Why We Gravitate Toward Unhealthy Relationships

Have you ever wondered why you find yourself in dysfunctional relationships? Maybe you find partners who recreate the dysfunction you grew up with, confusing an activated nervous system for the “sparks” of true love. Or maybe you find that healthy people seem uninteresting and boring. We are going to do a deep dive into why our brains do this and how we can rewire our brains to choose healthy people.

Understanding our Nervous Systems

Our nervous system is a complex and intricate network responsible for regulating and coordinating not only our bodily functions, but our perception of the world around us. Its goal is to identify threats and protect us from harm. In situations of abuse and relational dysfunction, the nervous system adapts in ways that lead us to perceive familiar (though unhealthy) situations as safe, while viewing genuinely healthy relationships as threatening. 

The Adaptability of Our Nervous Systems

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) plays a key role in our body's stress response. It consists of the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches, working together to maintain balance. When we are exposed to chronic stress or trauma (complex trauma is an example of this), the ANS becomes dysregulated and begins to recalibrate itself to  new baseline functions and responses. What was once threatening now feels normal. We become so immersed in the ocean of relational trauma that we don’t even realize that what we are swimming in is harmful–it becomes all we know.

For example, if you were  exposed to frequent emotional or physical abuse you may have developed a heightened tolerance for stress, causing you to interpret high-stress situations as ordinary or even safe. 

Take a moment to consider your life. Do you go after high-adrenaline hobbies? Were you often attracted to the “bad guy” type? Do you perform well in a crisis (and maybe even choose jobs that have you navigate crises frequently?) Do you push deadlines to the limit and perform well under pressure? These are all examples of our nervous system’s recalibration playing out in our daily lives.

Normalization of Dysfunction

One way the nervous system copes with prolonged stress is by redefining familiar situations, even if they are unhealthy, as the new norm. This adaptation leads us to seek out and maintain relationships and environments that replicate the dysfunction we experienced early in life. The brain, in an attempt to maintain stability, becomes wired to perceive dysfunction as the status quo. 

This normalization of dysfunction can look like seeking out relationships with characteristics similar to those of your abusive caregivers or gravitating towards environments that recreate the familiar stressors of your past. In these situations, the nervous system identifies dysfunction as safety, creating a cycle that reinforces maladaptive patterns.

Remember this: What is familiar feels safe. If what you are familiar with is actually threatening, then know that what feels safe might not actually be safe. So often we gravitate toward the things that are familiar and turn away from new things that we haven’t yet adapted to.

Here’s the beautiful part of this: our brains inherently know what needs healing. We recreate our traumatic past in hopes of subconsciously working it out and healing. 

Okay, and now for the hard truth: until we become aware of the ways we have adapted to our trauma, we won’t be able to transform this trauma and do the actual healing work. To go back to our previous metaphor, we need to know we are “swimming” in dysfunction if we want to be able to leave the dysfunctional patterns behind and heal.

Perceiving Healthy Relationships as Threatening

I touched on this briefly before, but it is worth exploring further: a nervous system accustomed to dysfunction may perceive genuinely healthy relationships as threatening. This is why the “nice guy” may seem boring or uninteresting. You may not feel “sparks” with them. If chaos is what you feel comfortable in, then someone who is stable is going to feel extremely unsettling. In fact, you may interpret the stability and support you experience from healthy relationships as foreign and uncomfortable, triggering a stress response.

Let me reiterate: healthy relationships, if you are accustomed to chaos and dysfunction, may trigger a stress response. 

This is where we need to work on teaching our minds and bodies that what is safe is actually safe. If we don’t, we are headed down the road of self-sabotage, where we unintentionally distance ourselves from the people who can love us well.

Let’s Break the Cycle

We have to get to the point where we can recognize and address the impact of our nervous systems normalizing dysfunction. If we don’t, we will find ourselves replicating unsafe situations in our lives and deepening our trauma. 

This is the path forward to trying the new thing–the healing thing. 

If you want to stop normalizing dysfunction, stress, and harmful relationships and find the path toward being able to thrive in healing relationships, sign up for our step-by-step course that will empower you to understand how your nervous system has adapted to trauma and how you can rewire it to actually find, maintain, and thrive in relationships with healthy people who can love you well. 

You deserve to thrive and feel safe in relationships with healthy, loving people.