“Those who do not remember past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana

“Why do I always wind up with wrong person? I want someone who is kind, loving, reliable and open. Yet my relationships are always with men who are angry, hostile, emotionally unavailable and cannot keep a job.”

“I want a woman who is emotionally stable and independent, but I always wind up with women who are overly dramatic, tend to hysteria and depend on me to make their decisions.”

These are common problems brought to me by clients. They blame bad luck, coincidence or accident for winding up with exact opposite of type of person they say they prefer in a relationship.

One very attractive female marketing manager in her mid thirties agonized - “If I went to a party and there were fifty men in room - and 49 were college graduates who were business or professional men - and 50th was a high-school dropout with a felony police record - number 50 and I would somehow find each other.”

We make our relationship choices based on life experiences accumulated from childhood. We subconsciously integrate these experiences and react from them to current situations.

Children’s psyches are like unwritten slates. The messages we receive from our parents are stored upon them as if etched in stone. We internalize these messages and accept them without question as we mature because in child’s mind, mommy and daddy - who are our ultimate authority figures - said it is so!

When a little girl has a father who is physically present but emotionally absent and does not provide her with love and nurturing she needs, she will grow up with a big empty space in her heart where that love should have been. The message - although unspoken - tells her that she is not important and not deserving of love.

After joining such a club I realized that not all prices were cheaper than non-membership store just across street. So we decided to shop carefully and only buy those items that were cheaper. Of course, we also ended up buying in quantities that we didn't need. So, when we did find bargains, we ended up with a supply that would last us a couple years.

After adjusting our shopping strategy at warehouse club to take into account our need to be aware of higher prices and inconvenient packagaging, we realized another thing. It's not convenient to stand in line with three items, when everyone else ahead of you has their carts overflowing with merchandise. It's clear that not everyone cares about actual value and some folks only want perceived value (you know, a case of maple syrup at a 3 cent discount). So, we soon tired of standing in lines for our handful of items.

We decided that if we were going to get only best value items in quantities that suited our lifestyle, that we would only need to make a few trips every couple of months so that we could get everything we wanted without spending all that time standing in line several times per month. But guess what happened? We noticed that each time we'd go in for items on our list that items sometimes wouldn't be carried anymore. We're not talking about items being out with an empty space on a shelf. We're talking about something else is placed where that item was and store employees telling us they don't carry it right now, and that we should fill out a comment card if we want to get items back in stock.

With items on our list not being in stock, we still found ourselves standing in line with a handful of items - instead of cartful we'd planned on.