A man I was in a relationship with a couple of years ago recently resurfaced in my life. He’s still funny. Sexy. Smart. And very successful. And when we were together, he fit my perfect-man paradigm to a tee. Upon meeting him, I was overwhelmed with how impressed I was by him. And smitten. I even thought he might have been The One.

Imagine my surprise when a couple of weeks ago, he contacted me and asked if I wanted to reconnect over dinner. I agreed to meet him and was, at first, pleased to find that he was his old, bantering self. In the past, I actually enjoyed the game of communicating with him through witticisms, through always being somewhat indirect.

But something changed …

This time, I saw clearly now what I had been blind to before: he was not really looking to open up and be emotionally intimate with another person. I saw so clearly that his witty banter — not that there’s anything inherently wrong with it — served as a barrier. He uses his humor and intelligence as a defense mechanism against really being known.

I also saw how he used his concrete markers of success not only to impress others into loving and respecting him, but also as protection against being exposed and recognized as his essential self, stripped down and raw.

On this second go-around of “meeting” him, I was bored. Plain and simple. At first, I was confused by my boredom: I once cared deeply for this man. Yet I could still access, without resentment or charge, that part of me that knew why the relationship had ended.

Reuniting with him helped confirm that my taste in partners has changed. Men who I would have fallen for before no longer pique my interest like they used to, and I find myself attracted to men I might not have noticed before. As disorienting as it can feel, I now see this as a good sign, a sign of my growth.

Being bored with your old “type”— especially if your type has never brought you the kind of love you want — is often a sign that you’re outgrowing old, unproductive patterns, and getting more in touch with how to really be your essential self.

Here’s why: it’s our unconscious mind that determines our emotional attraction to another person. To the mind, nothing is more important than safety, so it will do anything to ensure that we remain unharmed, even if this means investing in an emotionally unavailable person out of habit.

In fact, if we find ourselves often #dating people who are emotionally unavailable, there’s a good chance that we are also unavailable or that close emotional connection scares us somehow.

Or sometimes we invest in an emotionally available person who we know can’t really give us what we want (maybe they’re already in a relationship or they’re a self-proclaimed “lone wolf”). This is really the flip side of the same, unavailable type.

Maybe your old type is the kind that jumps into relationship with both feet right away, proclaiming love after a date or two. Sometimes this is also a sign of emotional immaturity because the person who dives in so quickly isn’t as concerned about really exploring the connection with the other person as they are with being in a relationship.

All of these scenarios have information for us to work with. When we are in relationship with, or attracted to, a certain type of person, we are attracted to him or her for a reason. And that reason is about US, not about THEM.

What’s your type and what might it be showing you about yourself?

If you’ve been attracted to (or attracting) a certain kind of person for a long time and aren’t getting what you want, take a moment to see what your type might be showing you about yourself. In the sticky places of those relationships lies a pearl of wisdom for you.

And if your type is shifting towards #someone who can really give you all that you want, this just might be a great sign of your own growth in the right direction!

Photo Credit: Stocksy

Heather Lynn Temple, of Heather Lynn Coaching, is a certified Creative Love™ Coach who specializes in helping people find their authentic selves so that they can attract their ideal match. She busts through dating myths and tosses aside dating games, focusing on doing inner work with her clients so they discover love from the inside out.

Want to learn about how people commonly sabotage their love lives? Sign up for Heather’s ebook here, and she’ll give you tips for how to unlearn these patterns and set yourself up for dating success. You can also sign up for a free 30-minute strategy session with Heather to start tackling your relationship hurdles today!

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