Do you ever find selfishness...kinda hot? The brash and bold, get out of my way because I'm gonna get mine, attitude. I feel so basic saying it but I've always felt attracted to, and worse, falling for guys who are really just...kinda dickish. It feels like a rush. Like woah, look at how MASCULINE this guy is! Get all those other beta bros away from me, THIS GUY really knows how to take charge!
The issue is they're shitty partners. They form painfully toxic, one-sided relationships. Everything is on their schedule and they need to be the center of attention. You watch them watching themselves in the mirror. Doing anything for them from a routine chore or a favor, well that’s expected, but doing things for you? Yeah, not gonna happen. You run out of time to take care of yourself and keep your life balanced.
This was my story. Over time I'd see how it was affecting me negatively, gain perspective, leave the situation, and insist it will be different next time. One second I’d be telling myself ‘glad that's over and I learned my lesson’ and the next I’d be promptly falling for a new asshole. Like even if I knew, at some level, that being with a nice, thoughtful, caring guy was probably a good idea. I didn't care.
Why? Why do I, and thousands of guys like me put myself through this torture over and over again? What makes these ‘dom’ & ‘masculine’ guys so enchanting?
To answer this let me introduce you to Ross Rosenberg, a leading expert on this topic who I will be referencing throughout this piece
Ross is a psychotherapist at the Self-Love Recovery Institute. He’s also an author and in his seminal work, The Human Magnet Syndrome, he describes why opposites attract to create unhealthy, unbalanced relationships, where one side gives the majority of love, respect, and care only to receive little or nothing in return. By understanding how this theory works and what causes it, we can see why so many people repeatedly fall for guys that inevitably create toxic situations, and what we can do to break out of the pattern.