Recurring Partner Selection: How to Stop Inventing Curses and Start Distinguishing Facts

Epigraph

“Test all things.” — 1 Thessalonians 5:21 (World English Bible context). The original text concerns sober discernment within a Christian community, not a license to stage cross-examinations, provoke drama, or tolerate dubious contacts.

What This Article Is About

It is a familiar scenario: the faces change, the scenery is new, but the finale still smacks of cheap melodrama. A spark flares up, a familiar anticipation sets in, and when it comes to simple arrangements, time somehow evaporates once again. One feels tempted to stamp oneself with a dramatic label: “I fatally choose the exact same type!” Yet the phrase “I keep stepping on the same rake” explains precisely nothing. It collapses initial attraction, the setting where you met, people’s actual actions, and your present retrospective view into one undifferentiated pile.

Before enrolling oneself as an incurable client of psychoanalysis or inventing generational curses, it helps to engage a cool head. Examining your own steps does not make you culpable if another person behaved dishonestly or unsafely. Conducting this check does not require calling exes, hiring a private detective, or throwing yourself into a random romance for the sake of science. Sometimes it is enough to acknowledge a sober reality: the underlying causes remain unknown, but to these specific conditions I no longer agree.

Consider a fictional protagonist—let us call her Polina. Polina recalls exactly two encounters, both occurring at photography workshops. The script looks almost carbon-copied: a confident manner of speaking about art, an energetic proposal to go for a camera walk, and later on, a brick wall when attempting to coordinate regular dates. Polina thinks: “I chose an unavailable one again!” But let us forgo the theatrical hand-wringing. This is not a clinical therapy session, nor is it a cosmic decree. There are precisely two instances, a similar setting, charismatic banter at the outset, and a scheduling bust later. Were the reasons behind this discrepancy identical? Did anyone make firm promises? What did each party actually invest into the word “regularity”? It is unknown. That sober lack of knowledge is the exact place to begin.

I. Naming What Actually Repeated

The first rule of informational hygiene is to strip the drama of its microphone and outline the dry facts. What do we have? Both spoke with confidence. Both offered a walk. With both, coordinating the desired meeting schedule later proved difficult. These are three entirely distinct items, not a single monolithic flaw. The first detail is a manner of speaking. The second is an immediate conversational gesture upon meeting. The third is a subsequent difficulty in coordinating availability. From the fact that someone briskly invites you for coffee, it does not follow that they possess a pathological incapacity to make future plans. There is no need to inflate one trait into a complete character report, as if a camera strap came with a lifetime service guarantee.

The second pitfall is confusing one’s recurring internal feeling with identical external conduct. The ache of waiting in your chest may feel completely identical, but was it produced by the exact same cause? In one case, a firm promise for Tuesday might have been made and subsequently broken. In the second, someone might have politely stated, “I am swamped at work until May.” In a third, you might have imagined a joint vacation after a couple of witty jokes. The disappointment feels the same, yet the facts are fundamentally different. If a promise was broken, the responsibility belongs entirely to the one who broke it, and one should not dissolve that fact in self-blame. If the frequency of meetings was never discussed, or whether someone intended anything deeper, treating the situation in hindsight as an established contract is foolish.

Two awkward strolls do not make a demographic trend, nor do they qualify as a representative census of your entire dating future. The moment dramatic strings swell in your chest and you convince yourself that the whole planet is populated exclusively by elusive phantoms, take the megaphone away from the inner drama queen: which encounters actually made the cut, what got left out, and could there simply be gaps in what is on the table right now? Any gripping series can spin a cliffhanger out of nowhere, but two similar episodes do not mean the whole run is doomed. The word "always" sounds punchy in trailer voiceovers and captures plain exhaustion, yet as a factual claim about your life, it falls flat. It is vastly healthier to concede, "I am looking at exactly two stories, and I have no idea what the rest of the universe is up to"—a realization that will not magically heal the sting, but will at least strip you of the martyr's tragic crown.

II. Recognition Can Begin with a Minor Trait

Back in the seventeenth century, Benedict de Spinoza (Ethics, Part III, Proposition XVI) pinpointed this mental parlor trick with razor sharpness: if an object bears the faintest resemblance to something that once brought us pleasure or pain, our affect eagerly slaps the old emotional residue onto the newcomer. This is a brilliant philosophical reflection on human passions, not an empirical, laboratory-tested relationship manual. Spinoza is simply pointing out how swiftly we swallow a familiar hook and spin an entire saga out of a single detail. For Polina, that hook might well have been a confident conversational flair, but that remains a plausible hypothesis to test against the facts rather than a settled diagnosis. A person can discuss shutter speeds with magnetic swagger, but that charismatic opening tells you nothing about their actual calendar or whether they will vanish the minute life gets busy.

There is nothing criminal about being drawn to confident people. Polina enjoys photography and appreciates proactive conversationalists—fine taste, so why abandon it? Attraction itself does not become an error; one may separately consider whether Polina attributed more weight to a single detail than was warranted. In any specific instance, a proposal like “Let’s shoot the sunset on Saturday” remains an offer awaiting an answer. An offer of a walk is not yet an agreed commitment; even an agreed walk is no binding contract for regular dating. There is no need to invent childhood trauma or script-bound curses; it is quite enough to notice the gap between a literal phrase and personal expectations.

Furthermore, swinging toward radical overcorrection and deliberately seeking out quiet wallflowers out of spite is an equally dead-end tactic. A quiet demeanour conveys nothing about available time, romantic intent, or reliability regarding commitments. Reversing an external marker does not guarantee an opposite outcome. One need not subject oneself to absurd experiments and force feelings for unappealing companions merely to “break a pattern.”

III. What Research on Partner Similarity Can and Cannot Say

Science has also ventured a look into this territory. In 2019, researchers Yoobin Park and Geoff MacDonald published a study analysing nine years of data from a long-term German longitudinal panel. They examined the personality self-reports of former and current romantic partners of the same individuals. Their findings demonstrated that a meaningful, specific similarity between an individual's partners is indeed observable; the authors carefully distinguished normative profile similarity, similarity to the participant themselves, and specific partner-to-partner similarity. Thus, the possibility of recurring partner personality profiles is not mere fiction. Do not rush, however, to shout triumphantly, “I told you so!”

A clear caveat is required: for this piece, only the official abstract and brief metadata were examined, not the complete text, methodologies, or data tables. The abstract itself includes an important qualification: certain associations with individual differences did not replicate under an alternative analytic approach. The authors provide no fatalistic destiny, schedules of fate, statistical noise claims, causal attraction mechanisms, or pre-packaged excuses for Polina. The academic study does not prove that Polina is doomed to repeat history, nor does it trace the issue to upbringing.

Similarity across personality self-reports in a survey is far from an identity of real-world actions, work calendars, or broken promises. The study reported a significant specific similarity in self-descriptions, not that the difficulties with both of Polina’s workshop acquaintances had identical causes. One should not drape ordinary logistical dilemmas in the prestigious mantle of PNAS.

IV. The Setting as an Independent Hypothesis

Now apply basic situational logic: both individuals were met at photography workshops. What if the issue is not mystical subconscious magnetism, but simply the environment? Thematic masterclasses attract a distinct demographic: people with particular lifestyles, ambitions, and specific schedules. They are hardly a representative cross-section of humanity. Then again, blaming photography workshops for everything is equally absurd—they do not manufacture overbooked individuals on an assembly line.

Nevertheless, in that setting, an articulate discussion on camera exposure is immediately apparent, whereas information regarding whether someone’s Friday evenings are free remains hidden. Polina merely responded to what was brightly illuminated by the spotlights. That does not make her reckless—at the starting line, we invariably operate on fragments of information. The only question is whether we mistake an attractive storefront for a guarantee of a comfortable calendar.

Should Polina decide to switch environments and join a running club, that is her prerogative. Yet doing so is simply a voluntary leisure choice, not a medical procedure designed to repair a crooked destiny. In a new environment, essential conditions might just as easily take time to emerge. There is no need to abandon a beloved craft to atone for imagined sins of selection; everyday life is not a testing ground for representative sampling.

V. When Was Essential Information Discovered?

Another sensible angle is examining the order in which the cards were revealed. If Polina spent both courtships getting swept away by banter about photography, quietly drafting a weekly dating timetable in her head, and only discovering months later that the other person was booked solid until the next solar eclipse, what repeated was the sequence of discovery, not an ancient family curse. Inquiring about someone's actual availability a bit sooner is a practical move for the next round, even if it comes with zero warranties against smooth talkers, changing minds, or future plot twists. Just avoid the opposite ditch: an espresso date is an invitation to chat, not an HR screening where you hand a prospective partner a multi-stage application form complete with references and a probationary clause.

Resist the trap of hindsight. Once a story concludes, it is tempting to slap one's forehead and proclaim, “It was obvious from day one!” What was known back then must be assessed separately from today’s explanations; certain details or their weight may have remained genuinely unknown. One should not pretend to have possessed prophetic foresight that was criminal to neglect. An honest retrospective stance asks: “What did I know then, what did I discover later, and where is my memory merely approximate?”

Stating one's needs can be done calmly, without theatrics or assigning guilt. If predictability and regular dates are essential to Polina, while the other person can only offer an erratic, spontaneous call once a month, the conditions simply do not align. Both may be admirable people with benign intentions. A clear comprehension of one’s parameters does not diminish another person’s responsibility if deceit was involved, but it dismantles the illusion that one can insure oneself against all earthly disappointment.

VI. Testing an Explanation Rather Than Confirming a Label

Once a situation is stamped with the label “they are all equally unavailable,” the mind gleefully commandeers every cancelled plan as irrefutable evidence. Stuck in traffic? Unavailable! Visiting relatives? Classic prototype! Yet under the umbrella of “it didn't work out,” diametrically opposed realities can dwell: force majeure, lack of mutual chemistry, an outright broken promise, or the fact that regular dates were never explicitly agreed upon in the first place. Ask yourself: what concrete fact could actually refute my conspiracy theory? If no such fact can exist, the theory is hollow.

Exceptions must be evaluated fairly, using consistent criteria. If Polina recalls a confident photographer who reliably showed up for dates every Wednesday, that constitutes genuine reason to doubt the equation “confidence = unavailability.” But if she merely recalls a polite barista with whom she never even flirted, that belongs to an entirely different category.

And for goodness' sake, avoid turning into an amateur detective. Testing explanations has nothing to do with reading private messages, interrogating mutual acquaintances, or staging jealousy tests. Such stunts violate boundaries without turning guesswork into knowledge. If the available conditions do not suit you, or essential details remain unknown, you possess the full right to step away without running a full-scale forensic probe. If there is any hint of threat, abuse, or harassment, the priority is to protect yourself and seek local help, not to pursue the academic validity of personal hypotheses.

VII. Personal Input and Another’s Responsibility

Here, many veer onto the slippery slope of victim-blaming: “If this happened to me again, I must be subconsciously attracting deceivers!” To the disappointment of esoteric self-flagellation, the capacity to choose one’s actions does not equal the capacity to govern someone else's mind. Polina may have been charmed, and she may have deferred an inconvenient question—yes. But that does not make her a co-author of someone else’s lies, manipulation, or mistreatment. The responsibility for harmful conduct rests squarely upon the person who committed it.

Even in mundane scheduling mismatches, maintain the boundary: you are responsible for your requests and propositions; the other is responsible for their answers and their promises. If an individual is genuinely overwhelmed by three jobs, they are not a villain, but neither are you obligated to wait by the phone for years, sacrificing your needs to another’s calendar. Understanding someone's circumstances is commendable; continuing an unsuitable arrangement is entirely optional.

If a persistent sense that “something is wrong with me” becomes paralyzing, consulting a qualified professional makes practical sense. This article does not diagnose conditions, deduce your attachment style from two encounters, or substitute for formal therapy. You do not need to excavate ancestral lineage down to the seventh generation simply to state: “This format does not work for me.” And if retrospective analysis causes pain, shut it down. Your safety and peace of mind take precedence over an airtight analytical framework.

VIII. Not Every Similarity Is an Error

Catching feelings for someone self-assured with an eye for photography is not a clinical relapse; it is just a coherent, fully adult preference. You do not need to self-flagellate for past disappointments by forcing yourself to endure excruciating small talk with dreary bores merely because they are the polar opposite of your previous dates. Craving lively, sharp conversation is not a flaw you need to cure. If sheer charisma was previously mistaken for a firm commitment to a regular schedule, that mental leap is certainly worth checking next time before getting carried away. But for now, that connection is merely an unverified working theory in Polina's notebook, not an indelible flaw—so there is zero reason to pack away the camera or repent for having decent taste.

Sometimes what proves identical is not how the stories actually ended, but how we retroactively package them. In one scenario, two adults talked and calmly realized they were incompatible; in another, one partner strung the other along for three months. Yet in memory, both files receive the identical title: “I was abandoned again.” Separate those files. In one instance, you perhaps only needed to ask a question earlier; in another, you needed to weigh the available answer against your standards or seek outside support.

Meaningful change does not require hunting for the exact opposite of past partners. It can manifest in minor adjustments: asking sooner, accepting a polite refusal without treating it as a verdict on your worth, or deciding: “Right now I prefer to be on my own and take my camera out in peace.” You are under no obligation to prove to society that your taste has been “repaired.”

IX. A Small Decision Instead of a Final Underlying Cause

When all is said and done, Polina does not need to assemble a grand theory of her personality. One practical option, should she desire it, is simply to ask about available time during a subsequent voluntary contact. This need not become a mandatory script for every encounter. The person may respond evasively, may say “I am only free on bank holidays,” or may decline to discuss it. Excellent! Polina can simply base her decision on the actual answer provided. It is not a competency test for the human being; it is a check on the compatibility of your current needs.

This small step does not require digging through archives or disturbing the ghosts of the past. Do not message exes: “Say, why didn't our schedules align back then? It’s for my research.” Leave them alone. If self-examination makes your teeth grind, close the notebook. One can live a normal life without an elegant conceptual architecture categorizing every former romance.

And if a confident photographer smiles at you next time, there is no call for panic (“Good heavens, here we go again!”) or smug intellectual triumph. Standing before you is simply a new person. Notice the familiar trait, smile at it, but evaluate them based on real actions and present terms here and now, rather than the ghosts of past workshops.

X. Discernment Without Condemnation

The quotation from Thessalonians at the opening recalls practical common sense: it is helpful to separate the grain from the chaff rather than swallow everything whole. Yet the Apostle Paul penned those words for Christian communal life, not as a dating handbook for the twenty-first century. The passage does not recommend subjecting loved ones to loyalty tests or meekly tolerating mistreatment.

Spinoza’s philosophical view on affective association, the German empirical study on personality traits, and the biblical exhortation toward discernment are simply three distinct lenses. They do not merge into a grand universal truth, nor do they guarantee Polina any specific romantic outcome. The practical steps below are neither a clinical protocol nor a superstitious ritual to summon a soulmate. They are simply common sense set down on paper.

Polina can take a breath: two stories do not prove karmic destiny or an inescapable family script. There are two clear events, a shared setting, appealing interlocutors, and ordinary scheduling mismatches. The root causes remain unestablished—and so be it. That distinction offers a basis for questioning self-blame, articulating boundaries to new people, and reserving the full right to drink coffee alone if nobody is ready to share that time on reasonable terms.

What This Means in Practice

If you are determined to dissect your recurring rakes, pick a smaller magnifying glass and more accessible material. For instance, take precisely two recent stories where scheduling fell through. Draft a rough note: what caught your interest at the start, what specific action proved significant later, what was genuinely agreed upon, and what was merely your hopeful assumption. Cannot recall the exact words? Simply write: “cannot recall.” Do not fabricate investigative scenarios, and under no circumstances attempt to hack anyone's accounts. This exercise is not an intelligence test; it is an attempt to separate facts from assumptions.

Next, formulate one grounded explanation and immediately identify its blind spots. For example: “We met at a specialized workshop, so common topics were effortless, but that revealed nothing about their around-the-clock schedule.” Or: “I was flattered by their assertiveness, but enthusiasm on a first meeting does not equal reliability a month later.” Avoid composing a doctoral dissertation. And if testing your explanation requires staking out someone’s doorstep or starting a relationship out of spite, drop the enterprise immediately. Incomplete information never robs you of the basic right to say: “This does not suit me; I am stepping back.”

Take one measured step in reality, if one is needed at all. Calmly ask a new acquaintance about the terms of communication, decline an inconvenient invitation, or simply vent to a friend over tea. This step is under no obligation to revolutionize your existence. Do not expect an ideal partner to arrive at your doorstep simply because you wrote things down. If a relationship involves violence, threats, or coercion, set the paper aside: safety and local professional support must come first. Never discontinue therapy or alter prescribed medication on the basis of kitchen notebook reflections. If analysis becomes an obsessive loop and causes distress, simply stop.

Finally, record a sober baseline: “In these two instances, I responded to confidence; I suspect I overlooked the question of available time; the underlying causes of their conduct remain unknown to me; regular meetings are currently critical for me.” That is all. Tuck the draft into a drawer; there is no need to show it to former or prospective partners. You owe the world no report demonstrating that you have been “fixed.” The essential point is not to surrender your life to sweeping labels, and not to confuse your own steps, unknown circumstances, and another person’s responsibility for actual conduct.

Key Quote

“some point of resemblance” — Benedict de Spinoza, The Ethics, Part III, Proposition XVI (R. H. M. Elwes translation). A philosophical observation regarding how a familiar detail can awaken emotional associations, not a scientifically validated diagnosis of your romantic selection.

Connections Across Traditions

Spinoza’s Philosophy: Proposition III.XVI perceptively notes how a fleeting familiar detail can stir past affect. At the same time, Spinoza's metaphysics cannot be transformed into a psychological testing template or a recipe for successful dating. Selected Primary Text.
Christianity: The passage in 1 Thessalonians 5:19–22 addresses sober communal discernment of spiritual experience. This editorial comparison provides no license to subject partners to suspicious tests or to endure mistreatment. World English Bible.
Modern Psychology: Park and MacDonald evaluated partner self-reports over nine years of German panel data. The documented similarity across personality profiles is notable, but it does not dictate Polina’s future, prove the causes of her difficulties, or guarantee the efficacy of psychological exercises. Official Abstract and Record.
Overall Editorial Focus: A disciplined delineation of what we actually mean by repetition. This represents an exchange between diverse frameworks without claiming to deliver a universal formula for relationships.

Primary Sources

S1. Benedict de Spinoza. The Ethics, III, proposition XVI and selected surrounding context. Translation from Latin by R. H. M. Elwes; printed edition date not established here. Project Gutenberg 3800, released 1 February 2003, updated 9 January 2021. Read: selected III.XVI–XVII passages and surrounding association context, metadata; not complete book or Latin critical text. Philosophical perspective, not a verified causal model of repeated romantic choice. Global reuse licence UNKNOWN; no raw-source import, embedding or training. Accessed text.
S2. 1 Thessalonians 5:21, context 5:19–22. Traditional Pauline attribution; collective World English Bible translators. Read: complete short chapter and explicit publisher public-domain text notice; not whole epistle or original critical text. The English quotation follows WEB; the corresponding Russian quotation is a brief editorial rendering, not a branded Russian WEB edition. Christian communal discernment, without partner tests or compulsory risky contact. Accessed chapter.
S3. Yoobin Park, Geoff MacDonald. “Consistency between individuals' past and current romantic partners' own reports of their personalities.” PNAS 116(26), 12793–12797, 25 June 2019; online 10 June 2019. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1902937116. PMID: 31182593. Read: complete official abstract and metadata only; full paper, detailed methods and data unread. Nine-year German longitudinal data and partner self-reports; specific profile similarity does not establish personal causes, inevitability or practice efficacy. Abstract's qualification about an alternative analytic approach retained. Reuse licence UNKNOWN; scientific direct quotes zero, raw-source import/embedding/training false. Official record.

About the Authors

Andrey Zarinsh — author and founder of the United Wisdom project. Explores themes of internal transformation, the unity of traditions, intercultural dialogue, and modern spiritual discipline. Instagram: @andrey.zarinsh.

Maria Evilkut — co-author of United Wisdom. Alongside research work, she strives to test these ideas in practice and observe how principles of unity and mutual understanding operate in real life between people and cultures. Instagram: @ilkutki.