Why You Keep Attracting the Wrong Relationships — And What to Do About It
A love and relationship coach reveals the hidden patterns keeping high-achieving women stuck in unavailable love — and the path back to secure, conscious connection.
Have you ever looked at your love life and thought — why does this keep happening?
You're capable, self-aware, you've done the work. You know your worth in your career, in your friendships, in your community. And yet… when it comes to romantic relationships, something keeps going sideways. You either find yourself over-giving to someone emotionally unavailable, or — and this one can sting — you push away someone who's actually showing up for you.
If any of that resonates, you're in good company. In this episode of the Connection Matters podcast, I sat down with Asa Baav, a love and relationship coach who spent years running one of the UK's largest PR agencies before a personal breakdown led her to the inner work that changed everything. She now helps women attract secure, conscious love — and what she shared in our conversation genuinely gave me food for thought, both as a host and as a woman in my own mid-40s.
In this blog, I'm pulling out three powerful insights from our conversation. Whether you're actively dating, healing from past patterns, or simply curious about why you relate the way you do, there's something here for you.
1. High-Achieving Women and the Love Pattern Nobody Talks About
Your greatest strength at work might be quietly sabotaging your love life.
Asa's story begins in a familiar place for many of us: peak external success, quiet internal unravelling. At 30, she had the six-figure salary, the director title, the board seat. She was launching businesses in New York. And on the day she received her highest-ever pay package, she felt... nothing. Still not enough.
What she came to understand — through therapy and years of inner work — was that her relentless achieving had always been about earning love. Specifically, her father's love. And that same blueprint was running her romantic relationships too: attracting emotionally unavailable men, over-giving, over-performing, trying to prove her worth through doing rather than simply being.
This pattern is incredibly common among high-achieving women. Asa describes it beautifully: we become so skilled at the doing — holding all the spinning plates, taking action, solving problems — that we unconsciously attract partners who step back and let us carry everything. And then we feel unseen, exhausted, and resentful. Not because we chose badly, she says, but because two blueprints became a match.
The shift begins when we ask: what is my value if I stop doing? Who am I if I'm not fixing, organising, proving? That identity question — uncomfortable as it is — is where the real work starts.
2. Reclaiming Your No — And Why It's the Foundation of Secure Love
You can't build a truly intimate relationship if you can't tell the truth about what you want.
One of the most quietly profound moments in our conversation came when we talked about saying no. Asa describes secure attachment as being built on four things: the safety to be your authentic self, to have needs, to say no, and to be in conflict without losing connection.
For many of us, one or more of those feels genuinely dangerous. And if we learned early that saying no meant withdrawal of love or approval, of course we're going to find it difficult in our adult relationships too.
I shared something from my own experience — a women's pleasure workshop where we did a simple partner exercise. Someone would touch your hand or arm, and you were encouraged to say no, not there, somewhere else. And when you did, they said: thank you. Thank you for not letting me waste my time doing something you didn't want. I remember how strange and unexpectedly moving that felt. Because we are almost never taught that a no is a gift.
Asa put it simply: a no to others is a yes to yourself. And the more clearly you can express your truth — in small, everyday moments — the safer it becomes to express it in love. She suggests practising this in low-stakes situations: what do I actually want to eat right now? Do I want to take the train or walk? Building that muscle of authentic preference before the big relationship moments.
Worth sitting with: are you someone who doesn't say yes — but also doesn't say no? That ambiguity, Asa says, is its own kind of cost.
3. Conscious Men Do Exist — But You Might Be Walking Right Past Them
The man you're looking for might not look the way you imagined.
This is the part of our conversation I found most surprising — and most hopeful. The question I brought to Asa was one I hear a lot, and have wondered myself: where are all the conscious men? Where are the ones doing the inner work, willing to show up, ready for something real?
Asa's answer was direct: they exist. But — and this is the important bit — we often can't see them. Because we've built up an image of what a 'conscious man' looks like (perhaps someone in a men's circle, speaking fluent therapy language, moving through the world in a particular way), we can walk straight past men who are genuinely willing, emotionally present, and ready to grow.
Even more confronting: sometimes we actively reject men who are consistent and emotionally available, because that very softness or stability triggers something in us that we've unconsciously labelled as weakness. If we haven't yet made peace with our own vulnerability, we can't really receive it in another person.
Asa also described something I found quietly beautiful: the retreat she and her partner David run, where men and women witness each other in circle. Women who arrive asking 'where are the conscious men?' leave having seen something shift in their own perception. The men were there all along. They just didn't fit the template.
The invitation here: can you open your heart 5% more to the possibility that he already exists — and might look radically different from what you expected?
Three Things You Can Do Right Now
If this conversation has sparked something in you, here are three grounded places to begin:
1. Name your main pattern. What is the recurring theme in your love life? Speeding up too quickly? Over-giving? Pulling away when things feel good? Getting specific about the pattern is the first step to interrupting it.
2. Practise your yes, no, and more. Start small. In everyday moments — food, plans, conversations — slow down enough to feel what you actually want. It's a muscle. Build it gently.
3. Choose to believe. Asa talks about taking 20–30 seconds before opening a dating app, or entering any social space, to consciously affirm: the person I'm looking for exists. I choose to believe they're out there. This isn't spiritual bypassing — it's a genuine recalibration of the lens you're looking through.
You Have More Power Here Than You Think
The thread running through everything Asa shared is this: when you change within, you create different without. Not by becoming someone unrecognisable, but by coming home to yourself — to your authenticity, your truth, your expression. The work isn't about fixing what's broken. It's about remembering what was always whole.
As Asa said at the close of our conversation: there is so much more than you can see from where you're standing right now, and so much more available to you than you currently believe.
I found that genuinely moving. And I hope you do too.
Want to Go Deeper?
Listen to the full conversation with Asa on the Connection Matters podcast — where we go further into attachment styles, dating in your 40s, nervous system regulation, and why the inner work really does come first.
If you're ready to take the first step with Asa's work, she's offering a free masterclass — Chosen: How to Attract Conscious Love — which is a beautiful place to begin.
And if you're ready to commit to the full journey, you can explore Asa's 12-month group programme Attract Love here.
I'd love to know what resonated with you from this conversation. Drop a comment below, or come and find me over on social media — I'm always up for continuing this kind of conversation.
