Permission to be Powerful Podcast

How I Kept Repeating the Same Toxic Relationship—And Finally Broke the Cycle

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How I Kept Repeating the Same Toxic Relationship—And Finally Broke the Cycle

Why We Chase Emotionally Unavailable People—And How to Stop Rewriting the Past

Anton

Mar 22, 2025

Transcript

I thought I had learned my lesson.

More than a decade ago, I walked away from a woman who lied, cheated, and left me doubting my own reality. I wrote out every reason why I would never go through that again—why I would never let anyone else erode my self-respect like that.

And yet… I did.

Not just once. Again and again.

The faces changed, the details shifted, but the story stayed the same. Every time, I convinced myself this one was different. Every time, I found myself trapped in another cycle of emotional starvation, neglect, and mind games.

It took me years to see the truth: I wasn’t choosing these women. I was recreating my childhood.

We don’t repeat toxic relationships by accident. We do it because something deep inside us is trying to resolve unfinished business. The emotional wounds we suffered as children—the love we chased but never fully received—become the blueprint for what we pursue as adults.

I relentlessly pursued emotionally unavailable women because, on some level, I believed if I could just make one of them love me, I could finally rewrite the past.

Of course, it never worked.

Because healing doesn’t come from repeating the pattern. It comes from breaking it.

And breaking it? That’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

The Pattern: How I Kept Ending Up Here

I used to think I was just “unlucky” in love. That I just happened to attract difficult women. That maybe I was too soft, too sensitive, or too willing to see the best in people.

What I didn’t realize was that my “bad luck” wasn’t luck at all—it was a script.

I was replaying the exact same dynamics I had learned as a kid:

Love meant chasing. I had to earn it, prove myself, be “good enough” to receive it.
Love meant inconsistency. One day, I’d feel cherished. The next, ignored.
Love meant sacrifice. The more I gave up my needs, the more “worthy” I felt.
Love meant pain. If I wasn’t suffering, it didn’t feel real.

I didn’t just tolerate emotionally unavailable women—I sought them out. I was drawn to them in ways I didn’t fully understand. Their coldness, their detachment, their mixed signals—these things felt familiar.

Because they were.

My nervous system was wired to crave the kind of love I grew up with: unpredictable, distant, conditional. If a woman showed up ready to love me fully, without resistance? I’d push her away. I’d find her boring. I’d think, Something’s off. It’s too easy.

I wasn’t looking for love. I was looking for resolution.

But you can’t fix the past by repeating it.

The Illusion of Change

Every toxic relationship starts the same way: with a lie.

Not her lie—mine.

The lie I told myself that this one was different. That this time I’d finally found someone who could love me the way I wanted to be loved.

Eriche was the biggest illusion of them all.

On the surface, she seemed like an upgrade from past relationships. More serious. More ambitious. More put-together. But underneath? She was even more oppressive.

The same dynamics I had run from before—manipulation, emotional starvation, power games—were all still there, just wrapped in a different package. A new mask on the same demon.

But I couldn’t see it at first.

Because when you’re still caught in the cycle, you mistake familiarity for love.

So I stayed. Longer than I should have. I tolerated things that should have been deal-breakers. I convinced myself that if I just tried harder, loved better, communicated more—she’d change.

But she didn’t.

Because that’s not how this works.

The Realization: It Wasn’t About Them—It Was About Me

Leaving wasn’t the hardest part.

The hardest part was realizing that I was the common denominator.

That’s the brutal truth no one wants to face. It’s easier to blame them. To call them narcissists, manipulators, users. And sure, maybe they were. But why did I keep choosing them?

The answer was painful:

Because I didn’t believe I deserved better.

Not consciously, of course. But deep down, I had accepted the lie that love was something I had to suffer for. That I had to earn. That I had to chase.

I had spent my whole life trying to prove my worth to people who could never fully love me.

Because that’s what I learned as a child.

That’s when I realized: The real work wasn’t leaving toxic relationships. The real work was changing what I believed I deserved.

Breaking the Cycle

So how do you break a pattern that’s been running your entire life?

Here’s what I learned:

1. You have to grieve the past.

You can’t move forward until you accept that the love you wanted will never come from the people who failed to give it to you. No amount of replaying the past will fix it.

2. You have to retrain your nervous system.

If chaos feels like home, healthy love will feel boring at first. Learn to sit with that discomfort.

3. You have to build boundaries with yourself.

Not just with others—with yourself. No more excusing bad behavior. No more chasing people who don’t choose you.

4. You have to practice receiving love.

The hardest thing in the world for people like us isn’t giving love—it’s receiving it. Let yourself be loved without earning it. That’s the real test.