We Attract What We Haven’t Healed
Every person you've chosen is pointing to the same unhealed place
When you’re lonely, it’s easy to feel hopeless and worry that you’re never going to find someone.
Being single feels like cosmic rejection and the ultimate failure of adulthood.
This sets a trap.
You convince yourself that a new relationship will be the solution. It’s the most obvious solution.
Careful though…
Wanting a relationship, and feeling like you need a relationship lead to vastly different outcomes. When you choose before you’re ready, you end up in the wrong relationship. Ironically, research shows you can be lonely inside a relationship too (Hsieh & Hawkley, 2018). That’s even worse than being alone.
The person who becomes your relationship partner isn’t random.
You determine who you attract.
Amazing people attract amazing partners.
Unfortunately, the opposite is also true.
Loneliness Is a Problem…Your Partner Can’t (and Shouldn’t) Solve It
You can’t outsource your own fulfillment.
It’s not your partner’s job to fix or complete you. That’s your responsibility. (It’s also not your job to fix them).
Too often while dating, people will rely on their romantic partner to entertain and occupy them. That works, to a degree, but doesn’t address the real source of the problem. Why do you feel lonely?
Loneliness is about disconnection, but also about feelings of inadequacy (Fardghassemi & Joffe, 2022). When you feel like something in your life is missing or don’t like who you are, a partner seems like the solution to both.
That’s a lot of pressure to put on someone. It’s actually fundamentally unfair. Your partner should be part of your world, not your entire world.
“You complete me” sounds romantic, but it’s actually problematic.
Honestly, “You complete me” is complete garbage. Love isn’t about solving your problems. A relationship can’t fix your life. (The best relationships are between two individuals who each have full, complete, amazing lives that they share with each other.)
You’re not meant to be someone else’s project.
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The Person You Attract Won’t Be Great
When you feel incomplete by yourself, like part of you is missing, you naturally want to fill the void.
I can’t blame you. Sometimes we just don’t want to be single. Our desire for companionship as humans is so strong that getting into a (really any) relationship feels like the right move.
It’s not a personal failure, it’s an adaptation that serves a purpose.
However, that doesn’t mean a new relationship is what’s best.
If you’re broken, incomplete, or unwell, you’re going to attract the wrong type of partner.
Think about it…what kind of person finds unhealed partners appealing? Sadly, it’s exactly the partner no one should want.
Optimistically, if you are incomplete you might attract someone who is a “fixer” or someone who wants to make you better. Though it’s an honorable goal, it’s one that’s hard to achieve for a few reasons:
First, helping people through issues is really hard work. Your partner probably isn’t qualified.
Second, it’s hard enough to be a good relationship without having to be a therapist as well. Those are different roles that require different strengths. Trying to do it all, often leads to doing none of it well. (Not to mention it’s tiring, like really really exhausting)
Now here’s the worst case scenario. The dating world has some bad actors….people who are downright interpersonally parasitic. They may not even realize they’re doing it, but there are plenty of daters out there who naturally gravitate toward (or purposefully select) partners who are lost, broken, damaged, or needy.
The reason? Unhealed partners are easy to dominate, manipulate, and have power over. Imbalanced power encourage one person to have excessive control. It’s one of the most common dynamics in toxic and unhealthy relationships.
Manipulative partners’ dating logic can be quite dark. A weak and flawed partner will allow them to get away with almost anything they want. Selfishness and cheating…overlooked. In the aftermath, half-hearted apologies and lame excuses get accepted. Why!?!?!?!! The unhealed partner is scared of being alone, of never finding anyone else. That sense of scarcity (e.g., if this person doesn’t love me I won’t have other options) makes the intolerable partner, tolerable.
We don’t like to think that “broken attracts broken,” but as one example, research shows narcissists are much more tolerant of fellow narcissists (Burton et al, 2017). Sadly, some people are more likely to attract, then tolerate, broken partners.
10 Signs You May Be Letting the Broken In
Importantly, being “broken” isn’t an either/or. Rather, it’s a case of less and more, the more broken you are, the more you’ll attract the same.
Here are signs that you’re more susceptible to attracting brokenness:
You feel a sense of pressure to be in a relationship. You mistake uneasiness and anxiety for chemistry. You’re a dopamine dater.
It feels like every potential partner has major flaws. You have few true “dealbreakers” or non-negotiables. You’re willing to accept “good enough.”
Chaos feels comfortable. Drama feels like the default.
You give early signs of attention and affection in a relationship too much credit. You like attention and feeling special.
You determine your feelings towards others based on how they feel about you. You focus on how to get chosen, instead of choosing what’s best for you.
You hold on to any small signs of romance or caring as indicative of who your partner “really is.”
You use rare glimpses of positive qualities to excuse prevalent bad behaviors.
When things go wrong, you convince yourself “this is how all relationships are.”
You operate from a place of “I can make this work” instead of honestly assessing whether you’re authentically compatible.
You’ve convinced yourself that you like the challenge of a project partner (or perhaps you like the sense of control it provides)
Those ten behaviors aren’t just bad choices, they’re problematic patterns that you’ve fallen into because you’ve never bothered to address the underlying problem: We attract what we haven’t healed.
When we attract someone who is broken, the relationship doesn’t stand a chance. You can’t have a healthy relationship if one half of the couple is damaged.
Want more detailed help with solutions?
You can find all the tools you need in the Partnership Protocol™ toolkits:
The Solution: You Have to Be Whole First
Be a little selfish. Put yourself first. It’s ok.
This is the ultimate form of self-care.
Instead of using a relationship to heal (which doesn’t work), heal yourself before you pursue a relationship.
It’s important to remember that no partner is a good option when you’re not whole yourself. Feeling pressure to find someone is a sign you’re looking outward to fill an inward need.
“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.” ~ bell hooks
You need to be able to stand by yourself, as a fully complete independent person. Create an amazing life for yourself. Once you have, you won’t look for happiness from outside sources like your partner. (And once you stop looking so hard, the right person has a way of finding you.)
Importantly, being whole won’t prevent toxic partners from entering your orbit. But it will make you a lot better at moving past them, or better yet, ignoring them altogether. One word of caution here. Even after feeling whole, we are often drawn to people who have the issues we previous solved. Think of it as a “shadow magnet.” For example, if you’re now hyper-responsible, hyper-productive, or “always have it together,” you may be magnetically drawn to people who are reckless, “free-spirited,” or even lazy.
Even though you’ve done the work to make yourself complete, you still need to be discerning.
When Will You Be Ready?
When I say you should be “complete,” I’m not saying you have to be perfect. No one is.
That makes it hard to know when you’re “ready.” I don’t want you to wait too long.
You don’t have to be perfectly ready. There’s no such thing. Besides, let’s call perfectionism what it really is: procrastination.
Don’t wait to be 100% ready. Just be mostly ready. That means not excusing red flags, chasing love, or sabotaging good connections with kind partners. Instead, seek calm and consistency over drama, and treat kindness as a baseline expectation (not a rare trait to be celebrated).
Then, when you’re dating, remember this basic truth: Everyone deserves a great relationship. Don’t accept anything less.
If you keep finding yourself in unhealthy relationships and want help fixing a broken “picker,” this article will help: You’re Not Unlucky in Love…Your Picker Is Just Broken
Conclusion
You can’t rely on a relationship to fix what’s wrong, fill in what’s missing, or find fulfillment for you. The most loving thing you can do, for yourself and for anyone you’ll ever date, is to stop outsourcing that work. Become the person you’re looking for. Not because it’s a strategy. Because you deserve to meet your amazing equal.
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Here are other ways to learn more about the Psychology of Relationships:
Substack Series: The Psychology of Relationships 101 Curriculum
My podcast: Love Strategies
References
Burton, K. A., Adams, J. M., Hart, W., Grant, B., Richardson, K., & Tortoriello, G. (2017). You remind me of someone awesome: Narcissistic tolerance is driven by perceived similarity. Personality and Individual Differences, 104, 499–503. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.09.019
Fardghassemi, S., & Joffe, H. (2022). The causes of loneliness: The perspective of young adults in London’s most deprived areas. PloS one, 17(4), e0264638. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264638
Hsieh, N., & Hawkley, L. (2018). Loneliness in the older adult marriage: Associations with dyadic aversion, indifference, and ambivalence. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 35(10), 1319-1339.
Photo by ClickerHappy
Note: Please forgive any typos or errors. Non-AI writing has its imperfections. Consider it the patina of a personal touch.
This is a wonderful piece. I like to think I’m already whole and self-reliant when in reality, I am not. When loneliness hits, I tend to seek it outwards. I grew up believing that whatever lacks in you, the other person will fill that void. Now that creates a cycle, a never ending loop of attracting wrong people in my life. That being said, no matter what the situation you’re in, there’s always a way out. When you start realizing that you alone can make yourself happy and complete too.
I think there’s something important here. At the same time, it’s not always that “broken attracts broken.”
Often the psyche is simply drawn to what feels familiar. Even unhealthy dynamics can feel strangely recognizable if they echo earlier emotional patterns.
Until those deeper structures of the psyche become visible to us, we tend to recreate the same relationships again and again.