Firstly my apologies if this isn't the correct se sight to ask this. <h2>Background</h2> I had a psychology professor some years ago (now that I think of it probably more like *many* years ago...) who proclaimed that a lot of the problems individuals experience in their relationships will be (we'll say persistent but it may not be the best terminology(?)) persistent across most of their relationships. His actual quote was "You'll find that whatever issues you're having in your relationships now, you'll find persist across all your relationships, despite your partner, so do your best to make the one you have work" Several years after him saying this, I started to notice this in my relationships, that no matter the person, we would always end up having some form of issues I had with relationship partner n-1. But probably this would be best if I left myself out of this and spoke more generally. <h2>Question</h2> [1] I am curious if there is any validity to my professors statement, I currently only have two data points in my sample space (my professor and myself). I do understand the notion that individuals to in fact bring baggage to relationships that will cause said issues, and I'm not sure how to reconcile this without bringing myself into said question which is what I'd like to avoid so not to come off in the wrong way. <h2>Previous Research</h2> I have tried <strike>googling</strike>duck duck go'ing to not much avail, My searches have been _problems persisting throughout relationships_, _relationship patterns_, _relationship cognition_ but I didn't really find much pertaining to the question at hand. Also I'm not sure if it is in any way related, but when studying at university I did a decent amount of research into _mathematical dynamics of relationships_ similar to http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pubs/paper277.pdf **EDIT:** It may be possible I didn't present the question in an intelligble way. So along with [1], based on my own experiences and the testimony of said professor coupled with the research I did into the dynamics of relationships, it would seem that outside of initial attraction, the "who" of the relationship doesn't really matter so much. Meaning that most relationships work not because of some fundamental fact of nature, but more because each individual understands that the problems are an amalgamation of themselves and manifest in some form or another in all their relationships. Please feel free to ask for clarification if need be, it would seem our "in house translator" may have oversold his skills :shrug: