Why am I attracted to assholes?  

Understanding why we form unhealthy relationships
 and how to fix it.

Written by Ben Sieg
 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.

 1. Human Magnet Syndrome

The idea here is that opposites attract (like magnets, get it?). But not just any opposites, like some city guy falling for a country boy or a conservative falling for a liberal. In fact, most often we like to date people similar to us, as shown in this meta analysis. It's similarities, not differences, in things like education, economic background, political views etc that we find attractive and makes a good partner. Extraverted people don't tend to enjoy relationships with people who never want to leave the house. Fitness trainers don't tend to enjoy dating someone with a compulsive fast food addiction.     

But there is one dimension where it appears opposites really do attract. Strongly. It is the dimension of where we focus our love, awareness and attention. On one side of the spectrum people focus their love inward towards themselves and on the other side they focus it outward toward others.  

I know. Kinda subtle. Sounds trivial. Not exactly the type of thing you put in your Scruff profile. But this basic orientation can end up saying a lot about how you act in the world, how you view yourself, and what you want in a partner.   

At a basic level, people are either more selfish and focused on themselves , or selfless and focused on others.

Think of this as a spectrum. 

 If you were right in the middle, you would have a 50-50 mix of the two. Where you have a perfect balance between caring for the needs of others and taking care of yourself.  

 As you inch to the left you focus more and more of your energy, time, and attention on yourself. As you move to the right you focus more on other people’s needs.

Neither of these leanings are ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ They just are. Almost any healthy and stable person you meet will lean one way or the other. That's perfectly normal.

Now the middle area is good, but the farther you go out on the spectrum the more unbalanced you are. By the time you get to the far poles there are going to be some real issues to contend with.   

On one side are people who are only motivated by their own internal happiness. To these people only their pursuits, their feelings, their desires matter. Anyone else's (including their partner’s) are not a concern. These people have Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Their self-love and self-interest has zoomed way past the healthy territory and right into sociopathic terrain.  

On the other end of the spectrum are people helplessly attracted to these pricks. Constantly looking to make others happy: confusing sacrifice and forgoing their own needs with intimacy, love, and connection. They are the pleaser. The fixer. The giver. In a relationship they become passive and subservient to the partner. Always putting themself second, third, or even last, totally consumed by fulfilling the needs of others. Rosenberg calls this Self-Love Deficiency Disorder (SLDD for short). 

It's important to note that while I will be focusing on the far ends of the spectrum, we don't have to be at the extremes of either side to exhibit tendencies or personality traits similar to those with these disorders. There are lots of people who maybe don't fit every aspect of an SLDD or a narcissist but have had many similar experiences and would benefit from the same type of growth and development. It's often the case that specific relationships or circumstances can exacerbate or bring out these qualities in us.  

2. Seeing the trap for what it is

Generally speaking, wherever you are on this spectrum you attract your opposite. In this way narcissists need SLDDs and SLDDs need narcissists. In fact, due to their extreme imbalances, they tend to only find each other attractive. So when they link up, it feels congruent. Natural. Exciting. Like they are perfectly synched.  
 
The narcissistic partner takes the lead and the SSLD follows. Their roles feel natural because they have been practicing them their whole lives.

The SSLD reflexively gives up power and the narcissist thrives on control and taking more.

The person who is self-love deficient is lonely. Afraid no one will love him. Doesn’t have a lot of confidence or self respect. They instinctively feel comfortable with the person who can step into the vacuum they have created. Someone who wants to be the center of attention. The controller.

It feels like a perfect match.

BUT

Then the SLDD continues to give more and more, much more than they receive back. And now the relationship doesn’t create as much excitement as it does bitter resentment. It predictably transforms into drama, conflict, feelings of neglect and being trapped.

And while the SLDD is often proud of their unwavering dedication and the consistency of their contributions to the relationship, they ultimately end up feeling used and unloved by their partners.

Every time this happens, the SLDDs become convinced that this is the best they can do. That they will never find a partner who loves them for who they are instead of what they can do for them.

Often low self esteem, lack of self respect, abundant pessimism, and fear of loneliness manifests into a form of learned helplessness where they are unhappy in the relationship but don't feel they can leave it or have options outside of it.

3. It stems from emotional underdevelopment.

It's important to understand that each pole of the spectrum represents a different form of underdevelopment, specifically they are versions of Insecure Attachment.  

Insecure attachment is a form of emotional underdevelopment stemming from experiences growing up where it was difficult to find love and acceptance during their formative years. It is a very common form of emotional trauma.  

When I say trauma it doesn't have to mean a dramatic instance of physical or sexual abuse. Often trauma is much more subtle. It's the overworked parent who doesn't have the time and energy to pay attention to you. It feels normal and ordinary. And it's more about the building up of effects over time than a singular event.  

The body never forgets these traumatizing experiences and now as adults, the SLDD and Narcissist mask their pain and insecurity with manipulative coping strategies.

It's not that narcissists love themselves the most, it's that they love others the least. Their disregard for other people leads them to using coercion, threats, and force to get their way.

The SLDD has the opposite problem. They don't love others the most, they love themselves the least. So they have learned a different strategy, to do whatever other people say as a form of manipulation to get other people to like them.

Both the learned sub-ordinance of the SLDD and coercion of the Narcissist are tools they learned while growing up to cope with not having the love, respect, or attention they needed.

 For an SLDD, that typically meant that the only way to get attention or care was by doing something for someone, possibly a demanding or narcissistic parent. This is often from a parent who is ‘hot and cold.’ Sometimes they are great and loving, other times they are cruel and withholding. The young child learns love is conditional and they must earn it. This is what is known as the ‘anxious’ style of insecure attachment.   

Narcissists learned a different coping strategy: to fend for themself. Often the product of a neglectful and mostly absent parent. For instance, maybe when the child was crying, no one came to care for him. So his mind and body started to tell him that ‘you can't rely on other people, they won't be there for you. You have to take care of yourself.’ They were not allowed to open up, to be vulnerable, or feel loved as a child and now have a hard time trusting or even respecting other people. This is what is known as the ‘avoidant’ attachment style.

4. Understanding the deeper levels 

Here we will stop talking about narcissists and zoom into Rosenberg’s model of Self-Love Deficiency Disorder so we can see how it works and what we can do.

Band-aid therapy won't work. You can’t just tell yourself to be attracted to a nice, sweet, caring guy the same way that you didn’t tell yourself to be attracted to a selfish, manipulative jerk. To make lasting change we can’t just wish it into existence .

To start, let’s redefine an attraction to narcissists as an addiction. It's the drug of choice to temporarily escape the pain of loneliness and self hatred. It's that pain, and our pursuit to escape it, that keeps the addiction alive.  

In this model we can see the attraction to the narcissist is a symptom of this underlying condition. Making progress means treating the root cause. In doing this we can move away from the far end of the pole and towards the center.  



It begins with the insecure attachment we discussed earlier, or, as Roseberg puts it, Attachment Trauma.

At a young age, your body and core being was taught by the world that who you are was not worthy of love. Love was conditional. “If you do these things that I tell you to, you will be loved. If you don't be who you are but instead be who I tell you to be, you will be loved.” And day by day you find the evidence to support your belief that you are not enough.   

This could stem from experiences inside your house as a young child or this could, more like me, come from moments in school where society not-so-subtly told you that if you are gay, the world will not love or accept you. 
 
The key point is that when a young person does not abundantly receive love, or the world does not allow them to feel respected and cared for, we internalize that as meaning there is something wrong with us. Our bodies hold on to this, and it is what becomes our Core Shame
Core Shame: who you are is not worthy of love. The belief that you are fundamentally bad or flawed. For people on the SLDD side of the spectrum, a necessary coping strategy to deal with this shame is to only feel good when they take care of others or act in a way to make others like them. The obvious cost of doing this is ignoring their own needs.  

Personally I was hyper focused with having straight-acting mannerisms and distancing myself from anything feminine. I didn't give a shit about ‘discovering myself’ or making myself happy, or even doing things I wanted to do. I cared about other people’s opinions of me and how I could shape them by being who they wanted me to be. As long as I was liked, nothing else mattered. If my unconscious had a thesis statement it would have been something like: ‘I have to remain closeted, play sports, and act like I’m attracted to girls because who I am is broken, disgusting, and unlovable.’ That was my core shame. 

A deep sense of core shame over time leads to Pathological Loneliness.

Pathological Loneliness: The unbearable pain that we are invisible, worthless, and unlovable converts into a deep, emotional longing to be with someone. We feel broken and incomplete because love and respect are out of reach, so we become consumed with a longing to find someone to fix us. 

This is the pain that fuels the addiction to narcissists.

Roseberg calls this next section ‘SLDD Addiction’ but we’ll call it the attraction to narcissists. It's the desperate need of a relationship that will make the lonely pain go away. For SLDDs it becomes an almost magnetic pull to their counter-match, the narcissist. It's the drug of choice to escape. They appear to have a confidence and internal strength that we lack. We feel like they are the missing piece that will complete us, even though it never really solves the problem as much as it does temporarily mask the pain. Like other addictions it begins with excitement and euphoria but ends in regret, suffering, and shame.     

When we add all this together, we get Self-Love Deficiency Disorder
SLDD- This attachment-traumatized, shame-based, pathologically-lonely, narcissist-addicted person suffers from Self-Love Deficiency Disorder. The selfless-compulsive caretaker who habitually attempts to control others into loving them through excessive care and attention. They create unbalanced relationships where they feel used and trapped giving more than they ever would receive back. 

When we look at it this way it should be abundantly clear, the problem was never the attraction to narcissists. But everything that lies beneath it.   

5. Fixing the issues.

Now that you understand it, let's talk about how to fix it.

Your current attachment style, whether it is at one of the far poles or anywhere else on the spectrum, is not a life sentence.

Rosenberg describes the cure as the achievement of Self-Love Abundance. Here I will describe the steps required to do that.

Before we do we need to know there is not a problem with loving other people. Caring about other people is a virtue that we want to hold on to. Instead, the issue is that SLDDs are the people who love themselves the least. 

The virtue they need to grow is the ability to feel genuine love, respect, and admiration for themself.

First the root of the problem is addressed - Attachment Trauma Resolution.  

The number one motivator for people is not our lust or greed, it's our need for connection. So when, at a young age, our body senses an inability to get love, you don't forget it. Time does not heal all wounds. Your new thoughts and experiences will be on the platform of this prior belief structure that says: DANGER! YOU ARE NOT SAFE. THE WORLD IS NOT KIND AND LOVING TO YOU. Your body will hold on to this until it is adequately addressed.  

Carl Jung the famous psychotherapist once said “Until you make the unconscious conscious it will control your life and you will call it fate.” What he means is that our mind and memory is much more powerful and influential than we realize and that as we are ignorant to it, it controls us. But when we can understand it and see it for what it is we can begin to work with it.  

This is what we are seeking to do here in this step. To heal we need to find those painful memories, experiences, and beliefs and dig into them. We have to do the extremely uncomfortable task of reliving them, feeling them, expressing them to other people, and exploring them. By doing this we can see them from a fresh perspective with our adult eyes. We can learn from them. What you learn will be expecific to your experience, but whatever it is, you cannot do this while being emotionally removed or do it from a distance. You're gonna have to get your hands dirty. Personally I ugly cried in the bathroom for a few hours. As someone who hadn’t cried in years it was surreal, cathartic and unforgettable.  
 
This is typically guided by a professional, but you can also get good results with a close friend. Either way it is from being able to safely express and explore repressed childhood trauma that we can achieve the first step, attachment trauma resolution. By bringing hidden pain into the light of day, by directly addressing it and learning from it, we can clearly see our painful childhood experiences for what they are, let it go, and integrate it into our lives. 

This allows us to realize Core Self-Love. Realistic, optimistic, and self-affirming identity which is based on what is naturally and fundamentally good about a person.

By going through the process of finding your pain, vulnerability, and hidden sources of adversity and then voluntarily taking them on we begin to change. Now that the blocks to connection and safety have been removed we can feel internally aligned instead of splitting apart at the seams. You begin to develop a sense of empathy and understanding, first for yourself and then outwards towards other people. I'm not a weak person, I was in a hard situation and doing the best I could at the time. I'm not a failure, I'm a growing man. In doing this we prove to ourself that we are stronger than we thought. We are a change agent that can grow, develop, and improve. We prove that we are worthy of genuine respect, first and foremost from yourself, and eventually from others.

 This leads to Existential Peace - the opposite of Pathological Loneliness. Comfort in your own skin. You feel complete on your own, without needing anyone else to feel happy.

*** I will make a quick note here that I believe Rosenberg would also agree with. In both my practice and experiences personally, when it comes to achieving better dating results, self respect is far more stable, reliable, and enduring than self esteem.  

                    Self esteem - I look good no matter what anyone says.
                    Self respect - I put in genuine work and effort to improve my health and fitness and I                                               am proud of myself for it.

                   Self esteem - I love myself because I am great and everyone should be loved.
                   Self respect - I have shown myself how strong I am by facing the painful adversity in my                                            past.  

Self esteem can really fluctuate with mood and is vulnerable to the opinions of others.   

Self respect is harder to achieve, but is worth the extra effort. No one can take away the effort you have put into improving yourself and it is universally recognized as attractive.**** 

Free from shame and loneliness the person is free to look for mutuality in relationships. By developing a deeper sense of self-love and self-respect from facing their adversity, they have moved closer to the center and thus have new, more stable dating options. Reciprocity of love, the more even balance between giving and taking in a relationship, creates a state of interdependence. Where neither partner is reliant and needy or controlling. Instead both partners benefit from being together. Relationships like this create a whole that is more than the sum of its parts where both partners willingly work to maintain and grow it because of the obvious improvement it brings to their life.

Now you are in a state of Self-Love Abundance. You understand your past and accept it. You know your core value and worth. You have developed the internal respect that allows you to feel good and live with peace and confidence. You are no longer spellbound by toxic narcissism and instead find yourself attracted to open, honest, and respectful partners. Your relationships embody mutual reciprocity. From this experience of growth you live with an abundance of self love.  

You only get to be a victim once, after that you're a volunteer.

Being Self Love deficient is NOT our fault. You are not a moral failure, you were victimized. You are not to be blamed for your pain. 

BUT 

It will not get better on it's own.

You have to be the one to take responsibility to make progress and change your situation now that you know. 
To solve the problem we have to take accountability for it and acknowledge our part in it.

We must take steps to move closer toward the center by uncovering the underlying emotions, assumptions, patterns of behavior, and thought loops so that we can understand, face our adversity, heal, grow and move forward. This is the way to a happier relationship and life. 

It is not an easy journey, it's the hero’s journey. Work hard now so you can live the rest of your life in peace and harmony.

You don't have to do it alone. If you are suffering, reach out to someone who can help.

Ben Sieg


Ben Sieg helps men get past hookup culture and grow lasting relationships.  He is an expert at helping guys attract quality men by facing their adversity and making things super simple to understand.  If you're interested in taking the next step in your life then definitely reach out and request a free strategy session today.


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