Repetition when pieces where eaten

I just drawn a chess game cause of repetition. however i have to ask, isnt repetition only a thing when the same position is reached 3 times? or is it the same move 3 times ? cause i read position as all the pieces in the board and in my game the 2nd and 3rd repetition ocurred after some pieces where eaten.  

Same position 3 times. Positions are considered the same if(1) the same player has the move,(2) pieces of the same kind and color occupy the same squares, and(3) the possible moves of all the pieces are the same.

Check the position after WHITE'S move 39, 41 and 43. Exactly the same position each time, with Black to move each time.

"Three-fold repetition" refers to repetition of POSITION, not of MOVES.

To clarify. If there is position 'A' and it gets repeated then this is one repetition even though the position has occured twice? If it gets repeated again then that is the second repetition even though the same position has occured three times? If it gets repeated again that is the third repetition even though the same position has occured FOUR times? It is a bit of a puzzlement for me so I avoid draws. 

No. When position A occurs for the first time, that's ONE. If position A gets repeated, that's TWO, not ONE. A second repeat is a draw.

As BlueEmu says, you can think of every single position, anywhere, ever, as the first of the three possible repetitions. 

Edit: well that’s not absolutely true, eg. if the first iteration had an en-passant possibility etc, but it’s basically correct.