Disclaimer: This is not a therapy post, it’s a self-introspection piece. If you’re deep in pain right now, please reach out to a professional. You don’t have to carry this alone.
Recently, I attended a gathering with old friends.
It felt familiar but strange. Friendly on the surface, yet quietly isolating. It became clear, almost immediately, that everyone had stayed in constant contact with each other. Everyone except me. Life happens, I understand. And still, the feeling of being out of place gnawed at me from the inside.
I watched them share inside jokes I wasn’t part of, references to moments I’d missed, conversations that orbited around me without ever including me. Why did I even sign up for this?
I appreciated the invite but if my presence was simply a courtesy…
The foolish, hopeful part of me had thought we were still who we used to be: young, tight, and welcoming. But this wasn’t the first time I’d felt this way with the same group of people. I had been here before. Feeling the exact same thing.
So the real question became: Why do I keep returning to things that hurt me?
The pattern I couldn’t ignore
Last year, I finally walked away from a long and painful relationship. It cost me years of difficulty and more tears than I care to count. And yet, here I was, voluntarily walking back into another version of the same feeling.
Why do we keep choosing people and situations that are bad for us?
I started reading about it. And what I found wasn’t flattering, but it was honest.
(Please note: everything below applies not just to romantic relationships, but to family dynamics, friendships, and any bond that holds us in a loop.)
Pattern 1: “Your brain isn’t addicted to them. It’s addicted to what feels familiar.”
In psychoanalytic theory, this is called repetition compulsion, the unconscious pull to recreate familiar emotional patterns, even painful ones. On a nervous system level, the body can actually feel safer with predictable pain than with unfamiliar safety. That’s why leaving can feel more frightening than staying. It’s not a weakness. It’s wiring.
Pattern 2: The same person who creates the wound is also the one handing you the bandage
Trauma bonding happens when intense emotional ties form in relationships where mistreatment is mixed with moments of genuine affection, apology, or warmth. The person who hurts you also holds you. That alternation, hurt then tenderness, coldness then care, doesn’t break the bond. It deepens it.
Love mixed with fear and relief; imagine hurtful behaviour but sprinkled with warmth, gifts, and promises to change in between.
Pattern 3: Waiting for the jackpot
Like sitting at a slot machine and pulling the lever again and again, waiting for the jackpot, we stay for the rare moments of kindness. This intermittent reinforcement, unpredictable rewards, is one of the most powerful conditioning mechanisms known, similar to how gambling addictions are formed. Because love isn’t guaranteed, we cling harder to the tiny signs of hope, waiting for the elusive affection and kindness to finally show up.
Pattern 4: How attachment wounds turn red flags green
Insecure attachment styles, especially anxious attachment, can lead people to tolerate neglect or disrespect because being alone feels more frightening than being mistreated. There’s also the quiet, exhausting belief, “If I just try harder, I can make them stay.” This is often a childhood pattern being replayed, the attempt to finally earn the love of someone emotionally unavailable.
Pattern 5: “It doesn’t feel good. It just feels less scary than the unknown.”
Low self-esteem leads people to minimise harm and overvalue the few good moments, as though the rare warmth justifies the consistent pain. Fear of loneliness, social pressure, or the sheer terror of starting over can all keep us tethered to what is familiar, even when the familiar is damaging. A toxic relationship becomes a dangerous comfort zone: you know exactly how it hurts, and that feels safer than not knowing at all.
But we all deserve better.
What we can actually do
These patterns are not moral failures. They are survival strategies, responses to pain, and they no longer serve us. Let’s begin with noticing, not blaming.
Journaling, therapy, and education are key tools. But, first, we need to cultivate awareness. This is also the very first step I am taking for myself.
1. Name the pattern clearly
Identify the cycle you’re actually in: trauma bonding, intermittent reinforcement, anxious attachment, or the repetition of familiar pain. Naming it reduces shame and makes it feel observable rather than overwhelming. A quiet internal reminder, “This is not love. This is an unhealthy cycle.”, can be surprisingly powerful.
2. Reduce contact
If the relationship is emotionally destabilising, less contact means less reactivation of the bond. That might mean blocking, muting, avoiding the “just checking in” impulse, or removing easy triggers: old chats, photographs, voice notes. For some, a structured no-contact period is the first real break in the loop.
3. Make a reality list
We often go back because we remember the warmth and forget the wound. Write down the worst incidents. The repeated patterns. How you felt after each incident. When loneliness or longing hits, and it will, that list is there to counter the fantasy version of who they were or who we hoped for them to be.
4. Build real emotional support
Toxic cycles weaken in safe connection. Friends, family, support groups, therapists, trusted mentors, any of these can hold you steady when the urge to return is strongest. Leaving isn’t just ending a relationship; it’s building a support system strong enough to fill the gap.
5. Work on the attachment wound itself
The deeper issue is often old attachment pain. Therapy, journalling, inner-child work, and trauma-informed support can help us understand why chaos feels like home. The goal isn’t to fix ourselves, but it’s to learn what safety actually feels like.
6. Practice boundaries in small steps
For people used to chaos, boundaries can feel rude or aggressive at first. Start small: saying no, delaying a reply, not rushing to rescue someone, noticing guilt without acting on it. Over time, boundaries begin to feel less like rejection and more like self-protection.
7. Replace the dopamine loop
Hot-and-cold relationships are addictive because of the emotional highs and lows. Replace that stimulation with steadier sources of reward: exercise, creative work, routines, learning, good sleep, and community. The brain often needs new patterns before the old one loses its grip.
8. Expect relapse without self-punishment
Most people go back before they fully leave. That isn’t failure, it means the cycle was strong, and healing is rarely linear. Be gentle with ourselves about this.
9. Hope without a basis is its own kind of poison
We often believe we can change someone. But how many times has that actually happened? And how many times have you changed because of someone else’s hope for you, versus because you decided to?
We change when we want to. Not because another person wills it hard enough. Returning with the belief that this time will be different, without anything having actually shifted, is a form of self-deception dressed up as optimism.
Remind yourself: hope without any basis is a knife we plunge into our hearts, unwittingly.
This isn’t love or friendship. This isn’t even healthy. This is an old wound crying for help.
People don’t return to painful relationships because they enjoy suffering. They return because the bond is tangled up in fear, familiarity, hope, and old wounds that were never quite cared for. Breaking free means more than leaving once, it means learning how to stay gone, healing the underlying pattern, and slowly building a life that feels safe.
For myself, I’m trying to understand who I actually am. What I love. What I enjoy. What I won’t compromise on. What my ideal relationship, romantic, platonic, familial, actually looks and feels like. What I am comfortable with.
Because at the end of it all, I am the only person guaranteed to be with me for the rest of my life. And it wouldn’t be fair to the people who love me to watch me tear myself apart over people who wouldn’t blink twice at my misfortune.
So let’s try to love ourselves a little more. Not only as a mantra, but as a daily, deliberate practice.
And, let’s honour the past but live in the present.
Disclaimer: This is not a therapy post, it’s a self-introspection piece. If you’re deep in pain right now, please reach out to a professional. You don’t have to carry this alone.
