Why We Pick Difficult Partners

How free are we really when it comes to our romantic partnerships?

This School of Life video addresses a theme that is central to the self-exploration work I assist clients to do as an English-speaking therapist.  Together we examine and work on how our psychological history strongly predisposes us to fall for only certain types of people and leads us into (often painful) patterns of reenactment that although causing us suffering are often fulfilling an important but often overlooked need, the need for familiarity over feeling good.

An unconscious question we may ask of potential partners is “How likely are you to make me suffer in the way that I need to suffer in order to feel that love is real?”

So how do we respond towards people who may be compelling but also keep us painfully in old childhood patterns? And is it possible to shed the old historical templates of attraction that we have acquired during childhood?

Watch the video to get a sense of what can be worked on in English speaking therapy in Berlin.