Repetition Compulsion: Why You Keep Repeating the Same Relationship Patterns

By Katie Caygill Pocock (MSc. Clinical Neuropsychiatry, BSc. Psychology with Neuroscience)

Do you find yourself repeating patterns from the past? No matter who you date, it seems like you end up falling into the same dynamic, ultimately coming to the same ending. One way we can label this is “repetition compulsion”.

Repetition compulsion is a label used in a few different ways, including compulsion to repeat trauma. It’s not a diagnosis, but a concept from psychoanalytical theory. It’s also used colloquially – in this article, we’ll be using it in this way to describe how you end up repeating the same patterns in different relationships.

We’ll explore the attachment connections to repetition compulsion, the neuroscientific reasons you repeat your attachment experiences, and how to break the cycle of repetition compulsion in relationships.

What Is Repetition Compulsion?

The phrase “repetition compulsion” is originally attributed to Freud, although our understanding of it has developed since Freud’s initial description in 1914. Researchers have previously suggested that repeating an unpleasant experience is an attempt to “master” it, but others have suggested that there’s no real function and it’s more of a “byproduct”¹.

One psychologist has suggested that repetition compulsion involves 3 factors²:

• A conscious or unconscious desire for a positive outcome.
• Behaviors we feel consciously or unconsciously compelled to engage in to get those positive outcomes.
• Top-down cognitive processes like rationalization or denial, e.g. “this time things will be different”.

We still don’t fully understand why we go through repetition compulsion, but we do understand a bit about how it happens.

In relation to your attachment style, repetition compulsion may be related to how attachment patterns play out the same way in different relationships. If you have an insecure romantic attachment style, you might find yourself repeating the same behaviors, which elicit the same dynamics, even with completely different partners.

How Repetition Compulsion Shows Up by Attachment Style

When your romantic attachment style is triggered, you can find yourself repeating the same relationship patterns. This usually happens during conflict and times of high emotional intensity.

For anxious-preoccupieds, this can look like an intense need to pull a partner closer – sometimes closer than is healthy, or closer than they’re comfortable with, which only results in you feeling pushed away and an even stronger urge to be close. This is how a pattern easily develops.

For dismissive-avoidants, this might look like pulling away to deal with high emotions. Even if your partner is secure, they can respond to this with feelings of confusion and uncertainty, and attempt to reinitiate closeness.

For fearful-avoidants, a combination of mistrust in others and in yourself can lead you to feel both a need to pull away and be close when emotions are high. This can create confusion in your relationship dynamics.

If your attachment style is secure but you still find yourself repeating the same patterns in relationships, you might be choosing the same partners over and over again – if you’re always dating someone with the same insecure attachment style, their attachment patterns can impact your relationship in the same ways.

Despite our best intentions, changing these attachment patterns can be an uphill battle – this is because they’re actually embedded in your brain.

Attachment Patterns Aren’t Hardwired for Life

In neuroscience studies, we can see that different attachment behaviors are associated with activation in different brain areas, particularly in the limbic system³.

The more that brain cells interact with each other, the stronger their connection becomes – this is how these behavioral patterns can become “hardwired”.

However, this also means that these patterns are changeable with time and repetition of something new. Neuroplasticity is our brain’s incredible ability to adapt and change in line with our experience – it’s how we learn and build new habits and skills. In theory, those brain activations associated with attachment patterns can change as we have more experiences aligned with attachment security – but, research is still needed to investigate this hypothesis.

This is an uncomfortable process though: when we already have an existing template, we prefer things that align with our experiences and expectations.

Why the Familiar Feels Safe

We purposely look for information that lines up with what we expect the world to be – this is known as confirmation bias⁴. Familiarity and the affirmation that what we believe about the world is true make us feel comfortable, even if the familiar thing is itself proving to be a source of discomfort.

In other words, your brain can have an easier time repeating negative relationship cycles because they fit in with your expectations, like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you expect relationships to be turbulent and then enter one characterized by calm, your brain can interpret this as something feeling off. It doesn’t match what you think a relationship is, so it doesn’t feel right, even if a part of you recognizes that this is what you want from a relationship.

How Repetition Compulsion Can Affect Your Relationship

This self-fulfilling prophecy effect can lead relationships to go the wrong way. Despite best intentions, believing something negative about the world can cause you to act in line with those expectations. The positive side of this is that the same is true when you have positive expectations, e.g., you trust your partners, so you don’t push them away by being cold or overbearing.

In the following example, we’ll see someone who has negative expectations of relationships that get reinforced with every confirming experience.

Repetition Compulsion in Relationships: Example

Taylor has noticed her relationships seem to follow a pattern: whether her partner is a good fit or not, she always seems to become over-reliant on them. She starts putting the relationship first, above the other important things in her life, so her self-concept starts to lean on her partner instead of her own sense of identity. She has come to expect this in relationships – even when she tries her best to avoid it, the feeling of dependence still comes around.

Taylor learns that she has an anxious attachment style. She realizes that when her self-concept starts to rely on her relationship, she becomes afraid of abandonment and hyper-aware of any signs of disconnection in the relationship. Even when she has an attentive partner, her hyperalertness leads her to misinterpret their behavior. This leads her to prioritize the relationship even more, further neglecting other parts of herself, hence driving an even deeper need to keep her partner close.

In her next relationship, Taylor decides to actively work on her attachment security. She intentionally invests more in herself instead of her relationship, but it feels uncomfortable at first. She feels like something’s wrong in the relationship because it doesn’t feel like it usually does, even though she knows it’s actually healthier. With time and practice, she settles into a more secure pattern and finds a good balance between honoring herself and her relationship.

Breaking the Cycle

Learning more secure attachment patterns is called earned security. This is achievable through making personal and behavioral changes, such as how you think about others and how you respond to them⁵. To help you work on attachment security, check out our resources for attachment repair, emotional growth, and dating.

Experiencing secure attachments with others, including friends, family, and even having secure attachment modeled by therapists, is also very important in learning attachment security. Focusing on the secure relationships in your life and therapy from a licensed practitioner can demonstrate security that you can apply to romantic relationships.

Recognizing your patterns is the first step. The fact that you’re already finding out information about your attachment style and repetition compulsion is a big step in itself. Perhaps reflecting on past relationships and looking for similarities will help you to understand more about your own repeated experiences.

Finding out your attachment style can give you major clues as to what patterns you might be repeating. If you don’t know your attachment style yet, take our free attachment quiz.

Conclusion

Repeating the same thing over and over in relationships is a common experience, although psychologists haven’t agreed on why it happens, if there’s a reason at all. We do understand, however, many of the mechanisms behind repetition compulsion in relationships, including what happens in the brain.

Your attachment styles are so deeply ingrained and effortful to change because they’re associated with different brain wiring. The more you repeat an experience, the more you come to expect it, which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. At this stage, experiences that don’t match up to our expectations of the world can feel uncomfortable, even if the experiences themselves aren’t positive.

However, thanks to neuroplasticity, we’re able to change our brain connections and expectations of the world. Earning attachment security requires positive experiences in relationships with others and in the way we relate to ourselves, but breaking the cycle of repetition compulsion in relationships is possible.

FAQs

Why do I keep dating the same type of person?

If you keep dating the same type of person, you might be experiencing repetition compulsion – this is when we unconsciously repeat experiences. When we come to expect certain things, they feel comfortable because they’re familiar, even if those expectations are negative. Dating the same type of person could be part of a self-fulfilling prophecy stemming from your expectations of relationships.

Can you heal from repetition compulsion in relationships?

It is possible to heal from repetition compulsion in relationships. Learning secure attachment patterns can help you to break from existing attachment patterns, though it takes time, patience, and effort to change deeply embedded patterns.

What is an example of a repetition compulsion in relationships?

An example of repetition compulsion in relationships would be someone whose relationships always seem to play out the same way, even when their partners are different. Without realizing it, they may be consistently engaging in the same behaviors or pushing partners away. Another example might be someone who always dates similar partners, even though it never works out well.

References

1. Levy MS. A conceptualization of the repetition compulsion. Psychiatry. 2000 Feb 1;63(1):45-53.
2. Zellner MR. Preliminary steps toward a neurobiology of the repetition compulsion. Modern Psychoanalysis. 2014 Jan 1;39(1).
3. Vrticka P, Vuilleumier P. Neuroscience of human social interactions and adult attachment style. Front Hum Neurosci. 2012; 6: 212 [Internet].
4. Nickerson RS. Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of general psychology. 1998 Jun;2(2):175-220.
5. Dansby Olufowote RA, Fife ST, Schleiden C, Whiting JB. How can I become more secure?: A grounded theory of earning secure attachment. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy. 2020 Jul;46(3):489-506.