Tim Arrigo argues you attract partners who mirror how you treat yourself. When you neglect or betray yourself, you accept the same from others because your standards are low. The brain seeks familiar dynamics, so healthy affection can feel wrong. Break the cycle by raising your standards and investing in self-care.
You don't attract what you want. You attract who you are. So many people are in relationships with people that they consider toxic. Well, the person isn't toxic, but their behavior is. And the reason that the person treats you poorly in the relationship is because you've had a history of treating yourself this way. You've had basically a history of treating yourself poorly. See, when you don't love yourself, when you don't invest in yourself, When you don't take care of yourself, when you don't validate yourself, when you don't— when, when you neglect yourself, betray yourself, abandon yourself, abuse yourself, then you're going to end up in a relationship with treats— with somebody that treats you the same way. So what you're doing is you're actually accepting and allowing the behavior because your own personal standards are not up to par. And so a lot of people wonder, like, why do I end up in this relationship with this person? So that's the first reason. The second reason is because your brain is a survival organ and it seeks to recreate the same dynamics that you've already experienced. So oftentimes you think that you're attracted to somebody, uh, but you're not attracted. Your brain is just recognizing them as somebody familiar, and the dynamic in the relationship is something familiar in terms of the way you feel in the relationship, right? So a lot of times your brain gives you the green light to enter the relationship because the person is very similar to a person that you either A, grew up with, or B, have had previous experiences with, previous relationships with, right? I always end up in the same relationship with the same type of person because your brain, right, is a survival organ. It wants you to relive what you've already lived because the chances of you surviving that go up dramatically. That's why you'll find yourself attracted to the same types of people while experiencing the same types of feelings in the relationship, consciously knowing that you need to end the relationship, but subconsciously on a deeper level feeling just this pull in the relationship. Also why when people are genuinely attracted to you, invest in you, want to spend time with you, truly adore you, a lot of times you're turned off by that. You say, ah, they're too clingy, or I'm not attracted to them, right? Because it's not really attraction, it's recognition. It's recognition. So what you need to do to begin to break this pattern is to A, start to realize that you're in this pattern to begin with, right? That I'm not really attracted to these people. I'm, I'm just recognizing them as familiar. And as I begin to demand and expect more from myself, as I begin to invest in myself and change the relationship I have with myself, that is in turn going to change the types of people that I allow to come into my life and that I choose to have a relationship with, right? So much of the time we want to blame the other person and we don't want to look at ourselves and take ownership. You can never fix or change, uh, other people. You can only change yourself. And knowing and understanding this and beginning by working on you and investing in you is the real ultimate solution to attracting, being attracted by, bringing in, right, the people that you want into your life.
