Listen,
If you’re in a situation where you can’t work out why things keep going so badly in your love life, read this. It’ll give you a few clues.
First, context:
Over the next few days, you’ll see a lot of content about love and relationships. You know the drill, podcasts, social media, and the like.
And what I’ve noticed is this: people will do anything to explain why we choose the partners we choose (specially the bad ones). And still they skip the one thing that actually explains it.
They get stuck in a neurological narrative about what happens when someone is with a person who activates their nervous system, and how that translates in the brain.
Of course, if you check the scientific literature you’ll find that with a supportive partner, there’s reduced threat and pain-related brain activity, and a dampened stress response in the body. And, in the opposite situation, with high-conflict, hostile interactions, studies link couple conflict to more dysregulated cortisol patterns and wider physiological strain.
But what popular psychology and neuroscience people (think Dr Andrew Huberman) focus on doesn’t point you towards what’s actually important. The reality is that we’re looking at the wrong angle.
We’re looking at the consequence, not the origin.
And yes, that is the neurological consequence of being with someone who produces that kind of reaction in you. Okay, it’s useful to have that information. But at the same time, it isn’t the point, because what matters here is understanding why, in the first place, the person chose to be with someone with those negative characteristics.
Because when it comes to finding a partner, the most important thing is who you choose. The rest is secondary.
In fact, most relationship problems come down to choosing the wrong person. And I’m being polite here, because if it were up to me I’d say almost all problems come from choosing the wrong person.
Everything goes back to that point, and that’s the point of origin. The reason you choose that particular person, and not someone else.
Deep down (AKA the unconscious), you already know it’s going to end badly with that person, so why do you choose them?
Because, for you, those traits, the ones that would be completely negative and unacceptable to someone else, are normal.
For you, maybe the fact that your partner doesn’t listen to you, or seems absent, is normal, because it’s what you learned love is.
For someone else, maybe the fact that their partner is aggressive and impulsive is normal.
So it has little to do with the later effects in the brain, and everything to do with what led you, in the first place, to choose one person rather than another.
And it all has to do with the beginning, with childhood, with what happened there. Who your primary attachment figures were (whoever raised you), what they were like, how they treated you, how they treated each other. What you grew up seeing as normal.
Those are the first lessons you learn from minute zero, from birth, and that’s what determines who you’ll choose in the future to share your life with, especially romantically, but you can also see it in other kinds of social relationships.
And it all starts there.
So let’s not waste time on what happens in the brain. I mean, give it a rest. For a moment, drop the idea that some relationships are “parasympathetic” and others “sympathetic”. Give it a rest. Don’t waste time on trending topics.
This kind of information is useful in an intellectual way, it helps you learn and understand more, but it doesn’t move you any closer to a different outcome.
As I said, the key moment is the moment of choice, and the thing that matters is being honest with yourself and asking:
“How has my track record of partner choices gone? Has it gone well?”
Then perfect, there’s nothing to worry about. But if your track record has gone badly…
Maybe you’ve got a history of partners who cheat on you.
Maybe you’ve got a history of partners who leave you high and dry.
Maybe you’ve got a history of partners where you’re in the background and you’re not a priority, what you feel, think or need doesn’t matter.
Maybe you’ve got a history of partners who pull away the moment things get real, so you’re left all by yourself.
Then yes, in that case, it’s worth looking into it and going to the root of the problem, seeing what happened in childhood, what you learned love is meant to look like, what you learned to treat as normal in a relationship, and starting, little by little, to unlearn it.
Can’t lie to you. It’s going to be hard to unlearn it.
Why?
Think about it this way: it’s like you’ve spent your whole life writing with your left hand because that’s what you were taught was “normal”. Then you realise that “normal” is exactly what’s making your writing messy. Switching hands feels awkward at first. You slow down, you hate how it looks, and you want to go back. But if you practise long enough, your hand learns a new normal.
Making that change is difficult, but it can be done.
The first solution is therapy, to find where the pattern started, and do the work to repair it. Right now I don’t have availability, so I can’t offer it to you.
But, but.
The second solution is to use the resources I show you in the article “2026 Valentine’s Relationship Resource Guide: Dating, New Love, Long-Term Couples”, specifically in phase 1, called “When you’re looking for love”. You can check it out here.
I hope it helps.
Love,
Noemi
P.S. Even just reading the article will help you. Here.
