Why do I keep attracting the same kind of people?
You are not attracting them. You are recognising them. Familiarity registers as chemistry, so the dynamic you know best feels like the one you were looking for — even when you have decided against it.
How each tradition describes this pattern
Western psychology
Attachment style and repetition compulsion
Attachment research shows early relational patterns become the template through which later partners are read. What gets called chemistry is often recognition: the nervous system identifying a familiar dynamic and reporting it as rightness. Repetition compulsion describes the rest — the unconscious return to an unresolved situation in the hope of a different ending.
Contemplative traditions
Samskara
A samskara is a groove worn by repetition — an impression left by past experience that shapes how the next one is met. The image used is a riverbed: water does not choose its course so much as follow the channel already cut. Relationship patterns are among the deepest channels.
Where the two meet
What each account misses alone.
Attachment theory explains where the groove came from; samskara explains why it keeps being followed. The practical consequence is the same in both: insight alone does not redirect a river. You can name your attachment style precisely and still choose the same person again, because the recognition happens faster than the analysis.
Related questions
The Atlas explains the pattern. A Soul Mirror finds yours.
Reading about a pattern and seeing your own are different events. A Soul Mirror maps your specific architecture from your birth details and your own answers, and arrives within 24 hours.