You're Not Paying Attention to the Facts
One mistake that a lot of people make is confusing “dating” with being in an actual relationship. Meaning, just because you’ve checked out a movie with someone a few times, that doesn’t mean you two are in a relationship. But if it’s been about six months or more, you see and speak with one another on a regular basis (more than a couple of times per week) and---this is the real clincher---you both have established that you are in a relationship and then it comes to an end and within a month’s time you are back out dating, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re going to find yourself dating the same kind of person.
That’s because initially, we tend to be drawn to the external qualities of a person. You know, how they look, how they approach us and how they initially make us feel. If we like what we see, we move forward to learn more. However, if you give yourself enough time in between relationships, you can learn how to listen for what I call “trigger lines”; flags that emerge from the very beginning. One example is “I would love to go to dinner, I’ll get back to you later in the month.” That’s someone who probably means “I like meeting new people. It’s not a priority to me, though.” When a person is intentional about building something with you, their actions will show it. If a person wants to be in a serious relationship with you, they will say it. That said, if you pay more attention to what you want something to be than what it actually is, if you romanticize situations instead of looking at the cold, hard facts, you will probably find yourself dating the same person over and over again.
