Freeing the future from unhappy patterns of the past can be done, with effort 

 

Just as there are Revisionist Parents who want to parent positively differently than they were painfully parented, there are also older adolescents who are hoping to get grown-up relationships that feel better than those they have known among family and friends.
Sometimes, against their fondest wishes, they are disappointed.
Reflecting on family, the young woman resolves: “I swore I’d never get into another yelling relationship like I had at home!” Reflecting on friends, the young man resolves: “I told myself I wouldn’t get hooked up with anyone again who took advantage of me!” But in each case, what the young person didn’t want was exactly the kind of relationship they got themselves into after leaving home and high school. Why is that?


It can be a hard notion for older adolescents, on the threshold of leading an independent life, to understand when it comes to finding and forming the significant relationship they seek. People often don’t get what they want in relationships; they get what is familiar. Consider two fictional examples.
The high school senior says this. “I hate how my parents and I end up yelling insults at each other whenever we disagree. They can go from reasonable to emotional so fast, and when they get there I’m not far behind. I promise you this: when I leave home and find someone I care about, who cares for me, there won’t be any yelling to hurt feelings when we have differences. Until then, I’ll give back to my parents as bad as they give to me!”


Except: as things stand, this resolution is not a likely to come true. Anchored in a long standing habit pattern of verbal attack when in disagreement, she may repeat it later on because the emotionally intense experience of opposition will trigger the old familiar behavior instead of what she wants. So my advice to her might be: if she really desires to do conflict without giving injury in later caring relationships, she might start practicing a different approach with her parents now. To change her future behavior, she has to practice changing her behavior in the present.    
The college freshman says this. “All through high school, girlfriends took advantage of my desire to please and go along with what they wanted. The more I gave and gave in, the more they took, the more I felt exploited. It always ended up with me feeling unfairly treated. So I’ve decided to make better relationships in college by finding someone won’t do me that way and will treat me better.”
Except: as things stand, if he keeps entering relationships to please the woman and omits what would be pleasing for him, only acting how she’d like in order to be liked, the old familiar experience of feeling exploited in friendships is likely to continue. So my advice to him might be: if he really desires a more equitable and enjoyable relationship in the future, he might practice communicating his likes up front with who he is dating now.



The habit pattern of people not getting what they happily want in relationships, but getting what is painfully familiar instead is sometimes played out with patterns of emotional abuse in families. “I never want to act abusively or be on the receiving end of abusive treatment again!” The child or adolescent living with a parent who regularly exploded in fits of savage temper when that mother or father was displeased or denied, can later end up in a similar relationship, as actor or reactor.
Perhaps in defense by imitation she or he has learned to act abusively in disagreement. Or perhaps they have learned to react with passive adjustment to this treatment so they do not make an inflamed situation worse.

In either case, a familiar pattern of behavior in an emotionally charged intimate encounter has unwittingly been established in childhood that can create some readiness for repetition in older caring relationships to come. Now the young adult can attract or be attracted to her or his unhappy compliment, even ending up acting like or living with an abusive spouse in marriage, something that was never wanted. The familiarity factor is often partly to blame. “I didn’t know I was in training back then to unknowingly repeat painful patterns from my past!”
People can bring their pasts into their present in all kinds of painful ways, subscribing to old unhappy behaviors out of familiarity being one. The seduction of giving in to such repetition is that it somehow feels right in the moment, even when a person knows it is against their better interests and well-being to do so. “When my way gets challenged, it’s very easy for me to take immediate offense and act angry.”

Why are such habit patterns so hard to break and change? They testify to the human tendency to act automatically and not intentionally, without thinking reenacting what they have done before. It’s not just that people are creatures of habit; they can become captives of habit. They repeat what is familiar until what they unmindfully did is regretfully done.

Personal history has a way of repeating itself as resolutions fail and the rule of familiarity is asserted.  Hence cartoonist Walt Kelly’s observation: “We have met the enemy and they are us.”
So, the bad news is that old unhappy patterns of self-management in relationship can be self-perpetuating. However, the good news is that with responsibility, self-knowledge, practicing intentionality, and perhaps with some counseling help they can be supplanted by new habit patterns of a more nurturing kind. “In disagreement, I’ve learned to be patient with frustration and give a listen instead; and it’s made a world of difference for me and people I care about.”
To paraphrase philosopher George Santayana: “Those who can learn from their painful past are less likely to repeat it.”