By Stefan Gonick

Many people find themselves in an endless and frustrating search for love. They either have an extremely hard time finding a partner or end up having a series of unhappy and unsuccessful relationships.

Why is finding love so hard for so many people? The truth is that most people aren't aware of their own blocks to finding love, so they aren't in a position to change their outcome. However, once these blocks are understood, EFT can be a powerful solution for clearing them and finally having a wonderful and successful love life.

In my opinion there are three main types of barriers to finding the love of your life:

1. You are strongly attracted to the wrong people.
2. You have blocks to being with the right people, leading to self-sabotage.
3. You are not aligned with bringing your soulmate into your life.

In this article, I will focus on the first barrier of being attracted to the wrong people and how to heal that with EFT.

If you are attracted to the wrong people, then all of your time and energy will be wasted in painful, dead-end relationships. This unhappy situation will obviously make it hard to find and be with the right person. So, what causes you to be attracted to the wrong people?

As you grow up, you unconsciously form an image of your future partner based on the strongest traits of your parents, both good and bad. You will then be subconsciously attracted to people with similar traits. This is not a problem for the good traits, but it can be a big problem for the bad ones.

For instance, let's say that your father had a number of good traits, including intelligence, strength, humor and so on. However, he tended to be emotionally distant and unavailable. A woman who grew up in this environment would tend to find intelligent, strong, humorous, emotionally unavailable men the sexiest men on the planet! It's all good except for that one fatal flaw. Sound familiar?

Similarly, if a man grew up with a warm, loving and giving mother who also happened to be insecure and needy, what kind of women might he be drawn to? It is important to note that you are not limited to being attracted to the traits of the parent of the opposite sex. Your subconscious image can be a combination of either or both parents.

Finding Love Exercise - Your Parents' Negative Traits

Think about your parents' negative traits. In fact, write them down. When you have the list of negative traits from both parents, see if there is any commonality with your past relationships. You may be surprised (even horrified).

Breaking Out of the Bad Relationship Blues

When a parent has a strong negative trait, it puts you in the painful position of not having an important need met as a child. For instance, earlier we talked about the example of having an emotionally distant father. The unmet needs in this case were being emotionally close to Daddy, which also would validate one's worth as a person.

As an adult you are then attracted to people with similar negative traits as your parents. Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. You also can get very hooked on trying to get the original unmet need met with this new partner. However, since this partner has the same negative trait as your parent, you won't be able to get your need met with this person either! For example, just as your father didn't meet your need for closeness, an emotionally distant partner will not meet your need for closeness either.

In this situation you may keep repeating the same unhappiness you experienced in childhood due to the presence of a very powerful force. You see, the child part of you has never given up on trying to be close to Daddy, and your romantic partner is being a stand-in for Daddy (or Mommy). This isn't weird or sick - it's perfectly normal!

The unhappy paradox here is that you are drawn to people who also won't meet your needs instead of being drawn to people who would be good at meeting your needs. Yikes! Wouldn't it make sense to be with people who could meet your needs instead of ones who won't? Clearly yes, but you need to address that powerful force keeping you stuck in order to do that.

Healing the original wound of the unmet childhood need

So, how do you get yourself out of this mess? The answer is that you have to heal the original wound of not getting your need met by your parent. Once you have done this, you will no longer be drawn to people with that same negative trait. You will instead be drawn to people who can meet your needs. In the example of the distant father, you would stop being drawn to distant partners and be drawn to people who are very capable of being emotionally close instead.

There are two parts to healing the original wound so that you can break out of this pattern. The first part is to work through the pain of your parent's negative trait and the pain of not getting the associated need met by that parent.

It's the pain of the original wound that keeps you locked into the pattern of trying to get your needs met with similar people. Your young wounded self gets frozen in time, never giving up on getting your need met by your parent. Releasing the original pain frees up that part of you. This is where EFT can be such a powerful help.

The second part is to learn to give to yourself what you didn't get from your parents when you were growing up. You see, when you get a need met by your parents, you naturally learn to fulfill that need for yourself as an adult. For example, when a parent is close to you and gives you good attention, you feel validated as a person and learn to validate yourself as an adult. When you are not validated by your parent, you don't learn how to validate yourself as an adult. Instead, you look to other people to validate you. Unfortunately, you are attracted to people who also won't validate you. Paradoxically, if you learn how to validate yourself, you will be attracted to people who will be able to be close and validating. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

Healing the childhood wound with EFT

So, how do you heal the childhood wound of the unmet need with EFT? Unfortunately, it's not a simple formula where I can give you a standard set of tapping phrases. Instead, I can only give you general guidelines for healing the wound with EFT.

Basically, you need to address memories (or scenarios if you can't remember specific memories) where you painfully experienced your parent's negative trait. You need to tap on the pain of the negative trait as well as the pain of not getting the associated need met.

For instance, let's say that you had a critical parent, which has led to you being attracted to critical partners. You would want to tap on memories of being painfully criticized growing up. When tapping on those memories, you also want to tap on the pain of not being accepted as you are. This was the associated unmet need. You might tap on the specific criticisms that you heard from your parent to help release the pain in a very targeted way. You would then tap on the pain of not being accepted for the things for which you were criticized.

Giving to yourself what you didn't get from your parents

Finally, you will want to give yourself the acceptance that you didn't get from your parent. You would want to tap on accepting yourself for those same things. One way to do this is to use Pat Carrington's Choices Method. For instance, you might tap on something like:

Even though Dad didn't accept me for (fill in issue) I choose to accept myself for (issue) with warmth, love and appreciation.

GC COMMENT: The choices method is usually best used at the end of a session after all negative issues have been collapsed.

Another way to do this is with deep inner child work facilitated by EFT. This is something that I do with my clients with dramatic results. In this type of work, you develop a loving relationship with your wounded inner child to directly give to her or him what your parent didn't give to you. This is incredibly healing but I don't have space in this article to describe that here.

In both cases, the general idea and goal is to learn to satisfy the unmet need yourself by giving to yourself what you didn't get from your parent.

Once you have released the pain from your parent's negative behavior and the unmet need and learned to satisfy that need for yourself, you will be free. You will have broken out of the doomed pattern of being attracted to the wrong people, and you will finally be able to attract and move towards healthy love.

Hugs to all,

Stefan Gonick