Why Are Adult Children of Alcoholics Attracted to Toxic People?
Many adult children of alcoholics feel like they are attracted to toxic people. This is an insidious problem I still struggle with. For years, I asked my fellow 12-step members and the numerous therapists I have seen, “Why am I attracted to toxic people?” I have received countless different answers, which only left me more confused, frustrated, and ashamed.
After taking a brutally honest inventory of myself this past year and doing a plethora of research on the subject, I have discovered there is no single explanation for this complicated effect of the disease. Rather, several factors can explain this:
4 Reasons Adult Children of Alcoholics are Attracted to Toxic People
1. We are Attracted to People Who are Similar to Us
It is simply human nature to be drawn to people who are similar to us in terms of personality, worldview, interests, preferences, etc. Our identity is shaped by our upbringing. Therefore, we are drawn to people who have had similar upbringings.
When we are drawn to people who have had similar dysfunctional upbringings, we are bound to also have the same character defects and poor relationship skills. This is why adult children of alcoholic and dysfunctional families often end up being like fire and gasoline, especially in romantic relationships. This is why 12-step meetings are often toxic environments.
This also explains why I often end up befriending people who are the lesser evolved version of me.
2. We Are Attracted to Familiar People and Situations
As much as we may detest our families and upbringings, we often go out into the world as teens and young adults not knowing anything different. Therefore, we are drawn to toxic people and chaotic situations because they feel familiar. This can be seen in the girl who rejects dating normal guys because she finds them “boring” and prefers bad boys because they are “exciting.”
This is not a conscious choice. Usually, this takes place solely on the subconscious level of our minds. Until we become conscious of the unhealthy tendencies that are embedded into our subconscious from our childhoods, our subconscious will continue to rule our lives.
When I was being babysat at my drug-addicted cousins’ house, I was scared every second I was there. However, another part of me found the chaos entertaining because it was similar to my alcoholic home. Hence, I did not make much effort to get out of there. Addiction to adrenaline is one of the defense mechanisms we develop when we are growing up in a chaotic home.
3. We Feel the Need to Fix Others
This is another way our subconscious tends to wreak havoc on our lives. Many of the traits of adult children of alcoholics are synonymous with codependency.
There are many definitions of codependency, but the broadest definition I will use here is it is a set of behaviors that cause us to allow people and external circumstances to make us crazy. This can be due to a lack of boundaries, people-pleasing, controlling, and fixing someone. For our purposes here, I am going to focus on the definition from the book The Doormat Syndrome, which is “an addiction to fixing someone.”
Adult children of alcoholics are often attracted to toxic people because we want to fix them to compensate for not being able to fix our parents. In hindsight, I know this is why I spent years being codependent on my drug-addicted male cousin. Again, this is an entirely subconscious choice.
Another reason adult children of alcoholics want to fix people is because we have a high capacity for empathy to the point of being “empaths.” Empaths are sensitive, intuitive people who can sense who needs healing. We also have a healing aura that may cause broken people to be attracted to us.
4. We Miss the Red Flags
Lastly, the reason adult children of alcoholics are attracted to toxic people is a high tolerance for unacceptable behavior. Therefore, we tend to miss the red flags, which causes us to fail to set boundaries with unhealthy people. This is also why children of alcoholics marry alcoholics. As my former Al-Ateen sponsor once explained:
“A girl ends up dating this bad boy who doesn’t treat her right. She puts up with a lot of disrespect and even abuse. He’s that budding alcoholic who already has the traits of the disease. A few years later, they get married. Boom! What is he? An alcoholic!”
Growing up in alcoholic homes, we had to tolerate our parents being loving, caring, and attentive at times and cold, mean, and neglectful at other times. Often, toxic people and abusers are also like this as well. This causes our minds to revert to their old defense mechanisms of focusing on the “good times” instead of the bad times.
Also, in romantic relationships, people typically miss red flags during the initial attraction phase because those feelings cause us to idealize the person. In other words, we think, “They can do no wrong” in the newness of a romantic relationship.
Caution about the Blame Game
If you are reading this, you may feel inclined to blame your alcoholic/dysfunctional parents for screwing you up. Trust me; I was in that place for many years. However, I have come to learn that there is no one to blame in an alcoholic/dysfunctional family. As you can see from the behavior patterns I discussed in this article, the dysfunction simply gets passed down through the generations because no one has known better to break the cycle. The purpose of this information is not to blame anyone, but to develop the self-awareness to break the cycle.
