Do you find yourself gravitating toward partners who are dominating, controlling, or both? Early relationships are often based on projected material. We gravitate to people who let us do what we know how to do.

The early patterns of interactions that we learned with our opposite-sex parent might lead us to the same patterns again, that which we know how to do: our comfort zone. And even though we would prefer different experiences, we gravitate to the familiar, thinking that we can handle that.

You might go along, to get along because you feel that you can handle it; after all, you have for most of your life. However, under the radar you are maturing and growing even if you never go to therapy. At some point, you do not want to be dominated or controlled any longer.

Therefore, to know yourself, is to be armed with skills and tools that can help you acknowledge and recognize similar patterns in relationship - and avoid them. Though still compelled to move in the direction of the familiar patterns from your family of origin, you can choose to deliberately override the compulsion, through conscious awareness of warning signs. If you do this, then you make room for the right relationship to enter. Because you have changed, you attract a different person, a better person.

Some of the warning signs to look for and be aware of include: