Yesterday in my first post in the 30 Days of Drama Reduction series, the theme of attention came up repeatedly.

The type of woman that finds herself knee deep in drama all the time is seeking attention. Like a celebrity, for her, attention is attention and when the relationship is at it’s most dramatic, for that period of time she will feel like the centre of his universe and the focal point of his attention, regardless of whether it is positive or negative. This is your Relationship Crack.

If you are a Drama Seeker, accidental or otherwise, you’ve come to crave the type of attention that can only be derived from unhealthy relationships.

So how did you get here?

Hard as it may be to hear, the modern day Drama Seeker is like a child who rebels or creates problems to bring the attention back to her, and this for many women is where it starts; in childhood.

Absent or emotionally distant father. There can be a sense of abandonment if you never knew him hence you may live in fear of constant abandonment and choose men that perpetuate that feeling. Or he may have been around but you had to fight hard for any type of attention from him. Or, if you didn’t live with your father but still saw him, you may wonder what it is that you did to drive him away.

Second Best syndrome – I come across a lot of women who are for example, The Other Woman and they are used to coming second because they may have grown up in a house where they believed that another sibling was loved more than them, or they just generally had to compete with something or someone for their parents attention. For example, you may believe that one or both of your parents put their pursuit of their relationships ahead of you. Many readers who have emailed me mention growing up in households where their mother’s latest dodgy partner took centre stage.

Raised by a Drama Seeker. It is amazing the number of readers who have a Drama Seeker for a mother. I have one! The temperature of your household will have been controlled by the drama. Even if you feel repelled by her behaviour, it can be very difficult to avoid repeating subconscious patterns, particularly if you have very few positive lessons about love and relationships. Unless you address the issues created by living with someone like this, even in the face of knowing that you don’t want to be like her, you’ll be drawn to men who you’ll end up creating drama with.

You’re going out with carbon copies of your parents or mimicing the type of people they were involved with. Obviously this would be OK if they were positive influences but clearly they aren’t! For example, readers tell me that they are going out with habitual cheats, alcoholics, emotional abusers, physical abusers, etc and lo and behold, a bit of digging reveals that they were often raised by one of these, or watched a parent struggle with a partner like this. Often these kinds of relationships are about trying to fix, heal, or help the guy because you may have felt hopeless when you were younger and it’s a bit like righting the wrongs of the past.

You have merged thrill seeking and the man. There are some women that go out with men that are thrill seekers. They do dangerous things, screw around with your full knowledge , or have extreme sport hobbies, or may just appear to have a lot going on that makes them appear to be exciting and edgy. With the extreme version of this guy everything that comes out of his mouth and what he does is focused around his thrill seeking and he may struggle to emotionally engage. Hence when there is nothing to ‘do’, things may feel very awkward to you, so you create your own extreme sport of high drama. Very often, the type of woman that will go with a man like this chooses him because he seems to fill that gap with an exciting feeling, so when he isn’t around, you feel at a loss.

One man can spark a new relationship style. You may actually have managed to avoid some of the issues thrown up by emotional schooling and then found yourself inadvertently in a relationship with a man who was not all that he professed to be. Even if you were not emotionally unavailable yourself when you met a Mr Unavailable for instance, unless you realise what you’re dealing with and get out quickly, it is very difficult not to leave the relationship emotionally unavailable yourself because they almost end up teaching you a whole new relationship style. You may not have had any leaning towards drama but one day you may have discovered that he stuck around a bit longer, the sex was amazing, or it bought you some more relationship time, and you just kept repeating the behaviour.

The key with understanding what motivates you as a Drama Seeker is to understand what drives your need for attention and Relationship Crack because only then can you start to understand your Drama Seeking Triggers – those things that set you off and have you seeking out a ‘fix’.

Exercise! What is motivating you to be a Drama Seeker? Something about this works for you and is familiar – what is it? Do you fit into any of the groups above? When you ‘act up’ and create drama, what triggers it? If you can start to understand where you are coming from and be aware of your triggers, you can home in on your pattern and break it to create a more positive relationship style.

Your thoughts?

Do you have a post or tip to submit for the series? Get in touch! Read other posts from the series.

Add to favorites