that one reason you may have attracted bad boys is because you crave male power and wish to be taken. It is hard for a man to learn that his power is good, and for him to learn to express that power with his heart open. I address all of this and more in my book and will write more in future blogs. I address some of this in a chapter on Arousal Patterns. I do not gender stereotype our relational of sexual preferences. I suggest that we work within our preferences while developing greater comfort with all aspects of giving or taking, and receiving or being taken.
How to resolve family patterns, birth scripts, and attraction patterns is complex. It involves anything that helps you articulate and feel the issues, so becoming conscious of the issues is a first step, but it takes more than awareness to resolve a pattern or make new choices. It requires energetic shifts that make new patterns and the freedom to move in new directions. I often say that my job is to help people “kick it around,” meaning that the more aspects we can see, feel and express the more likely we are to heal and resolve it. This begins to describe why experiential therapies are important. We all need support in going beyond just a cognitive understanding.
Within the psychology of selves’ model our task is to become everything and feel okay about both sides of an issue or our personality. Our task it to be both nurturing and powerful and not resist aspects of our past or of our personality. When we are in touch with our own power and even our own ability to manipulate others, we will not be as attracted to a bad boy or be fooled by him. When we are in touch with our need to retreat to safety, we will not be as subconsciously drawn to the peace and quite of the unavailable man.
Meanwhile it is valuable to get clear on your needs and goals and choose available, generous, and nurturing men. It is valuable to say no to unavailable men and bad boys. This does help create the emotional resolution and the space to manifest your stated desires.
Developing a greater ability to self-soothe is also a key. If we can comfort ourselves through loss or our fear of loss, we can become more comfortable in relationships, and more comfortable with desire and intimacy. It takes inner “strength to want” because we are only going to feel safe enough to desire something that we can survive loosing. This is also an aspect of inner strength that will help us attract our true hearts desire. When we are what we truly desire on the inside, the mirror of life will bring it to us.
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