Playing Detective to Design Your Love Life
How to Decode Your Unconscious Patterns and Design the Love Life You Want
Most people have normal hobbies. Like sports, knitting, or collecting garden gnomes.
But me? I like to kick back and play armchair detective with my own life—digging through the evidence of past choices to crack the case of my repeated mistakes.
Want to play too? The rules go like this.
First, close your eyes and imagine you’re at a crime scene made up of all the memories of your past. Your job is to go hunting through it in search of your unfortunate choices.
These choices are your “evidence.”
Once you’ve gathered your evidence, the next step is to connect the dots and anticipate your next questionable decision—like a serial killer mapping out their next move. Catch the killer (yourself) before your body count increases, and you win.
Sound fun? (What do you mean, “No”?)
It’s way more interesting than Cluedo if you ask me.
Connecting the Dots Without Driving Yourself Crazy
While my particular brand of self-reflection might look a bit like masochism, a little humility and a detective mindset is what we need if we’re serious about our growth.
Because here’s the truth: None of us are as in control of ourselves as we think.
Pattern recognition is a powerful tool to detect the little goblin in our brain that likes to drive us in unhelpful directions.
It’s how we can stop and say, “Wait—I don’t want to go through that again,” and extract ourselves from Einstein’s definition of insanity—the one where we make the same choice over and over and expect a different result.
But I believe we can use the power of pattern recognition to do more than steer us from life’s sinkholes. I believe we can use it to uncover what we actually want and sketch out a vision that excites us.
Stick around, and I’ll show you how to do just that. And as a bonus, you’ll get a front-row seat to one of my classic dating blunders—because self-awareness is easier to swallow with a laugh.
How to Speed-Run Self-Care
This discovery all began on a visit to my favourite nail salon.
The situation was getting dire—I had troll feet. So, torn between looking after myself and cutting back on expenses, I caved and booked in a pedicure.
I ditched work with a plan to squeeze as much self-care into a single hour as I could: While I was getting the treatment, I’d let the complimentary massage chair pummel me on its highest setting as I listened to a webinar about healing from heartbreak on double speed.
Fast forward to this evening and I’ve forgotten the entire thing, but one part stuck out which was when the guy said this:
To keep the hope of love alive, you need to imagine someone better than your ex.
This made sense to me. More sense than the months I’d spent crying into ice cream.
Clear goals are a psychological cornerstone of getting the life you want.1
You’ve got to be able to picture it to get it, which is why any girl with even a shred of “basic” makes a vision board at the start of every new year.
Despite knowing this, I’d been trying for months to picture my dream partner—my imagination had hit a creative block, leading me to shelve the entire project.
But, just a few hours after my visit to the salon, I did it.
I was able to picture someone that would make me happy, and the image struck me with a download-like level of clarity that helped my heart finally turn a corner.
Digging Up the Ghosts of Your Love Life
So, how did I do it?
Well, I did it by reasoning backward through my unconscious patterns to see what had been left unresolved. I essentially asked, “What things would I like to pick up where I left off?”
If this doesn’t sound very sexy or romantic, that’s because it’s not.
You see, I’ve wandered into enough walls now to think I have some sense of what my unconscious is doing. I can look back at my patterns and can see why I was acting in unhelpful ways and making not-so-good choices, as well as how that behavior was the result of confusion, projection, or unacknowledged feelings.
This analysis isn’t always comfortable, but we can all benefit from doing it.
If doing so brings up shame, make a point of viewing these experiences as lessons that have served to make you stronger and wiser, rather than as evidence you’re a victim or buffoon—because mistakes are inevitable.
Simply come up with some empowering story of the meaning behind your mishaps and let yourself believe it.
Once you’ve done that, the game begins.
You’re ready to start examining the scene of your life with an objective, non-judgmental eye in search of clues.
You’re on the lookout for two things, in particular.
1. The Ways You Fucked Up
First, I looked back through my mishap moments in relationships for things that went sideways, felt unfinished, or fizzled out because of me.
Ask yourself: When did you fuck up and cut an experience short as a result?
This isn’t about self-flagellation. It’s about spotting the moments you wish you’d handled differently—the conversations left unspoken, the doors you slammed shut too soon, or the paths you veered from before they reached their natural conclusion.
Maybe you got scared and ran away? Maybe you self-sabotaged? Maybe you pointed blame rather than taking responsibility? These events are clues, pointing to unfinished business that may be floating around in your psyche.
Simply scan for regrets or scenarios where you wish you’d made a different choice. Then, identify how you’d have acted more consciously or with the awareness you have now.
Not too hard, right?
To round off this step, I’d also recommend shaking your fist up at the sky and screaming something like, “Hey, I’m ready for a do-over!” which both feels cathartic and lets the universe know you mean business.
2. The Rule of Three
Next, you want to go looking for patterns. Here’s a simple rule you can apply:
If you observe the same thing in your life three times, it’s probably a pattern.
For our purposes—we’re looking for a pattern in our past, unconscious behavior. What have you repeatedly chosen for yourself that seems out of the ordinary, disproportionate, or doesn’t make sense?
Start by simply looking around at everything that makes up your life—the people in it, the stuff around you, the things you do each day.
Unless someone’s playing you like a puppet, you made your life what it is today. This means it’s your responsibility to inspect why.
Why did you choose that duvet cover on your bed? Why do you care about making it look fluffed whenever your mother comes around? Why did you allow so-and-so people to get under it with you?
Deep spiritual growth means inspecting every choice you’ve made for its motivations. If these aren’t obvious to you, it points to a little sliver of your psyche you’ve yet to reclaim—have fun catching it.
When you notice you’ve made a certain choice three times, it’s probably pointing to a pattern. So, find that pattern and inspect it.
What’s going on inside you that keeps drawing you to this experience?
If the pattern isn’t a pleasant experience, you can think of it as a kind of knot that needs to be untangled for you to move forward and have a better experience.
How do you untangle the knot?
You do it by reliving the experience—whether in reality or in your mind—and making a different choice, right at the point that everything usually falls to shit.2
Have or simulate the experience again, and stay conscious. Handle it with deliberate awareness, skill, and communication, rather than dissociation, reactivity, or avoidance, like you did in the past.
This is what exposure therapy is—walking, eyes wide open, into a situation that troubles you in order to conquer it. This is also what’s happening when a therapist guides a veteran to revisit traumatic memories so that they stop triggering flashbacks.
If you’re dead set on dating someone your friends unanimously agree is a walking red flag, at least do it with a magnifying glass in one hand and a notebook in the other. Have some humility and treat yourself like a wildlife researcher tracking an unpredictable species in its natural habitat.
“I have no idea why I keep doing this,” should be your mantra.
“What the hell am I up to?” should be your research question.
Inspect. Inspect. Inspect. Because remember: You need to understand what’s motivating you to choose your current experiences if you want any hope of changing them.
So, get curious, and start throwing some hypotheses around:
Maybe I feel like I need to work for this person’s love and approval.
Maybe I think this person’s going to rescue me from my lousy life.
Maybe I don’t feel like I deserve to be in a proper relationship.
Try out a few, and keep going until all your choices make sense to you, or at least until you have a running hypothesis for them all. Then, try to act like a conscious adult as you navigate forward.
If everything comes crashing down around you, ask yourself: Would I like to repeat this experience? If the answer is “no,” then you just need to ask two more things:
What experience would I rather have instead?
What would I have to believe about myself to have that different experience?
Once you sincerely ask these questions and heed their answers, now you’re stepping into the driver’s seat of your life.
Again, But Fun This Time
I’ve just walked you through a process of self-inquiry to arrive at a series of uncomfortable truths.
Let’s now look at how you can apply the same process to have a much more fun time designing your love life.
Where we left off, I was trying to visualize an improvement on my ex as the final step in my Heartbreak Recovery Plan™, but my lack of imagination was making it difficult—I simply didn’t know what I wanted anymore.
So, I came up with an idea.
I humbly lowered my angry fist and began making concessions to the sky.
“Okay,” I said. “Maybe I don’t know what I want. But what do my past fuck-ups and patterns suggest my unconscious wants?”
I laid back and let the analysis run. Not long after, the mental processor dinged with a conclusion I didn’t expect.
U.S.—Hey, Wait a Second…
My brain spat the results at me, and I mentally stared at them in surprise.
An American? I immediately went digging through the data.
First, there was a fuck-up I’d spotted.
A few years ago, I was in a casual situation with an American who was smart, funny, and apparently wanted to spend more time with me when he invited me camping with his friends.
Infatuated as I was, my self-worth was not where it needed to be to believe I was receiving this invitation. Rather than keep me as his late-night secret, he wanted to expose me to the light of day?
I was stunned. So stunned that I didn’t acknowledge his offer. I was busy digging around in a cabinet when he asked, so I disguised my shock by pretending I didn’t hear him.
Instead, I continued to pitch myself as a sex object because it was a role I felt safe in and knew how to play.
Then I ghosted him out of terror.
Yeah. Yikes.
So, that’s my fuck-up. But it’s also a pattern.
More recently, I went gravitating into a time-limited travel affair with another American. Clever, charming, and playful, this guy made me feel giddy like the first.
You see where I’m going with this? Clearly, the evidence is mounting.
Case Closed?
What is it about this type of person that I seem to be drawn to, and why?
At this stage, I can only speculate. Here’s what I arrived at, summarized in a late-night text to a friend:
I don’t know how many Americans you’ve hung around, but they have a way of making everything feel heightened. It would be comforting if there was someone with an American accent around making the absurdity of my life feel entertaining. It’d be like living in an episode of Seinfeld.
I’m being stupid (sort of).
But it’s clear something is going on with the way these experiences have made me feel. They’ve brought out a side of me that was first terrifying, then exciting—and the idea of investigating further is a fascinating prospect.
Is it projection? Do I unconsciously want to unlock these men’s main-character energy in myself?
Or is it shadow? Because, by and large, I usually find Americans annoying.
Surely, it couldn’t be love?
See, that’s the only problem with playing armchair detective. You don’t get to find out whether you win or lose until time passes and life does its thing, a bit like placing a bet.
But, even though I have no idea why I keep doing this—and I’ll be damned if I know what I’m up to—the speculation has been exciting enough to get me scribbling on my quantum vision board.
I’m finally envisioning a better dating life and emotionally moving forward from my ex.
So, it’s “case closed” for now.
And God bless America.
Concluding Thoughts: Yes, I Can Count
“But Nicole, that’s only two Americans. You said three is a pattern!”
Yes, shut up, I know.
There’s a third data point around this which is that my father is American, and Freud would say that’s probably the only data point that matters.
No, I will not be taking further questions.
The point is, our past mistakes aren’t just fodder for late-night cringe spirals—they’re precious clues leading straight to our unconscious patterns.
By dissecting our regrets, spotting recurring themes in our relationships, and figuring out why we keep stumbling into the same messes, we get a front-row seat to what we actually want—or, at the very least, what we need to stop repeating.
This isn’t about wallowing in past failures. It’s about taking the wheel of your life with clarity, intention, and a sense of intrigue. You can’t rewrite the past, but you can absolutely use it to draft a future that better suits you.
Whether you’re trying to move on from an ex, sidestep the same old mistakes, or just understand why your love life feels like a rerun, this process hands you the tools.
So stay curious, not judgmental—and maybe keep a case file handy.
If you enjoyed this deep dive into the patterns running the show behind your love life, stick around for more. Subscribe for weekly insights, all designed to help you navigate life with more awareness, and hopefully fewer dating disasters.
Kashdan, T. B., Biswas-Diener, R., & King, L. A. (2008). Clarity of emotions and goals: Exploring associations with subjective well-being across adulthood. Journal of Research in Personality, 42(1), 189-194.
Yeshuani (2025). Fractal mastery: The end of recursion and the mechanics of reality creation (how to break patterns, collapse limitations, and reshape reality).