Are you attracted time and again to identikit lovers, for better – or, more usually – for worse? These unhealthy repetitions aren’t always immediately or glaringly obvious – bad relationships come in many more subtle varieties than a partner who is deliberately cruel or violent. In many cases, similarities in the type of person, or situations in which you’re attracted to people, emerge slowly and nibble away at your self-worth.

Take Holly Watkins, for example, who met many girlfriends through her dyke-friendly media job. Recently, Holly began noticing she’d been involved with women who were uniformly ‘witty, brilliant, funny, beautiful, stylish,’ – so far so good – but who also shared a number of less positive qualities. They undermined her, were moody and made themselves emotionally unavailable, causing problems for Holly’s sense of self. She says ‘there’s a part of me that craves an emotionally open, unjudging, nurturing partner,’ and, because she finds that she isn’t getting that even-keeled relationship she so desires, ‘I often feel that I’m the more stable one and end up feeling hurt, angry and resentful’.

Emotional unavailability was a thread running through three out of four of Hope Morris’ long-term relationships, as she was involved with women ‘who didn’t really like me as much as I liked them – or at least didn’t think it was important to show they liked me as much. I was told I said “I love you” too much by more than one, but if a relationship’s working, you should have room to say how you feel without being told off’. Hope says she always felt like she was doing the chasing: ‘One girlfriend decided to move to another city without talking to me about it. Another was really moody and often gave me the silent treatment – in front of people, too. This was my first proper relationship so I didn’t have anything to compare it to.’ Hope admits she finds haughtiness attractive: ‘I find bored, arrogant, cold-seeming women massively attractive – think Kristin Scott-Thomas in Gosford Park. But that kind of unavailability only works in the realms of fantasy or fiction. If you have to live with it, it’s impossible.’

In Ruth Moore’s case, the same-ol’-same-ol’ starts rearing its head before a relationship even begins. ‘There’s an element of suspicion reserved for people who ask me out or seem to fancy me,’ she admits. ‘A bit “I-wouldn’t-go-out-with-any-woman-who-would-have-me-as-a-girlfriend”. If someone I think is great doesn’t seem that into me, in a twisted way that verifies my impression of them as fanciable or discerning. By fancying women who I assume wouldn’t be into me, I avoid rejection, in the sense that I pre-empt it.’ As well as this attraction to women she perceives as ‘out of her league’, she’s also drawn to ‘mildly mocking’ people. But why would anyone like someone who likes putting them down? ‘I suppose I’m attracted to women who are intelligent – and perhaps at some point I’ve confused intelligence with being critical.’

So what is it that makes otherwise confident women slip into unhealthy carbon-copy attraction? Low self-esteem lurks behind an inability to speak up for yourself when you’re being unjustly criticised or ignored, and self-esteem issues affect a sizeable chunk of the queer population, as Sophia Prevezanou, counselling service manager at LGBT counselling and support charity London Friend, agrees. ‘One thing gay and lesbian people have to face is coming out, regardless of how comfortable [they are]. Every time you are in a different situation you have to decide whether to disclose your sexuality.’ This constant awareness of being judged naturally has ramifications on self-image. Add to that a paucity of role-models, whether in family networks or media representation, meaning that a lot of the time we make the rules up as we go along, because we don’t grow up in environments exposed to same-sex relationships and ideas of what is and isn’t acceptable aren’t culturally ingrained. Or put most simply: if you’re told you’re crap, you’ll act like you’re crap.

Hope definitely thinks that homophobia – both internalised and at large – played a role. ‘I grew up in a strongly anti-gay place – all the time I heard people, my parents included, say that gay people could never be happy. I suppose I put up with things [in my relationships] because deep down, I thought I never could or would find happiness.’ Unhappy families also lay behind Holly’s entanglements with challenging relationships. ‘My mum says I always choose difficult women. She’d know – they’re probably a response to my experience of her, growing up!’ More seriously, Holly believes we’re all trying to undo the hurt we experienced when we were young, ‘subconsciously trying to find people who in some way remind us of aspects of our parents [to] try and “correct” the parts that didn’t work,’ she says. This is a common experience, according to Prevezanou, who says, “We’re drawn to the same experiences, usually because we hope that, in the future, the new experience will give us time to undo the negative experiences we’ve had in the past – but usually it doesn’t work out that way’.

Freud identified this ultimately futile attempt to undo past trauma as the ‘repetition compulsion’, and Holly is indeed following the psychoanalytic path to recovery through therapy. She’s also seizing fate by the throat and, rather than trying to achieve the impossible task of changing the past or her partners, she’s changing the way she behaves in relationships. ‘I’m not being afraid to speak up and be honest about how I’m feeling. I’m trying not to behave as though I’m superhuman and nothing and no one can touch me.’

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to the problem, however, and Ruth has taken a very different path, reining in those passions and refusing to settle for less than the best. ‘I’m not strongly attracted to many people these days – I was told recently I’m too fussy!’ she says. ‘But I genuinely don’t feel that chemistry and excitement with many people and I don’t see the point in having a sexual relationship with someone unless I’m really feeling that chemistry. If that’s fussy, then yes, I am fussy.’

Meanwhile, it took a relationship of equal affections for Hope to realise that love didn’t have to be about imbalance. ‘When I finally started seeing someone who liked me as much as I liked them it did wonders for my self-esteem,’ she says. ‘I realised it WAS possible to have a relationship where you weren’t continually wondering “does she like me?” In the beginning, that uncertainty is part of the excitement – but if you’re in it for the long haul you need a solid foundation.’