Arthur C. Brooks explains why you keep dating the same wrong person: early imprinting plus bad judgment. His fix: deliberately date the opposite type, even if it feels wrong. He calls it the Opposite Signal Strategy, a way to break the cycle.
many people will sort of imprint this idea of true love from earlier in their life, and they'll keep kind of looking for their ex again and again and again. There's a reason you broke up. Maybe it just didn't work out, but maybe that person truly wasn't right for you. And if you're trying to replicate that and trying to get your ex, not literally your ex, but somebody just like your ex, you're gonna have the same problem again and again and again. I see this constantly, the same partner over and over and over again who looks like a person that they felt like they truly loved. If this is you, what do you do? You're not a prisoner of that behavior. On the contrary, one of the things that I teach my students a lot is something called the OSS the opposite signal strategy. And there's lots of ways where you get a signal and you do the opposite on purpose and you will it so because your brain is lying to you. Your executive centers are not working properly. You're impaired. And the same thing is true if you're a pathological pattern of looking for the wrong person over and over again. The opposite signal strategy is not him, not that on purpose. Go for the opposite of the thing that's actually not working for you. Even if you're like, I won't like that. Give it a try. That's all I can say. The opposite signal strategy is often a really good strategy.
