Why Does This Keep Happening?

A woman I spoke with recently had been divorced for several years and was trying to date again. She told me she was exhausted by online dating. Again and again, she found herself attracted to men who seemed confident, successful, attractive, and exciting. They knew exactly what to say, made a great first impression, and seemed to have their lives together.

But after a few weeks or months, the same pattern kept emerging. Many of these men turned out to be emotionally unavailable, self-centered, controlling, or showed clear narcissistic traits.

Finally, she asked me a question I’ve heard many times over the years:

“Why do I keep choosing these men?”

Her experience wasn’t unique. It’s a conversation I’ve had with many clients.

My answer surprised her.

“Evolution may deserve some of the blame — but it’s probably not the whole story.”

Here’s one explanation many evolutionary psychologists point to. Our attraction systems weren’t shaped primarily to help us find a compatible lifelong partner. They were shaped, at least in part, by pressures related to survival and reproduction in a very different environment than the one we live in now.

For most of human history, people weren’t evaluating potential mates by asking whether they’d be emotionally available twenty years later or make an equal partner in raising children. Researchers who study mate selection argue that our ancestors were often making rapid judgments about who appeared healthy, capable, confident, and likely to survive in a difficult world, and that some of those instincts still shape our attraction today.

If that’s true, it would help explain why traits like confidence, social status, ambition, physical attractiveness, decisiveness, and charisma tend to grab our attention so quickly. In an ancestral environment, those qualities may have signaled strength and competence.

The problem is that today’s world is very different. Many of those same traits can just as easily be displayed by someone who is manipulative, narcissistic, or emotionally unhealthy.

Confidence can be mistaken for arrogance. Charm can be mistaken for manipulation. Passion can be mistaken for love bombing. Certainty can be mistaken for emotional maturity.

What you experience as powerful chemistry may simply be a very effective first impression. And this isn’t just a theory, researchers Back, Schmukle, and Egloff, in a well-known 2010 study, found that people with more narcissistic traits were consistently rated as more attractive and likable by strangers in first encounters, largely because of how they dressed, carried themselves, and spoke. The advantage faded the longer people knew them.

To be clear: this doesn’t mean confident people are narcissists. Most aren’t. It does mean that people with narcissistic traits often become exceptionally skilled at displaying the very qualities that catch our attention fastest. They know how to create excitement, certainty, and emotional intensity long before you have enough information to judge their character.

Online dating may amplify this problem. Profiles reward confidence. First dates reward confidence. Social media rewards confidence. Many of the qualities that predict a healthy long-term relationship; kindness, humility, empathy, accountability, and emotional stability may take weeks or months to reveal themselves. They rarely create the same immediate excitement.

This is one piece of why so many intelligent, thoughtful people repeatedly find themselves attracted to partners who later become controlling, dismissive, or emotionally abusive. It isn’t because they’re weak, unintelligent, or “broken.” Sometimes an attraction system built for a different world is part of the picture, alongside other factors, like relationship history and what someone learned early on about love and conflict, which matter just as much and are often more useful to work through in practice.

The encouraging news: you can’t rewrite your instincts, but you can learn to notice when they’re leading you somewhere you don’t actually want to go.

Instead of asking only, “How strongly am I attracted to this person?”, start asking different questions.

How do they respond when they’re disappointed? Can they admit a mistake without becoming defensive? How do they treat people who have nothing to offer them? Can they tolerate disagreement without becoming angry or contemptuous — one of the strongest predictors researchers have found of a relationship in trouble? Do their actions consistently match their words?

Those questions won’t give you the same rush as instant chemistry. But they’re far better predictors of the relationship you’ll actually have a year from now.

Real compatibility isn’t determined by who excites you the fastest. It’s determined by who consistently demonstrates empathy, integrity, emotional maturity, and respect over time.

The goal isn’t to ignore attraction. Attraction matters. The goal is to recognize that attraction should begin the conversation….. not end it.

Check out my free online guide on narcissistic relationships.

A Classic Psychology Book Recommendation

One book I recommend if you want to know more about this topic is The Evolution of Desire by David M. Buss David Buss is one of the founders of evolutionary psychology, and the book explores why humans are attracted to particular traits, how mate selection evolved, and why some relationship patterns are surprisingly universal. It doesn’t focus on narcissism, but it provides the scientific foundation for this article.