Why we love people who are bad for us ?

 

There is a certain kind of love that feels like gravity. You know it is pulling you somewhere dangerous, somewhere you probably shouldn’t go…but your body leans toward it anyway. You tell yourself you can stop whenever you want. You tell yourself you are in control. But something inside you keeps walking back to that Person who hurst you more than they heal you. 

And the strangest part is that it feels familiar, almost comforting. 

People always ask the same question : Why do we fall for people who are bad for us? Why do we stay? Why do our brains get hooked on someone who makes us feel small, confused and unsteady? 

The answer isn’t just emotional. It’s biological. The brain is doing something very old, very primitive and powerful. 

It starts with unpredictability. 

Healthy love feels steady. You know where you stand. But the toxic kind is all about inconsistencies. One moment they are warm, affectionate, almost addictive. The next moment they pull away or disappear. 

Your brain hates unpredictability, but it is also wired to seek patterns. when affection becomes inconsistent, the brain doesn’t relax….it becomes obsessed. 

The reword system lights up, especially the dopamine pathways, not because the reward is big, but because it is unpredictable. This is the same mechanism that makes gambling addictive. A slot machine doesn’t reward you every time, it rewards you just enough to keep you hooked. 

The same thing happens in relationships that feel unstable. The brain learns to chase the next good moment, even if it means enduring many bad ones. 

It isn’t weakness, it is conditioning. 

But there is something deeper, something psychological. 

when love becomes intertwined with anxiety, the body treats the relationship like a survival situation. The fear of losing the person becomes its own attachment. Your stress hormones rise, your nervous system becomes hyper vigilant and the emotional intensity starts to fell like passion. 

In reality, it is your fight or flight system constantly firing. 

Some people confuse this adrenaline for chemistry. Others mistake emotional chaos for connection. 

And if you grew up around unpredictable affection, your brain learned early that love feels like anxiety. Not calm. Not safety. But longing. 

So when someone comes along who recreates that pattern, the brain doesn’t see danger…it sees home. 

What amazes me is how the body keeps score even when the mind tries to move on. The smallest gesture, a text, a memory, a scent, can pull you straight back into a dynamic you thought you outgrew. 

It is not because you lack self respect. It is because your brain remembers the highs and edits out the lows. It is because the body holds emotional habits long after they stop serving you. 

It makes me wonder how many people we love because of who they are, and how many we love because our brain was trained to chase them. 

The truth is simple but uncomfortable: Sometimes the person who feels the most magnetic is the one who fits a wound you have not healed yet. 

And maybe that is the part that is hardest to admit. We are not just falling for them..We are falling for the version of us that believes this is the love we deserve. 

The brain can pull us toward danger disguised as desire. But once you see the pattern, you get to choose something new. Something calmer. Something that does not feel like gravity, but like breathing.  

 

“The body remembers what the mind forgets.”                                                         — Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score