Can low self-worth attract someone who makes you feel lower? Can people-pleasing attract a taker who never stops taking?
There are many ways to become attracted to someone. But some attractions can turn downright abusive.
If you keep attracting hurtful people into your life, the pattern likely isn’t random. There’s usually something deeper going on that draws these relationships to you, and understanding what that is can change everything.
Many people who end up in emotionally harmful relationships share a common thread from their past. Growing up in dysfunction creates a kind of template for what feels normal in relationships.
If you experienced emotional abuse as a child, whether from a parent, caregiver, or other authority figure, you learned to navigate a world where love came with conditions, where approval had to be earned, and where your needs often came second.
That early programming doesn’t just disappear when you become an adult. Instead, it quietly shapes what feels familiar, what feels like home, even when home wasn’t safe.
The brain is wired to seek out what it knows. Familiarity registers as safety, even when the familiar thing is actually harmful.
This is why someone who grew up walking on eggshells around a volatile parent might later find themselves drawn to a partner who requires the same careful navigation.
The dynamic feels recognizable. And recognition feels like belonging. Your nervous system doesn’t distinguish between “this is familiar” and “this is good.” It just knows the terrain.
Dysfunction can feel comfortable when you grow up with it. If you spent years adapting to someone else’s moods, anticipating their needs, and managing their emotions, you developed a specific skill set. Those skills feel valuable because they kept you safe as a child.
The problem is that you carry those same patterns into adult relationships, where they become the very thing that keeps you stuck. You might believe you’re looking for healthy love, but watch for the possibility that you’re actually looking for a place to use the survival strategies you’ve already mastered.
This is where it gets tricky. People often say they want a healthy relationship, but when they actually encounter someone who’s emotionally available, communicative, and stable, it feels wrong. Boring, even. There’s no crisis to manage, no emotional puzzle to solve, no dramatic highs and lows.
The absence of chaos registers as an absence of passion. But what’s actually happening is that your system is so accustomed to running on adrenaline and hypervigilance that calm feels like flatness.
Hurtful people can spot this vulnerability. They’re not necessarily doing it consciously, but they recognize when someone is primed to accept less than they deserve.
If you’ve been conditioned to believe that love requires sacrifice, that your needs are too much, or that you have to earn affection through perfect behavior, you’re sending out “signals” in a way. Those signals attract people who are looking for someone to absorb their dysfunction without pushing back.
The dynamic often starts subtly. Maybe they test boundaries early on – small things, like showing up late without apology or making a joke at your expense.
How you respond to those early tests can tell them what they can get away with. If you excuse it, rationalize it, or blame yourself for being too sensitive, they learn that you can tolerate more.
Each time you accept unacceptable behavior, you’re training others what the relationship will allow.
What I learned the hard way is that when you’re used to dysfunction, you can become an expert at making excuses for other people’s behavior. You can find a reason for almost anything. i.e., they had a hard childhood. They’re stressed at work. They don’t mean it the way it sounds.
When dysfunction is your upbringing, you might develop a tendency to become so skilled at understanding the dysfunctional person’s perspective that you lose sight of your own experience. And empathy can become a weapon you use against yourself.
This pattern also shows up in how you define love. If your early experiences taught you that love means enduring pain, then relationships without pain don’t register as love.
Some people brought up in dysfunction might even create problems where none exist, picking fights or manufacturing drama because the absence of conflict feels unfamiliar and therefore unsafe. Their system needs the intensity to feel connected.
Breaking this pattern requires recognizing that what feels like love might actually be trauma bonding: The intense highs after painful lows, the relief when they’re finally kind after being cruel, the desperate need for their approval. None of that is love, but it may be perceived as such.
When your nervous system is getting a hit of relief after being in a state of threat time and time again, that relief can feel like connection. Unfortunately, it’s often just your body coming down from hyperarousal.
“So, I’m just a terrible judge of character?”
No. That’s not what’s happening. One of the hardest truths to accept is that you might be choosing people who confirm what you already believe about yourself.
If you grew up feeling like you weren’t enough, you might gravitate toward people who make you feel that way again. That’s not because you’re broken or stupid (or can’t discern good from bad character). It’s because your brain is trying to resolve an old wound by recreating the conditions that caused it.
When you’re getting these results over and over again, there may be a part of you that believes if you can just get this person to love you properly, it will heal what your parent or caregiver couldn’t give you.
But, as you probably know, that’s not how healing works. Healing starts with recognizing the pattern, not with finding the right person to complete you.
You have to get honest about what you’re actually attracted to and why. When you meet someone new, ask yourself what draws you in:
Is it their stability and kindness?
Or is it the challenge they represent?
Are you attracted to who they are?
Or are you attracted to the project of fixing them?
These questions matter because they reveal whether you’re seeking a partner or seeking a familiar wound to tend.
The healing work involves learning to tolerate discomfort in a different direction. Meaning, instead of tolerating mistreatment because it feels familiar, you have to learn to tolerate kindness even though it feels foreign.
This means sitting with the anxiety that might come up when someone is consistently respectful, when they follow through on their word, and when they don’t punish you for having needs.
Your mind and body will tell you something is wrong because there’s no crisis to manage. But you have to teach yourself that this uncomfortable feeling is actually safety, not danger.
You also have to grieve what you didn’t get. Sometimes we exit childhood missing some essential ingredients to healthy relationships when we get older. And those ingredients are also what we feel are missing in our life today.
When we’ve experienced neglect, abuse, or other traumas in our childhood (some that we may not even realize are there), we may not know what healthy love looks like.
Not knowing how to give or receive love in a healthy way is not something you would ever be at fault for, but it does need to be addressed.
The people who hurt or neglected you in the past aren’t going to come back and make it right. The hurtful people you attract now aren’t going to suddenly become the parent you needed.
The bottom line in all of this is to make sure you aren’t trying to get from romantic partners what you should have received from your caregivers as a child.
Another crucial piece is learning to identify red flags in real time instead of explaining them away. When someone shows you who they are early on through small disrespects, boundary violations, or inconsistencies between their words and actions, believe them.
Don’t wait for the pattern to become undeniable. Don’t give them the benefit of the doubt at your own expense. Trust your discomfort instead of your hope.
This doesn’t mean becoming cynical or closed off. It means developing discernment. Healthy people don’t need you to be perfect. They don’t require you to manage their emotions or walk on eggshells. They take responsibility for their own behavior and respect your boundaries without making you fight for them.
If you’ve never experienced this, it might not even register as an option. You might dismiss these people as “too nice” or “not exciting enough” because your system is calibrated to chaos.
The truth is that changing this pattern is uncomfortable because it requires you to become unfamiliar to yourself. You might have to let go of the identity you built around being the understanding one, the patient one, and the one who can handle anything.
Watch out for any tendency to be proud of your capacity to endure so that you can start building your capacity to require better. That’s a different skill set entirely, and it won’t feel natural at first.
What all this really means is that you might just need to rewrite your definition of love. It’s about teaching yourself that love isn’t supposed to hurt, it doesn’t require constant vigilance, and you don’t have to earn it through perfect behavior.
This takes time because you’re not just changing your thoughts; you’re changing the neural pathways that were built over years or decades. Your brain has to learn that someone who treats you with kindness and respect is a good sign.
The people you attract will start to shift when you shift. Not because you’re doing anything to manipulate the outcome, but because you’re no longer available for the same type of dynamics that usually play out.
Don’t explain away red flags or make excuses for poor behavior; otherwise, you will become incompatible with people who need those things from you. The hurtful people will either step up or step out, and either way, you win.
This journey isn’t about becoming perfect or never making mistakes. It’s about becoming aware of the patterns that have been running your life without your conscious participation.
Once you see them clearly, you can start making different choices. Those choices will feel wrong at first because they’re unfamiliar, but wrong and unfamiliar aren’t the same thing.
Sometimes the healthiest choice is the one that makes you the most uncomfortable, and learning to sit with that discomfort is how you break the cycle.
 | Paul Colaianni Paul Colaianni is an Emotional Abuse Expert and Behavior and Relationship Specialist who has been analyzing complex relationship dynamics since 2010. As the creator of the Healed Being program and host of the top-rated Love and Abuse and The Overwhelmed Brain podcasts, with over 21 million downloads worldwide, he specializes in helping people recognize hidden manipulation, navigate emotionally abusive relationships, and empower themselves to make informed decisions. |