112. Why You Keep Choosing the Wrong Man (Even When You Know Better)

Ever wondered why you keep choosing the same kind of man… even when you know you deserve better?

In this episode, I’m breaking down what’s really going on beneath the surface. Because this isn’t about a lack of awareness… it’s about the emotional patterns your nervous system learned a long time ago. We’ll talk about why attachment wounds can feel like facts, how they quietly shape who you’re attracted to, and the difference between understanding your patterns and actually changing them. If you’ve ever felt like “I know better, so why do I keep ending up here?” This conversation is going to connect a lot of dots.

You might want to listen if:

• You keep attracting emotionally unavailable men and don’t understand why
• You know your patterns intellectually but still feel stuck in them
• You find yourself overanalyzing, chasing, or trying to “fix” the connection
• You feel frustrated because you know you deserve better but your choices don’t reflect it yet
• You’re ready to stop repeating the same relationship cycle and start creating something different

FIND OUT MORE!

• Join the Speak Honest Academy 
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• Schedule your Free 30 min Attachment Assessment with Jenn Today! 
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DISCLAIMER:  Speak Honest podcast content is informational, not professional or medical advice. Jenn is an ICF relationship coach, not a licensed therapist. Consult health professionals for specific concerns. Client opinions do not reflect Speak Honest’s stance. We aim for accuracy but are not liable for errors or outcomes from this information. 

Transcript

Knowing Better Yet Repeating Patterns

Attachment Wounds Live In The Body

When Familiar Feels Like Chemistry

Integration Versus Information In Dating

Changing The Dance And Getting Support

Final Reminder And Subscribe Request

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello, and welcome to Speak Honest. I am your host and certified relationship coach, Jennifer Noble. It has been my passion for over a decade to help women like you heal. What's been holding you back from having the relationships you deserve? Are you struggling with a relationship where you can't seem to voice your emotions, needs, and boundaries without having it blow up in your face? Then you have found the right podcast, my friend. Get ready for practical tips, empowering truths, and honest conversations. Now let's dive in. Hello, ladies, and welcome back to another episode of Speak Honest. I am Jen Noble, your go-to relationship coach and author of the best-selling book Dance of Attachment. Around here, we talk honestly about the patterns we find ourselves in with love, especially the ones that make us shake our heads and say, How did I end up here again? And today's episode is about that question. It's the one I hear all the time from women who are smart, capable, self-aware, and genuinely trying to build healthy relationships. They'll sit across from me and say something like, Jen, I know I deserve better than this. I know the red flags, I've done therapy, I've read the books, I understand attachment styles. So why do I keep ending up in the same kind of relationship? Listen, maybe you've had that moment too. You're out with friends, maybe over dinner or a glass of wine, and you're explaining the latest situation with a guy. As you're telling the story, you can hear yourself saying the same things you've said before. He seems great at first. He was attentive, interested, maybe even a little intense. And then slowly something shifts. The texting changes. He pulls back emotionally. You start analyzing every interaction, and somewhere along the way you hear yourself saying those words. I know I deserve better than this. And you mean it. You truly believe that you deserve a healthy relationship, a relationship with consistency, emotional availability, and someone who actually chooses you back. The confusing part is that knowing that doesn't seem to change the outcome. So today I want to talk to you about why that happens. Because the issue is not that you don't know better. In fact, most of the women who find this podcast are incredibly insightful. The real issue is that attachment wounds, they live deeper than just awareness. They live in the nervous system, in the body, in the emotional patterns we learned long before we ever had a language for them. And once you start to understand that, the whole pattern begins to make a whole lot more sense. Now, before we dive in, if this conversation resonates with you and you want support actually integrating this work, then I want to invite you to come join us inside the Speak Honest Academy. Inside the Academy, we do live group coaching calls, we work on nervous system regulation, and we talk through these patterns in real time so you can start shifting them in your actual dating life. You can learn more at speakhonistacademy.com or you can click on the link in the show notes. Now let's dive in. Let's start with something that is foundational to attachment work. When we talk about attachment styles, what we're really talking about underneath the surface are attachment wounds. These are the emotional conclusions we formed about love when we were younger. Attachment theory, which originally comes from the work of John Bowby and Mary Ainsworth and all those people that I've talked about before, it explains how our early relational environments shape the way our nervous systems understand connection. As children, we are constantly interpreting our experiences with our caregivers. We're learning things like whether our needs are responded to, whether our emotional closeness feels safe, or whether people are reliable. And over time, those experiences turn into beliefs. Not beliefs that you consciously wrote down somewhere, but beliefs that live inside your nervous system. They might sound something like this I'm too much. I'm not enough. Men always leave. I have to earn love. I can't depend on anyone. Here's the important part. These beliefs become so ingrained in the body that we experience them as truth, not as opinions, not as guesses. They feel as obvious as saying the sky is blue. Your nervous system doesn't walk around thinking this is just a belief I picked up in childhood, everything's okay. It experiences that belief as reality. And your brain is very good at organizing your experiences around what it thinks to be true. So if somewhere deep in your system there is a belief that love requires chasing, right? So let's say this, right? Love requires chasing, or maybe that closeness eventually disappears. Your body will orient itself towards relational dynamics that match that expectation. Is that making sense? So if you think love requires chasing, what do you think you're gonna do? Exactly. You're gonna go chase him. If you think closeness eventually disappears, then how are you going to feel when he kind of starts pulling away or he has another plan? You're gonna be like, oh, there it is again. There's the closeness disappearing. And this isn't happening on a conscious level, right? This isn't because you consciously want that outcome, but because the nervous system prefers the familiar. Familiar feels predictable. Predictable feels safer than the unknown. But here's the key thing I do want you to hold on to. These beliefs are not facts, they are adaptations your nervous system created to make sense of the environment you were in at the time. They just helped you navigate relationships in the context you were in. And once those beliefs are in place, they start shaping every relationship you choose. All right. So once an attachment belief is in place, something interesting starts to happen in your dating life. Your nervous system starts organizing your attraction around it. This is why you attract men who reinforce these deep beliefs. So let's say somewhere in your emotional blueprint, there is a belief that love requires effort and pursuit, right? You're not really in love unless you're having to work for it. Maybe that you have to earn someone's attention or prove your value in order to be chosen. When you meet someone who is a little inconsistent or emotionally distant, your nervous system recognizes that dynamic. It feels familiar. It feels safe. And that familiarity can feel like chemistry. This is why so many women say, Jen, I don't understand why I'm so drawn to this type of guy. On paper, you might want consistency and emotional availability, but attraction often follows the emotional patterns that we are familiar with. See, psychology sometimes refers to this as confirmation bias. Our brains naturally look for evidence that supports our existing worldview. If your nervous system believes that closeness will eventually become uncertain, it may feel strangely compelling when you meet someone who starts strong and then becomes unpredictable. So, for example, if the belief is I have to chase love, so let's go back to that one. I have to chase love in order to make it worth it, right? The emotionally unavailable partner can create this powerful sense of a pull. Like he's literally pulling you in. And not because he's actually a good match for you, but because the dynamic fits the template your nervous system already created. Isn't that wild? Okay, let's try another one. Let's say the belief is I'm too much. That's a big one. I know that's a big one for me. I hear that in the academy all the time. So you might find yourself drawn towards partner who withdraw when the emotions deepen in the relationship. When that withdrawal happens, it reinforces the old belief that you're too much. See, I have too many emotions. I'm asking for too much. I want to go too deep. And then the cycle continues. So I once worked with a client who joked that she kept dating the same man in a different outfit. I love that so much. I just love that visual. And, you know, different professions, different personalities on the surface, but the same emotional pattern underneath. Strong initial connection followed by distance, followed by her trying harder to keep the connection alive. The point here is not that you are choosing these dynamics intentionally. I want to be clear. This is a very subconscious thing. This is that your nervous system is operating from an emotional blueprint that was formed earlier in life. And until that blueprint shifts, right, until we can literally rewire or roll out the blueprints, erase all of them, and start re-putting them down, the attraction patterns tend to repeat. This is also where many women start to feel stuck. They understand their pattern intellectually, but the emotional pull still shows up. They're still attracted to that same type of guy. And that brings us to the third concept for the day. This is one of the biggest distinctions I see in my work as a coach. The difference between internalizing information and actually integrating it. All right, so I want you to really listen to this part as we're talking. If you got distracted, come back to me. Internalization means the information lives in your mind. You know it. You understand it. So you know your attachment style. Great. You understand your relational patterns. Perfect. You can explain the dynamics to a friend over coffee and sound incredibly insightful. That's amazing. And a lot of women who find this podcast, they're in that stage. They've done the reading, they've listened to the podcast, they've spent time reflecting on their patterns, they watch the TikToks that explain all of this, and that awareness is valuable. It truly is, it gets us somewhere. But awareness is often just the first step. Integration is something different. Integration is when your nervous system begins to respond differently in real time. So for example, imagine you're dating someone and you notice a shift. His communication changes slightly for whatever reason. Maybe he's become less responsive because, you know, he's busy at work or he's getting a bit more distant because you guys have been dating for a couple months and that's just a natural thing to happen. And in the past, that moment might have triggered you so much and caused so much mental activity. You might start analyzing the situation, wondering what you did wrong, trying to re-establish the connection in any way that you can. When integration begins to happen, something subtle but powerful changes. Instead of immediately moving into pursuit or analysis, your nervous system recognizes the pattern. There's a pause. Hmm, an awareness. Something inside of you goes, Oh, I've seen this pattern before. Okay. And from that place, you have more choice. You might slow down instead of leaning forward. You might observe what he's doing instead of trying to fix it. You might start asking, is this what I want? Instead of, why is he doing that? And from a neuroscience perspective, this shift involves the relationship between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. The amygdala is constantly scanning for emotional threat and familiar patterns. That's its job. While the prefrontal cortex helps us regulate and make thoughtful, insightful decisions. When regulation improves, the logical part of the brain has more opportunity to participate in that moment. You allow the prefrontal cortex to do its job. That is the difference between understanding a pattern and embodying a new response. Internalization is when the information lives in your mind. Integration is when it lives in your nervous system. Awareness shows you the pattern. Integration is what finally changes it. Let's bring this all together now. So today we talked about three important pieces of the puzzle. First, attachment wounds can become so ingrained that they feel like facts rather than just beliefs. Second, those beliefs quietly shape the attraction patterns in our dating lives, often drawing us toward partners who reinforce the emotional blueprint we learned earlier. And third, real change happens when insight moves from the mind into the nervous system through integration. If you keep finding yourself in relationships that don't meet your needs, it does not mean you lack insight or intelligence. Many women understand their patterns super, super well. The deeper work is teaching the nervous system that a different kind of relationship is possible. In other words, your nervous system may still be dancing to an old choreography. The beautiful part is that choreography can change. And here's the line I want you to remember. If you remember anything from today's episode, I want you to remember this. Awareness shows you the dance you learned. Integration is what finally teaches your body a new one. Thank you all so much for spending this time with me today. Conversations like this are exactly why I created the Speak Honest Academy. Inside the Academy, we take these concepts and actually practice them together. We talk about real dating situations. If you're out there right now on the dating apps and you're going through first date, second date, third date, and you're not sure what to do, then come inside the academy and get some help. We work on nervous system regulation so that your responses start shifting in real time. And we explore what it looks like to attract and maintain emotionally available men. Ladies, you deserve better than an emotionally constipated man. You really, really do. In addition to all of that, inside of the academy, you get access to our live group coaching calls. They happen every Tuesday and Thursday at 7 p.m. Eastern. If that works for your schedule, we would love to see you there. Because the truth is that integration happens through experience, reflection, and support. It's much easier to shift these dynamics when you're not doing it alone. Let us guide you. Let me, as your coach, help you along and let the women in the community show you you're not alone. You're not the only one going through this. And girl, you deserve better. Now, if you've been listening to this podcast and thinking, oh my gosh, this is exactly the work I need to be doing, then I would love to have you join us. You can go to speakhonistacademy.com or you can scroll down, click on the link in the show notes to learn more. And I have something really special for you. If you do want to decide, if you're listening to this right now and you're like, Jen, I really want this, I don't know who you are and I don't know about this community. Listen, I get it. I also have trust issues, and I want to give you something really special. For right now, you can use the code SECURESTART. If you're listening to this and this code still works, then girl, use it. I don't know how long this is gonna last, but I want you to get your first month free inside of the academy. All right. I hope you take advantage of this. I hope to see you either on Tuesday or Thursday. And I just want you to remember it's all about integration. All right, ladies, I will speak with you all next week. Take care. As we wrap up today's conversation, always remember that healing is a journey, not a destination. And it is an honor to be a part of your healing journey. If you want to dig deeper into the topics we cover today, be sure to head over to our show notes where you can find all of the valuable information mentioned in today's episode right there. And please remember to rate, review, and subscribe if you enjoyed today's podcast. Your feedback means the world to us and helps others discover our podcast. Until next time, remember to speak up and speak honest.