We often think of change as linear, move forward, don’t look back. But when it comes to relationships, especially the ones that stay with us long after they end, the past has a way of repeating itself. This blog explores how psychoanalysis understands repetition not as failure or inertia, but as something alive and meaningful. What do we repeat, and why? And could the very pattern we feel trapped in be holding the key to something we haven’t yet been able to say?
Early in My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante sketches a friendship that’s anything but simple. Elena and Lila’s bond is immediate, electric, and often unbearable. There’s a hunger in it: intellectual, emotional, almost physical. But just as strongly, there’s tension. Rivalry. A relentless push and pull. Elena is drawn in, inspired, and repeatedly diminished by Lila’s brilliance. The relationship ignites her, wounds her, and never quite lets her go.
As the girls grow, drift apart, reconnect, and compete, the dynamic repeats itself. A rhythm of idealisation and resentment, closeness and distance, loops back again and again.
It’s a pattern that many will recognise - not necessarily in the form Ferrante describes, but in the emotional choreography. The feeling of returning to an oddly familiar relationship dynamic, even when the people and context are new. The friendship ends, or fades, or shatters, but the questions remain. Why did this happen again? What was I drawn to? What was I trying to resolve?
We tend to think of repetition as a path to improvement. “Practice makes perfect,” we say, as if repeating something is always a way of getting better. But relational repetition doesn’t feel like progress. It feels like being caught in a loop.
Psychoanalysis listens closely to these returns. Not to stop them or fix them, but to ask: What is this repetition doing? What memory might it be holding in place, something remembered without words? What hidden script is being played out again, not quite consciously, but with unmistakable emotional force?
We may enter a friendship or relationship believing it’s new, spontaneous, and a clean slate. But something familiar draws us in. A dynamic that echoes earlier bonds. Perhaps a hope that this time, things will be different. This time, we’ll be seen, understood, and chosen. And when that doesn’t happen, the hurt feels not just current, but historical, saturated with past disappointment.
Still, repetition isn’t just a sign of failure. There’s something alive in it. We repeat because we are trying - again and again - to come closer to what couldn’t be grasped the first time. It may be clumsy, painful, or even self-sabotaging. But it’s rarely meaningless. In fact, it might be the most meaningful thing about us.
To repeat is not necessarily to remain unchanged. Each repetition is a little different. Something slips. Something shifts. There’s always the possibility, however small, for the pattern to break, for something new to emerge. Not through willpower, but because repetition itself starts to unravel.
We repeat to learn. Children rehearse words, dancers drill steps, and musicians practise scales. Repetition gives us fluency, familiarity, and a sense of control. But not all repetitions are conscious or chosen. Some return like echoes. We find ourselves having the same argument, choosing the same kind of partner, reacting in ways that feel scripted. We ask ourselves, Why do I keep doing this?
Freud called this repetition compulsion: the drive to return to unresolved scenes or dynamics. Not for pleasure, but in an attempt—often unconscious—to master what once overwhelmed us. We circle back, not to re-live, but to finally make sense of what was too much to bear the first time. And yet, in repeating, we may also be defending against something even more disruptive: the unknown, the truly new.
Here lies the paradox. Repetition can be a way of avoiding change, of staying in familiar discomfort rather than facing what we can’t yet name. But within the cracks of repetition, something else might insist on being heard. Psychoanalysis listens for that. Not to correct, but to understand: What’s being protected? What’s being remembered? What’s waiting to emerge?
You notice you’ve ended up in a similar relationship again. Or caught in a reaction that doesn’t feel entirely your own. What’s repetition doing here—and why does it feel both frustrating and strangely known?
Perhaps repetition isn’t a sign that nothing is happening. Perhaps it’s the sign that something is happening, but not yet visible. What looks like stuckness might be holding something in place. A necessary pause, buying time for something new to form.
Rather than asking, Why haven’t I changed?, psychoanalysis invites a subtler question:
What is my repetition trying to tell me about what I lost, what I’m avoiding, and what I’m trying to repeat until it finally speaks?
This kind of change rarely happens all at once. The retranslation of repetition, turning something compulsive into something that can be thought about, often takes time. It unfolds gradually, in the space between recognising the pattern and being able to do something different with it.