let me down slow

The kids and i planted our first seeds in the vegetable garden yesterday. The weather has made an almost alarming turn to heat. Hot, hot, heat. The kids have been rallying me for the first swim in the lake which i will probably attempt tomorrow after school.
I have been thinking about patterns in relationships. How the pattern, in my experience is more like a spiral. Starting at one perfect point and then slowly, unevenly, rotates outward from that. Usually, you kind of see that you're off kilter as you get towards the outside of the spiral and head back towards the center.
I think that my pattern of behaviour has been to jump ship. Abandon the sinking boat.
I've been wondering why i do that. The counselor would have said that it is all to do with something, some loss from childhood. A fear of being abandoned myself.
I'm not sure what it means to figure this out. I'm just trying to figure it out. It's been such a hard couple of years. I feel like so much time has been lost. So many possibilities destroyed. I just want to move forward understanding the backwards.