Lewis Howes once asked Robert Greene, “Why is the human brain so turned on by drama — by unhealthy love?”
Greene laughed: “I’d be a billionaire if I could answer that. I’d be the ultimate doctor of love.”
But maybe it’s not such a mystery after all.
Why? Well, because so many of us do it.
We find ourselves pulled toward the unpredictable. The person who leaves us waiting, wondering, guessing. The person who burns hot and then goes cold, whose inconsistency is so dizzying it feels like passion.
We think it’s fate. Chemistry. A story worthy of a song. But most of the time, it’s just our nervous system doing what it knows best.
The hidden science of why we’re drawn to the wrong people
Here’s the most quietly devastating truth I know: Your brain isn’t really chasing people. It’s chasing patterns.
From the time you were small, your brain learned what love felt like. Whether that was tenderness and security… or walking on eggshells, or longing, or trying to earn affection that came and went. Your childhood was your first blueprint. Your nervous system tuned itself to those rhythms like a radio, setting a baseline that would come to feel like “home.”
So when you grow up, you don’t consciously scan for a partner who replicates those old wounds. Your nervous system does it for you.
It lights up around familiar emotional frequencies. Even if those frequencies are chaotic or unsafe.
Love isn’t just emotional. It’s chemical
We romanticize this. We say, “I can’t help who I’m attracted to. I just feel this insane pull.”
And you really do.
Why? Because your brain floods with dopamine when someone is unpredictable — rewarding your anticipation. It bathes you in cortisol when you’re anxiously waiting for their reply. It spikes oxytocin after inconsistent bursts of closeness, hooking you in like a gambler chasing one more win.
Your mind calls this love. Your body experiences it as addiction.
Familiar isn’t safe. It’s just known
That’s why so many people say calm love feels boring at first.
Why stable affection makes them restless.
Why they break off gentle connections in search of the high.
Because their nervous systems were forged in fire. They equate calm with danger (it feels unfamiliar, so it feels wrong) — and confusion or longing with intimacy (because it feels like the chaos they survived).
This isn’t your fault. It’s your biology trying to recreate what it knows, hoping to finally master it.
The real heartbreak (and the real hope)
The tragedy is that until you heal those patterns inside, your brain will keep tugging you toward people who help you re-enact them. Over and over. Not because it’s cruel. Because it’s wired to resolve the story.
But here’s the astonishing grace in all of this:
You can change it.
When you start to regulate your nervous system — to calm it, to give it new experiences of safety and tenderness — your attractions change too. What your brain once labeled “exciting,” it will slowly learn to see as stressful.
What it once called “boring,” it will start to recognize as peace.
It won’t happen overnight. Your body is learning a new language.
But one day you’ll meet someone who offers steady, gentle love, and instead of recoiling, you’ll breathe deeper.
That day, you’ll stop confusing your trauma’s voice for your intuition.
That day, you’ll see that calm isn’t the absence of love. It’s proof of it.
A gentle question to end on
What might it feel like to call off the search for fireworks, and start seeking a quiet hearth instead? Not a blaze that devours you — just a warm place to rest your heart.
Because your nervous system isn’t your enemy.It’s just trying to finish an old story.
And what if, this time, you wrote an entirely new ending?
✨ If this resonates, you can explore more on safe love, healing your patterns, and nervous system wisdom at My Safe Love Project.
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