This is a very good explanation of how an intelligent person can get pulled into an abusive relationship and why it's so hard to leave. I would never go down that road again, but I've been there and thought he was the love of my life for a time. Now I have zero tolerance for disrespect.
Jennie has done a post on the book, "Why Does He Do That? (Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men)" by Lundy Bancroft, which is an excellent resource if you're wanting to get out of an abusive relationship or avoid getting into one or want to support others who are in those types of relationships. I'm mentioning again, for anyone who hasn't seen that post. Such a good book.
I'm not sure any of us could even find it -- I think that was a discussion in the facebook group. 😬 Suffice it to say it's an incredible book. Anyone who's spent time entangled with a toxic/abusive man should read it. Even if that's in the past, it will help you understand the patterns you may not have been able to see at the time.
Absolutely - even after reading lots and talking to a couple of counsellors after a toxic marriage and traumatic divorce I was amazed at what I didn’t know.
This book saved my life, along with a prose piece by LB called EVER WONDER WHY YOUR ABUSIVE PARTNER HATES YOU? In retrospect of your article its probably what snapped me out of the ludic loop I'd been stuck in for years by simply answering WHY.
sidenote: I recently discovered your writing and it's been just as valuable and insightful for me as Lundy's was back in the day. I'm so glad I found it and thank you!
"Uncoupling: Turning Points in Intimate Relationships" is also a great book. It uncovers patterns on both sides, mostly how both expect the other to change. One major pattern in the book is that the person most unhappy in the relationship is often the one who doesn't have the courage to do the break up. Then they make their partner's life miserable to inspire them to break up. It's a very hurtful pattern. When I read the book, I saw the signs, and did the breaking up myself. It probably saved me months of agony. https://a.co/d/7WvWBBD
Breaking this cycle, is one of the most difficult things I've had to do. Now I immediately recognize the 'unhealthy' matches and immediately remove them. It has further 'thinned out' the already narrow dating pool.
Holy. Shit. I've heard these phenomena explained before, but the way these are named here makes all the difference, especially "attractions of deprivation." Wow.
The *encouraging* thing here is that the same intellectual flexibility that renders us susceptible to falling into these patterns renders us able to identify and escape them. (actually going to add this point to the article right now; I think it's important)
I've been studying what I thought was a failing in me for a long time. When I got sober from alcohol in 2014, I learned pretty quickly that the thing underneath the thing for me was attachment trauma. I had spent much of my life chasing love, even as a little girl. That initial attachment trauma set up an unconscious obsession with "fixing" the deprivation cycle (this is clumsy wording, but after a decade, I'm really starting to put it together). I have always been drawn to men who would do this dance with me and rejected ones who didn't because those connections didn't feel like 'love.' We have cultural tropes for this, e.g. 'liking the bad boys' but that makes it sound cutesy or edgy, or perhaps just immature, not something that can really fuck up your life.
I learned about love addiction after I hit a total emotional rock bottom four years into sobriety, but while some of the symptoms of love addiction make sense, I can't quite get down with another label that stigmatizes something so totally normal and natural and human. And it has nothing to do with love! It's a process addiction, really, that's tied into our attachment system at the deepest level.
I'm currently wondering if folks, like me, who have struggled with substance addiction, are more vulnerable to this. I know we're all vulnerable from a neuroscientific perspective, but I'm thinking there's a spectrum. When I tell you these types of relationships/situations have almost ruined me, I mean it. I was never suicidal in my drinking, even in the worst of it, but this? This can really make me not want to be here. All this to say, thank you for bringing light to everything you do. It's helping me put together a lot of disparate pieces. Ironically, I'm writing a memoir about all of this, and I just came out of one of these attractions of deprivation that made me feel like even after ten years of recovery and SO MUCH WORK, I hadn't made any progress at all. But it's not true. xo
Oh my gosh Laura!!! I don't know if you remember me from the HOMEies days but it is wild to see this overlap! I could have written everything you said. I got sober 9 years ago and only in the past 1-2 years have I realized so much of my addiction was a coping mechanism to deal with attachment trauma (primarily kicked off by my mother, who is a walking ludic loop of shame and disappointment and chaos), but then reinforced by the self-victimization I put myself through in bad relationships. When I got sober, I thought I fixed the problem. I was emotionally stable, happy, resilient, had a great life and community. Until I tried to date again - and then all the same patterns resurfaced and I felt SUBMERGED.
Like you say, relationship suffering has been the worst pain I have ever endured, despite objectively worse things happening to me, because it triggers this primal wound. I am dying to read your memoir because I get it - some days it feels like I have made zero progress at all (I likewise got out of an attraction of deprivation earlier this year that felt SO RIGHT and then devastated me when it was clearly wrong, and I felt like I was back to square one). But we HAVE made progress - even just by acknowledging what is happening and being able to stand outside of it with reflection.
My two cents, if they're helpful: there is nothing pathological about wanting love and connection. It makes SENSE that we feel bereft when we don't get this and so greatly want it and need it from a human psychological standpoint. For those of us with primal attachment wounds, it makes EVEN MORE sense. We did not have our needs met as children or young adults and in a sense, we learned to internalize the fact that our needs were not met as a source of shame: we are "too needy." But really, we just need to develop more tools for orienting our search towards people who can hopefully meet that need in us.
Thank you for sharing your story. In response, my own experience is that I've struggled with this but with zero substance, or any other kind of addiction. Not booze, drugs, food, gambling, nothing at all.... other than this dance you speak of.
Hoping, with the help of Jennie's wonderful knowledge, and the work I've done in the past 8 years, to be able to swerve this now. I'm 61, should that be relevant to you at all.
Your work is working! I grew up in a family where SUD was the norm. In ACA I learned to go for love and support. I feel good most of the time now. And I'll keep doing the work to break apart being drawn to feeling bad... especially the way I do it to myself.
Misa Hopkins offers occasional free workshops on the feminine ways of healing, which are based on holding everything with compassion. I think there is deep wisdom well, I know there is. She is a lineage holder for native American women's healing traditions. Profoundly powerful gentleness.
I started following you when I started to get sober in 2017 and have read both of your books. Sobriety is my new normal but I‘m still stuck in an unhappy marriage. I‘m the daughter of an alcoholic mother who herself was stuck in a toxic marriage. I have an anxious attachment style and recently found out that both my husband and I are neurodivergent (him AUDHD, me ADHD) which comes with its own trauma history if undiagnosed or late diagnosed. I guess it’s what you call a trauma bond and that’s why it’s so hard to leave. I was so hopeful for you when it seemed that you had found love. Here‘s to liberation and a better 2025!
Oof. Boy do I feel seen. "Attraction of deprivation" soooo accurately describes my last relationship, one that has been over for a couple of years and I still can't quite seem to shake. This context is so helpful.
This especially got to me:
- Are you inspired by your partner's goodness and decency? - NOPE
- Is your love fueled by respect for the kind of person your partner is? - NOPE
- Are you and your partner willing to do the hard work of healing the relationship's areas of weakness? - NOPE
I *knew* at the time he wasn't a mensch. A friend of mine, Amy Kraus Rosenthal, famously wrote a piece for the NYT when she was dying titled "You Should Date My Husband" recommending her supremely decent man to his future partners.
I read that an knew I could never write anything like that about my ex. I *knew* he wasn't who my friends or family would pick for me. I *knew* if I was 20 years younger and looking for a father for my children he wouldn't be a good candidate.
And yet, the chemistry. The connection. The fun. The way he made me feel like the prettiest girl in the room.
He never put me down or made me feel less than, but he absolutely kept the relationship precarious.
Ha, same word going through my head when I read those questions: NOPE. 5 years, the last one of which I’ve broken up with him about 5 times. We’re currently broken up and I am hoping this time it will “take.” I feel so weak that I keep going back to him, but having the attractions named and explained gives me the intellectual edge to argue against myself.
you can do it <3 if it feels right for you, develop a strategy? like read that article if you want to go back, or call the national dv hotline, or go to a group at your local dv shelter?
I've read and reread this. Right now, it's a huge wow. Wow, wow, wow. I had been on the apps for almost two years when I ran into a woman who I used to work with and she told me about Burned Haystack. I have learned so much and this is the cherry on top as far as learning goes. Wow. Thanks
I don't think they're going away. I think they're going to change because they kind of have to (they're all in financial decline), but I don't think anyone yet knows how. AI is going to be a big part of it.
All of it. That's true of everything related to Burned Haystack Method®. If you want to take a course on it, you can do so here: https://rhetoricinreallife.substack.com/archive (scroll all the way to the bottom and work your way up; the course applies burned haystack methodology and theory to the rest of life).
ok, someone explain this to me? the math isn't mathing, how can more women be partnered than men? yes, i know about same sex partnership, but can the number of women partnered with women be 30%?
from the article " According to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey, 63 percent of men under 30 said they were single, compared to only 34 percent of women in the same age cohort. "
Attractions of deprivation remind me of something I read once: are your feelings coming from a place of lack, or a place of abundance? This mindset shift places you on more stable footing if you feel confident you will be okay with or without a relationship, and that you have a lot to offer.
This is a very good explanation of how an intelligent person can get pulled into an abusive relationship and why it's so hard to leave. I would never go down that road again, but I've been there and thought he was the love of my life for a time. Now I have zero tolerance for disrespect.
Jennie has done a post on the book, "Why Does He Do That? (Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men)" by Lundy Bancroft, which is an excellent resource if you're wanting to get out of an abusive relationship or avoid getting into one or want to support others who are in those types of relationships. I'm mentioning again, for anyone who hasn't seen that post. Such a good book.
Could someone post the link for this? I'd love to read her take on that book.
I'm not sure any of us could even find it -- I think that was a discussion in the facebook group. 😬 Suffice it to say it's an incredible book. Anyone who's spent time entangled with a toxic/abusive man should read it. Even if that's in the past, it will help you understand the patterns you may not have been able to see at the time.
Absolutely - even after reading lots and talking to a couple of counsellors after a toxic marriage and traumatic divorce I was amazed at what I didn’t know.
so many councilors aren't educated about abuse, which is nuts because it's so common, but they just aren't.
This book saved my life, along with a prose piece by LB called EVER WONDER WHY YOUR ABUSIVE PARTNER HATES YOU? In retrospect of your article its probably what snapped me out of the ludic loop I'd been stuck in for years by simply answering WHY.
sidenote: I recently discovered your writing and it's been just as valuable and insightful for me as Lundy's was back in the day. I'm so glad I found it and thank you!
Here’s a link to read the book online for free, in case you’re not in a position to purchase the book:
https://dn790007.ca.archive.org/0/items/LundyWhyDoesHeDoThat/Lundy_Why-does-he-do-that.pdf
"Uncoupling: Turning Points in Intimate Relationships" is also a great book. It uncovers patterns on both sides, mostly how both expect the other to change. One major pattern in the book is that the person most unhappy in the relationship is often the one who doesn't have the courage to do the break up. Then they make their partner's life miserable to inspire them to break up. It's a very hurtful pattern. When I read the book, I saw the signs, and did the breaking up myself. It probably saved me months of agony. https://a.co/d/7WvWBBD
here's a link to that book https://ia801407.us.archive.org/6/items/LundyWhyDoesHeDoThat/Lundy_Why-does-he-do-that.pdf
Breaking this cycle, is one of the most difficult things I've had to do. Now I immediately recognize the 'unhealthy' matches and immediately remove them. It has further 'thinned out' the already narrow dating pool.
Holy. Shit. I've heard these phenomena explained before, but the way these are named here makes all the difference, especially "attractions of deprivation." Wow.
The *encouraging* thing here is that the same intellectual flexibility that renders us susceptible to falling into these patterns renders us able to identify and escape them. (actually going to add this point to the article right now; I think it's important)
I've been studying what I thought was a failing in me for a long time. When I got sober from alcohol in 2014, I learned pretty quickly that the thing underneath the thing for me was attachment trauma. I had spent much of my life chasing love, even as a little girl. That initial attachment trauma set up an unconscious obsession with "fixing" the deprivation cycle (this is clumsy wording, but after a decade, I'm really starting to put it together). I have always been drawn to men who would do this dance with me and rejected ones who didn't because those connections didn't feel like 'love.' We have cultural tropes for this, e.g. 'liking the bad boys' but that makes it sound cutesy or edgy, or perhaps just immature, not something that can really fuck up your life.
I learned about love addiction after I hit a total emotional rock bottom four years into sobriety, but while some of the symptoms of love addiction make sense, I can't quite get down with another label that stigmatizes something so totally normal and natural and human. And it has nothing to do with love! It's a process addiction, really, that's tied into our attachment system at the deepest level.
I'm currently wondering if folks, like me, who have struggled with substance addiction, are more vulnerable to this. I know we're all vulnerable from a neuroscientific perspective, but I'm thinking there's a spectrum. When I tell you these types of relationships/situations have almost ruined me, I mean it. I was never suicidal in my drinking, even in the worst of it, but this? This can really make me not want to be here. All this to say, thank you for bringing light to everything you do. It's helping me put together a lot of disparate pieces. Ironically, I'm writing a memoir about all of this, and I just came out of one of these attractions of deprivation that made me feel like even after ten years of recovery and SO MUCH WORK, I hadn't made any progress at all. But it's not true. xo
Oh my gosh Laura!!! I don't know if you remember me from the HOMEies days but it is wild to see this overlap! I could have written everything you said. I got sober 9 years ago and only in the past 1-2 years have I realized so much of my addiction was a coping mechanism to deal with attachment trauma (primarily kicked off by my mother, who is a walking ludic loop of shame and disappointment and chaos), but then reinforced by the self-victimization I put myself through in bad relationships. When I got sober, I thought I fixed the problem. I was emotionally stable, happy, resilient, had a great life and community. Until I tried to date again - and then all the same patterns resurfaced and I felt SUBMERGED.
Like you say, relationship suffering has been the worst pain I have ever endured, despite objectively worse things happening to me, because it triggers this primal wound. I am dying to read your memoir because I get it - some days it feels like I have made zero progress at all (I likewise got out of an attraction of deprivation earlier this year that felt SO RIGHT and then devastated me when it was clearly wrong, and I felt like I was back to square one). But we HAVE made progress - even just by acknowledging what is happening and being able to stand outside of it with reflection.
My two cents, if they're helpful: there is nothing pathological about wanting love and connection. It makes SENSE that we feel bereft when we don't get this and so greatly want it and need it from a human psychological standpoint. For those of us with primal attachment wounds, it makes EVEN MORE sense. We did not have our needs met as children or young adults and in a sense, we learned to internalize the fact that our needs were not met as a source of shame: we are "too needy." But really, we just need to develop more tools for orienting our search towards people who can hopefully meet that need in us.
And yes I totally remember you!
Hi!! :) Lots of overlap in these worlds. I get everything you’re saying.
Thank you for sharing your story. In response, my own experience is that I've struggled with this but with zero substance, or any other kind of addiction. Not booze, drugs, food, gambling, nothing at all.... other than this dance you speak of.
Hoping, with the help of Jennie's wonderful knowledge, and the work I've done in the past 8 years, to be able to swerve this now. I'm 61, should that be relevant to you at all.
All the best x
Your work is working! I grew up in a family where SUD was the norm. In ACA I learned to go for love and support. I feel good most of the time now. And I'll keep doing the work to break apart being drawn to feeling bad... especially the way I do it to myself.
Misa Hopkins offers occasional free workshops on the feminine ways of healing, which are based on holding everything with compassion. I think there is deep wisdom well, I know there is. She is a lineage holder for native American women's healing traditions. Profoundly powerful gentleness.
I started following you when I started to get sober in 2017 and have read both of your books. Sobriety is my new normal but I‘m still stuck in an unhappy marriage. I‘m the daughter of an alcoholic mother who herself was stuck in a toxic marriage. I have an anxious attachment style and recently found out that both my husband and I are neurodivergent (him AUDHD, me ADHD) which comes with its own trauma history if undiagnosed or late diagnosed. I guess it’s what you call a trauma bond and that’s why it’s so hard to leave. I was so hopeful for you when it seemed that you had found love. Here‘s to liberation and a better 2025!
This was my exact reaction to learning all this.
Oof. Boy do I feel seen. "Attraction of deprivation" soooo accurately describes my last relationship, one that has been over for a couple of years and I still can't quite seem to shake. This context is so helpful.
This especially got to me:
- Are you inspired by your partner's goodness and decency? - NOPE
- Is your love fueled by respect for the kind of person your partner is? - NOPE
- Are you and your partner willing to do the hard work of healing the relationship's areas of weakness? - NOPE
I *knew* at the time he wasn't a mensch. A friend of mine, Amy Kraus Rosenthal, famously wrote a piece for the NYT when she was dying titled "You Should Date My Husband" recommending her supremely decent man to his future partners.
I read that an knew I could never write anything like that about my ex. I *knew* he wasn't who my friends or family would pick for me. I *knew* if I was 20 years younger and looking for a father for my children he wouldn't be a good candidate.
And yet, the chemistry. The connection. The fun. The way he made me feel like the prettiest girl in the room.
He never put me down or made me feel less than, but he absolutely kept the relationship precarious.
Here's knowing better and doing better.
Ha, same word going through my head when I read those questions: NOPE. 5 years, the last one of which I’ve broken up with him about 5 times. We’re currently broken up and I am hoping this time it will “take.” I feel so weak that I keep going back to him, but having the attractions named and explained gives me the intellectual edge to argue against myself.
you can do it <3 if it feels right for you, develop a strategy? like read that article if you want to go back, or call the national dv hotline, or go to a group at your local dv shelter?
I've read and reread this. Right now, it's a huge wow. Wow, wow, wow. I had been on the apps for almost two years when I ran into a woman who I used to work with and she told me about Burned Haystack. I have learned so much and this is the cherry on top as far as learning goes. Wow. Thanks
You are so very welcome, and thank you for being here! (and for your very kind words ❤️)
"Ludic Loop"....the definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result.
Have not heard of these concepts before but, boy oh boy, what a game changer for me!
This is brilliant, and so helpful thank you.
Super interesting! These dating apps are something! My 21 year old thinks they are going to eventually go away. At 57, I think they will stay around.
I don't think they're going away. I think they're going to change because they kind of have to (they're all in financial decline), but I don't think anyone yet knows how. AI is going to be a big part of it.
Wow! I'd like to see Jenny develop one with AI. She could teach AI a thing or two!!!
Can any of this be relevant to non romantic relationships as well? 🤔
All of it. That's true of everything related to Burned Haystack Method®. If you want to take a course on it, you can do so here: https://rhetoricinreallife.substack.com/archive (scroll all the way to the bottom and work your way up; the course applies burned haystack methodology and theory to the rest of life).
Every single word. Gently, lovingly walking away from each attraction of deprivation I uncover, including those in my self talk, changed my life.
Every single word. Gently, lovingly walking away from each attraction of deprivation I uncover, including those in my self talk, changed my life.
In my experience embracing attractions-of-inspiration became easier. I practice all the time.
Hey. Not sure how to reach you. I know you get a lot of messages, @Jennie FYI: https://www.vox.com/explain-it-to-me/399280/young-men-dating-struggles-single
Thank you!
ok, someone explain this to me? the math isn't mathing, how can more women be partnered than men? yes, i know about same sex partnership, but can the number of women partnered with women be 30%?
from the article " According to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey, 63 percent of men under 30 said they were single, compared to only 34 percent of women in the same age cohort. "
Women, particularly young women, tend to partner with older men. Sapphic and other non-masc identifying relationships
I love this artwork.
Oh me too. Andrea Kowch -- check her out, she's amazing.
You’ve done it again, Jennie! Gave me a new perspective …I adore you!
Aww, thank you. Learning these concepts was GAME-CHANGING for me, so I'm happy to share!
That Ken Page book is so good! I appreciate that you weaved it into this piece. Well done!
Attractions of deprivation remind me of something I read once: are your feelings coming from a place of lack, or a place of abundance? This mindset shift places you on more stable footing if you feel confident you will be okay with or without a relationship, and that you have a lot to offer.