PERSONALITY DISORDERS
4 Lies You Are Told About What Attracts Abusive Personalities
and what actually attracts them
I have heard such nonsense about what attracts people with personality disorders on the internet. I am diagnosed with a personality disorder, and in my experience, a lot of the stuff I’ve seen are nothing but myths.
Here are the four biggest misconceptions:
1. Empathic People
Most people with personality disorders believe empathy is a weakness. As a result, they are not attracted to empathetic and kind people. In fact, they are likely to find these people repulsive and unattractive due to their dysfunctional belief that empathy is a bad trait. In addition, they may believe people are feigning empathy to try to manipulate them and are unlikely to trust people’s attempts to empathise with them.
In other words, the whole idea that narcissists or other abusers like empaths is absolute nonsense. Some victims may call themselves empaths, but in fact, most victims actually have a personality disorder (co-dependency is also a personality disorder). This means most victims actually lack empathy, and I discussed this here:
Opposites do NOT attract. We like people who are similar to ourselves. If you ended up in a dysfunctional relationship with someone who has attachment issues, the chances are you also have attachment issues. If you are dating someone who lacks empathy, the chances are you also lack empathy.
2. Strong/Confident People
As I mentioned above, people with personality disorders date each other, and people with these disorders (regardless of which one) are not strong or confident. Healthy and securely attached adults are strong and confident. Most people who have experienced childhood trauma cannot internalise properly due to lacking certain emotions because their brains are underdeveloped. This results in black and white thinking, which leads to high levels of insecurity. I have discussed this here:
3. Healthy/Securely Attached People
Once again, people with personality disorders date each other, and mutual abuse is the most common form of IPV (Stets & Murray, 1992). Even when only one partner is abusive, the victim likely has Dependent Personality Disorder (co-dependency). If you have a history of childhood trauma, you will attract people with a history of childhood trauma.
The chances are that even if someone with a personality disorder gets involved with someone healthy and securely attached, this relationship would likely be short-lived, and they would lose attraction rather quickly. The only exception to this I have seen are people who have attended long-term therapy and therefore were able to become more securely attached, allowing them to form healthy relationships.
4. Virgins or “Pure” People
This one drives me nuts because those with personality disorders actually like promiscuous people. Even if it’s a guy who claims women should be virgins or pure or whatever, in the end, he will still be attracted to promiscuous women. I have actually had this happen to me. I had a brief encounter with a guy like this who became obsessed with my promiscuity. He started exaggerating it due to how black and white he was — he started thinking I was self-trashing with random men on a daily basis.
This was during the lockdown as well, so I hadn’t had sex in months, but I found his fantasy that I was out looking for random men to have sex with every day hilarious, so I just let him get carried away with it. He basically wanted to “save” me from a life of promiscuity. And needless to say, he was not at all pleased when I didn’t let him do that.
Women also develop some sort of saviour complex over bad guys — they want to be the ones to change them. Another reason for this is purely narcissistic. It would make someone feel special if they were with a person who had been promiscuous all their lives but decided to change for them. It would imply that they are unique and give them an ego boost.
For me, I like promiscuous men because it suits my attachment style. I find intimacy disgusting, and my partner sleeping with other women makes the relationship feel less intimate for me. I am also attracted to immoral personality traits. So promiscuity can satisfy different needs for different people depending on their attachment style and past trauma. In general, though, I believe there is a high fantasy element in anything that involves promiscuity. I’m sure there are men out there who specifically prefer virgins, but I find this to be the exception rather than the norm.
So who are people with personality disorders attracted to?
There is something called a Madonna/Whore Complex, which most people with personality disorders suffer from. As a result, they feel attraction to men and women who exhibit the traits of both Madonnas and Whores.
This personality is made up of the following:
(The scale was developed by Sam Vaknin, who is diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder himself.)
- Promiscuity
- Self-trashing behaviours (reckless, impulsive, irresponsible, etc)
- Full proud disclosure of the above two traits (shamelessness)
- High level of personality organisation
- High self-efficacy
The person who has these traits is essentially both a Madonna (good) and a Whore (bad). They have personality traits that are considered immoral, such as sleeping around and engaging in reckless and irresponsible behaviours like drug use, whilst having a stable personality with a high sense of self-worth who is capable of reaching their goals. The more of these traits someone has, the more attractive they will be to people with personality disorders.
I would challenge the high self-esteem part — in my opinion, as long as you have the appearance of having a high self-esteem, it should work. In fact, this would work even better than genuine confidence because people with personality disorders are very black and white. They see you as one trait or the other — in their mind, you cannot possibly have some insecurities whilst being a confident person. So for them, you are all or nothing — either one or the other.
Someone who is mimicking the appearance of high self-esteem is likely to present exaggerated confidence claiming nothing ever gets them down, they never feel anxious or they can never be hurt and affected by others. Someone with genuine confidence will openly admit to having vulnerabilities and not being some sort of superhuman. Someone with black-and-white thinking is more likely to believe the fake displays of confidence as opposed to recognising someone with genuinely high self-esteem.
I can also readily attest to this personality having a powerful effect. I met the only guy with a full Madonna/Whore personality that I have ever seen last summer, and the attraction was instantaneous. When I took a cab back home from his, I just knew then and there that I was going to like him — I had never experienced that level of attraction just from one date before. From anecdotal experience, I can also say that this personality attracts most people, not just those with personality disorders.
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