If you find yourself bouncing from one terrible relationship to another, one mess of a wo/man to another, like some sad movie on repeat, I have a piece of advice for you. You ready?
Now, before you say ‘yes’, just know that this will definitely change your dating life forever, okay? So. You SURE you’re ready?
Okay. Hold onto your seats, folks, here goes…
The next time you meet Mr or Ms ‘Just My Type’, run for the hills.
And I don’t mean: Go for a little jog along the scenic route. I mean: Run like the demon dogs of hell are gnashing at your heels.
Yup. After my last dysfunctional relationship came to an end and I was sobbing into the beautiful chest of Lady Lou, she brought me to the light.
‘But he was just my type,’ I blubbed. ‘It made so much sense.’
‘That’s exactly the problem, darling,’ she drawled. ‘Your type is self-destructing men, so maybe next time don’t go for your type.’
‘Type.’
You know, some white coats reckon that we hook up with people who look more or less like ourselves, because that’s what we’re genetically programmed to do. Shrinks and soul people say ‘type’ is about repeating childhood traumas and relationship patterns until we learn to break it in ourselves.
All I knew at that point with Lady Lou was that, although the guys I was getting involved with all looked different, they were all the same person to me.
My type was everything I said I didn’t want and everything I fell for: unavailable, duplicitous, indirect, uninterested, self-destructive.
‘My type’ was every kind of heart-ache and dysfunction I was comfortable with.
In the unremarkable rom-com ThankYouHappyMorePlease, Mississippi (played by Kate Mara) tells a potential new romance: ‘The men I fall for are horrible and cruel. And if I’m here, you must be one of them.’
It became my mantra for a while. If a man interested me – if I found myself drawn to him and wanting to get emotionally involved WAY before there was any indication he was safe to get involved with – I backed away.
And if that sounds sad to you, then good for you, you’ve probably never bounced from one yuck relationship to the next for so long that the title of your love life is essentially ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’.
But therein lies the happy ending.
‘My type’ became a big red flag for two major markers: The type I had to avoid and what I needed to heal in myself to stop being attracted to them.
And I highly recommend this course of action for those of us who can’t yet tell a bad romance from a good one: Red flagging your type until the type of person you fall in love with changes – because you have.
After all, there’s never a good reason to keep a sad movie on repeat unless you want to keep crying.
