Why Am I Attracted To The Wrong People And How Do I Change It?

Are you attracted to the wrong people? Maybe you have a pattern of choosing unavailable partners or find yourself in toxic relationships and don’t know why this keeps happening to you. You may feel like there’s something wrong with you and that you’re somehow destined to keep repeating this pattern. Why would you consciously choose someone who will break your heart and leave you feeling like lasting love isn’t meant to be? The real reason you’re stuck in this pattern may surprise you, but there’s hope. Once you understand the brain science of attraction and how it manifests in Your Love Imprint, you’ll discover the key to transforming your relationship patterns.

Knowing how your mind is wired for attraction puts you in the driver’s seat to change your patterns and, finally get love right. You can take a new approach that doesn’t just rely on chemistry and attraction to choose a mate. You’re not destined to be attracted to the wrong people. Lasting love doesn’t have to feel elusive.

When You’re Attracted To The Wrong People You Can Feel Broken

Discovering that you’re stuck in an unhealthy love pattern may make you feel like there’s something wrong with you and that your picker is somehow broken. When your inner coordinates for love keep steering you in the wrong direction, you may believe that you’re stuck in this pattern.

You’re not stuck forever being attracted to the wrong people. Everyone suffers from a version of this dilemma. However, the degree to which your coordinates are off determines how much of an adjustment you need to make.

The first step is to identify your unhealthy pattern and where it comes from. The coordinates of Your Love Imprint are programmed in your family of origin. The need to heal the relationship with your parents through your romantic relationships is universal. It’s part of the human condition.

The brain science of attraction reveals that healthy love wasn’t modeled for you in your family of origin, so you don’t have an effective internal guidance system to create lasting love. On some level, every person is not loved exactly as they desired by their parents and they play this dynamic out in their adult, intimate relationships.

Though this pattern can leave you feeling broken, it simply means you’re human. The wound of Your Love Imprint is part of the human condition and affects your strategies and behaviors in your intimate relationships.

You’re Attracted To The Wrong People Because Your Love Imprint® Has Defective Coordinates

Your Love Imprint is your subconscious program for love and intimate relationships. It includes your limiting beliefs, your mental/emotional patterns, and your behavioral strategies for giving and receiving love. It’s formed in your family of origin and drives your choices in your romantic relationships.

When you’re an infant you have two emotional needs that must be met for you to survive and thrive. You need to feel loved and safe. Your need for love and safety causes you to take on any beliefs, behaviors, and strategies to achieve your goal. They set the coordinates of Your Love Imprint — your GPS for love.

To get your needs met you took full responsibility for your parents’ inability to love you the way you needed to be loved. It was your responsibility to change, not theirs.

Maybe you learned in your childhood that you were more likely to feel loved and safe if you were quiet and didn’t speak up about your needs. You’d come to believe that it was safer to sacrifice yourself than it was to get your emotional needs met.

Or, in your family you might have learned that love and rejection are connected. The rejection you felt from one of the most important people in your life becomes intertwined with the need for love and acceptance.

The wound of Your Love Imprint significantly determines who you find attractive as an adult. The strategies you used to cope in your childhood become the strategies you use in your intimate relationships.

Ultimately, the brain science of attraction shows you’re attracted to the wrong people because they match your childhood wounds, and you end up repeating the same unhealthy pattern over and over again.

You’re Attracted To The Wrong People Because They Feel Familiar

Your attraction to the wrong people is a match to your childhood wounding. This is a Love Imprint match — your subconscious mind is highlighting certain characteristics as feeling familiar, and you interpret this signal of familiarity as attraction and chemistry.

Just as you have a physical homeostasis, you also have a behavioral one. Physically, your body’s temperature, blood pressure, and heart rate need to stay within a narrow range for you to stay alive. The same feels true of your behavior. It feels uncomfortable or frightening to step out of your relationship comfort zone.

Your subconscious mind recognizes a match to your childhood wounds and highlights them for you. It’s as if a signal goes off in your mind and body saying, “This is familiar! This is familiar!” Unfortunately, your subconscious cannot tell you if familiar is good or bad because its job is to maintain the relationship homeostasis of Your Love Imprint.

It’s like you’re confusing the signals of fear and excitement. Your body is producing adrenaline, increasing your heart rate, and making your breath shallow in response to the perceived threat. You’ve been misinterpreting those signals as chemistry, attraction, and love.

Your attraction feels intoxicating and intense because your mind is sending you a loud “This is familiar!” signal. You misinterpret that signal to mean excitement when it’s a fear response. The brain science of attraction has you confused about what love feels like.

Your Fear/Excitement Trigger Needs To Be Recalibrated

The first step to changing this pattern is to avoid people who trigger this “danger/excitement” feeling. Rather than dive in headfirst when you experience this familiar signal, slow down and use caution. Start reorienting what you’ve believed to be chemistry as fear.

If you were to describe what love feels like to you, your description probably includes feeling off-balance, having obsessive thoughts, butterflies in your stomach, or inability to control your impulses. These are symptoms of a fight/flight response, not love and acceptance.

The brain science of attraction keeps you stuck in this unhealthy pattern. Until you heal the wounds of your childhood, you’ll keep repeating the same unhealthy relationships. If you’ve been burned enough, you’ll over-correct and choose safe partners who you don’t feel attracted to or shut your heart off from love altogether. None of these choices lead to the lasting love you desire.

When you’re attracted to the wrong people, you need to recalibrate how you think about attraction. Recognize the fear response attached to Your Love Imprint and avoid getting intimate with people who trigger those familiar feelings.

Don’t Choose A Partner Based On A Feeling

When you’re attracted to the wrong people, you’re putting too much emphasis on your feelings while ignoring potential issues. Attraction is important for love to last, but it isn’t the only ingredient. Putting too much importance on chemistry can cause you to miss the red flags right in front of you.

The brain science of attraction highlights people who feel familiar to you. If an emotionally available, kind, and loving potential partner was interested in you, you’d likely not find them attractive because they wouldn’t be charged for you in the same way as your familiar relationship pattern.

You’ve yet to experience being loved by a supportive, nurturing partner who values you and wants you to be happy. Or experienced being with someone who’s curious about you and your feelings and doesn’t allow you to go into sacrifice.

For you to find a kind, supportive person attractive, you’ll first have to change your relationship with yourself to recalibrate the settings of Your Love Imprint.

The Love You Seek Is Inside Of You

The story you created about yourself because your parents were unable to love you the way you desired to be loved feels true. It feels like part of your identity. The brain science of attraction proves that you’ll reject someone who doesn’t mirror that dynamic until you change your relationship with yourself.

The pattern of being attracted to the wrong people is part of Your Love Imprint, but it isn’t your destiny. It’s a pattern you learned, and you can learn a new pattern for love.

To break this pattern you need to begin a practice of self-love. One of the first steps is to start speaking up for your wants and needs, as well as setting and keeping clear boundaries. When you treat yourself respectfully, you’ll reject anyone who doesn’t match your internal energy.

The brain science of attraction says that your outer world experience is a reflection of your inner world. When you realize that you don’t get love from another, instead you share the love you have for yourself with another, then you’ll start nurturing your feelings of self-love and self-respect.

Developing Your Self-Esteem And Self-Respect Is The Key To Transforming Your Love Imprint

A lack of self-respect causes you to tolerate people who don’t treat you with respect and deep-down hope that they’ll change for you. You end up trying to prove your lovability and wishing you’d have said no to their requests. Or maybe you find yourself apologizing for your behavior when there’s nothing to apologize for.

Changing this pattern of being attracted to the wrong people begins by making agreements with yourself and sticking to them. Instead of dwelling on the people who’ve mistreated you, decide today you will treat yourself with loving kindness — no matter what. Even on your worst day, decide you’ll find compassion for yourself.

Change your inner dialog from beating yourself up and internalizing your parents’ voices to one that is supportive, kind, and loving. You can become your own best friend by saying nice things to yourself about yourself.

It’s time to forgive the child inside of you who was doing the best they could. Find compassion for all that you went through as a child, and now as a grown person make better choices because you have more resources. When you make this shift, the brain science of attraction assures that you’ll no longer be attracted to the wrong people.

Don’t Put Your Lovability In The Hands Of A Stranger

You’re the only one responsible for your lovability. Treat yourself with love and compassion. Focus on healing the wounds of Your Love Imprint so that you can find a better caliber of person attractive.

Wishing and hoping that someone will prove that you’re lovable by choosing you gives your power away and leaves you feeling insecure and full of regret. No one can give you love. You share the love you already have within yourself with another. Focus on growing the love you have for yourself before looking for someone to partner up with.

If you’re stuck in a pattern of attracting the wrong people, those who are unable to fulfill your needs, you’ll need to transform Your Love Imprint. Then you can develop a new way to create lasting love. Transforming your GPS for love puts you in the driver’s seat of your love life and utilizes the brain science of attraction in your favor. You can take the first step by clicking here.

About the authors

Love Coaches Orna and Matthew Walters

Orna and Matthew Walters are dating coaches and founders of Creating Love On Purpose with a holistic approach to transforming hidden blocks to lasting love, and the authors of Getting It Right This Time. They’ve been published on MSN, Yahoo!, YourTango, Redbook, Newsweek, Best Life, and have been featured guest experts on BRAVO’s THE MILLIONAIRE MATCHMAKER with Patti Stanger, and as guests with Esther Perel speaking about love and intimacy.

Suggested Reading