Why do we fall in love with people who are bad to us?

The answer to a question that intrigued people for ages

Have you ever fallen in love with someone who had more red flags than the chinese government? A person that when you look back on your past, it was clear as a day that they would mistreat and hurt you, but at the time you willfully ignored all the clear signs that things would go wrong, just because you felt that 'with you it would be different'.

If you have indeed experienced the above sittuation or is in a continuous loop of falling in love with people with similar characteristics, don't worry this condition doesn't mean that you have a 'bad taste' in your partners or that you are forever destined to be in love with individuals who are going to hurt you in the end, altrough love is a very subjective emotion and there are millions of different reasons on why we become infatuated with someone, there is indeed a clear reason on why we follow this illogical pattern on our relationships.

The root cause of this behavior lies on a psychological feature of our identity called self-respect, which is basically the degree by which an individual believes that he is worthy of respect and happiness, now you may be wondering "What this has anything to do with who I fall in love with?" well in truth everything.

This is a subconscious behavior that many are unaware of, but our brain is constantly creating a 'filter' to who we can be attracted to, putting people in a hierarchy of desirability and one key aspect of this 'filter' is that he will always prioritize people that have an increased probability of making us having our deserved level of satisfaction and happiness, this means that if you unconsciously think that you aren't worthy of being fullfiled in life, you will find people that have more probability of treating you badly as more attractive.

While this fact may seem very grim and disheartening for anyone who is dealing with this problem, the reality is actually the opposite: undestanding how your brain works means that you have the opportunity to change it. By having the knowledge of your thinking patterns change is possible and now you can always immediately perceive when you are tumbling to this mental and emotional trap and if you start to improve your self-respect, eventually you will only feel attraction for people who can make you happy in the long term.

My font for this post comes mostly from the research of the writer and psychotherapist Nathaniel Branden, and two books I strongly recommend for those interested on the topic will be found on the resources below.

Lastly I deeply thank you my dear reader for your attention, if you have any feedback or question feel free to comment then below and if this post was helpful please like and share with anyone who will also find it useful.

Resources:

1 - https://www.amazon.com.br/Six-Pillars-Self-Esteem-Nathaniel-Branden/dp/0553374397

2 - https://www.amazon.com/Why-Do-Fall-Love-Psychology/dp/0312132158