Why are we attracted to the people we’re attracted to? Why him? Why her? How does dysfunction and trauma effect our natural attractions and can we shift our attractions? Find out here.

<p>Why are we attracted to the people we’re attracted to? Why him? Why her? How does dysfunction and trauma effect our natural attractions and can we shift our attractions? Find out here.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Freedom Health Ministries

Attraction

Gabriel Arruda

01 Why You’re Attracted to Who You’re Attracted to

02 The 4 Parts of Attraction and Personality Types

03 What Makes People Attractive and Why Attractive People Can Be Dangerous

All right, I wanna talk about something I've been thinking about a lot lately, and that's the idea of attraction.

When it comes to the topic of dating and marriage and finding a potential life partner, You know that we have these principles and perhaps you've been to these conferences where, you know, it talks about these are the features you should look for in a guy, these are the features you should look for in a woman.

You know, with women they go to Proverbs 31, with men they look at the qualifications for like a deacon or elder in the books of Timothy and Titus.

But you know, none of that really matters if you don't address who you're attracted to.

Because I guarantee you're not gonna marry the person who's theologically correct for you to be with.

You're going to marry who you're attracted to.

You're not going to marry someone who you're not attracted to, right?

It's all wonderful advice, but you're going to magnetize with the person who you share attraction with.

And so, if we don't address that, it's really, it's kind of a mute point.

And so we have to deal with the topic of Attraction.

Why am I attracted to the people I'm attracted to?

Because the fact is all of these godly principles will melt in the face of Attraction.

You're gonna hook up with who you're attracted to.

There's a lot of aspects to this, but have you heard of the topic or the concept of trauma bonding?

Who has heard that terminology, trauma bonding?

Can anyone give me what your understanding of that is?

Okay, yeah, yeah, that's a good, that was a good, succinct definition right there.

So the classic definition of trauma bonding was coined by this counselor, Patrick Carnes, and it's the misuse of fear, excitement, sexual feelings, and sexual physiology to entangle another person.

Another working definition is a strong emotional attachment between an abused person and their abuser.

So very similar to gaslighting, Stockholm syndrome typically has 3 cycles that it goes through.

And my point though is that although there's this classical definition that pertains to physical and sexual abuse, there are clinicians and mental health articles that use it more loosely to apply to emotional abuse also, which really makes sense to me.

I mean, I think you could experience a low-level version of trauma bonding where the abuse is just verbal or emotional, someone who's just bad for you and dysfunctional and a lot of the characteristics of classic trauma bonding have a lot of crossover with non-abusive Dysfunctional relationships like being drawn to the dysfunctional characteristics in another person the inability to leave a dysfunctional partner, healthier relationships feeling boring to you, people around you saying you should leave the relationship.

These are all classic trauma bonding things, but they also apply to, I guess what you could say, average standard dysfunctional relationships.

And you guys touched on another concept, which was attachment styles.

Has any of you heard of attachment styles?

Are you aware of like the 3 main attachment styles out there?

So 3 main attachment styles are avoidant, avoidant, which you brought up, anxious, and secure.

And there's sub ones within those, but those are the 3 main attachment styles, avoidant, anxious, and secure.

And what it relates to is what happened in your formative years, how the people, the guardians, the sources of love in your life, how they interacted with you when you had deep needs as a child.

And so, and that kind of sets you up with how you attach or don't attach to people.

So some people, when they feel emotionally close, they're starting to feel like they're getting emotionally close with someone, they will actually run.

Because the last time I got, was really emotionally close to mom and dad, dad took off and so emotionally close equals danger and so they they avoid they have a difficulty and that's the avoidant attachment.

Then there's the anxious and they kind of do the opposite.

The further the parent was away, the more they're like, no, no, no, I need it, I need it.

The more angst and desire they felt for that thing that was not within their grasp.

And then there's secure and there's people who, it's essentially what it sounds like, They received a pretty healthy childhood.

You know, the parents responded to their cues for affection and love.

There are a lot of their needs were met as children.

And they don't have a lot of the insecurities.

It's not like they're insecure free, because we can, the way we live our life, we can add insecurities to ourself as we go on.

But generally speaking, as a foundation, they don't have those same insecurities.

The real challenge and what ends up happening is when an avoidant and a anxious get together.

Can you see how that's a recipe for disaster?

We have a runner who's with a pursuer and a chaser.

And so you get this whole thing where this 1 person's constantly trying to pursue this other person.

And the more they pursued them, the more the avoidant wants to back off, and the more the anxious wants to grab.

And this creates a recipe for disaster, but when you understand attachment styles, you can be a little bit more intentional about the person that you choose as a life partner.

There is this, I don't know if any of you have heard of the Brain People podcast by the clinicians at Beautiful Minds.

You would know about that if you're in the area.

1 of them said something that is, they didn't coin it, but they repeated it and it's just such a true statement.

They say, we marry our unfinished business.

That's, that's a, That's such a true statement.

If you didn't get something from a parent that you should have, a certain validation, you will seek to finish that in a marriage.

And so you will be attracted to a person that has those same type of dysfunctional qualities that were in your parents so you can try to complete that mission that you never were able to complete as a child.

This is just a way our our minds work and it explains why let's take women for example who were raised in a home where the man was a raging violent alcoholic, what kind of guy did they get together with?

You saw how destructive that was to your mom, You saw how destructive that was to your mom.

You saw how destructive that was to your home.

Why did you marry into the very hell that you were raised in?

It's this idea of they're trying to finish, complete their unfinished business.

There's this relationship Researcher who I really like I mean, New York Times bestseller.

You might have heard of him John Gottman He's 7 principles for making marriage work Excellent work get this he recounts the stories of women and abusive relationships in which they were habitual targets of violence.

So they were either their boyfriend or their husband was a violent man and they were the targets of that violence regularly.

He was astonished, him and his researchers were astonished when they told them that some of the best sex they had followed immediately after acts of violence.

And we're adults here, I'm gonna speak in adult language.

There's such a thing as makeup sex and breakup sex.

Why would the best sex a couple has be like right after a make-up or a break-up?

There's reasons for why that stuff, it's renowned.

In a book called What Do Women Want, The author recounts this lady, her name was Isabel, and she noticed that she would get excited or attracted to, She would not be attracted or excited by her boyfriend who was very respectable, very gentle, very nice, but she was magnetically drawn to the jerks who she knew would not be there for her, who she knew would never commit to her, who would encourage her to dress trashy.

Series

Attraction

01 Why You’re Attracted to Who You’re Attracted to

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Romantic Relationship Seminar

02 How God Prepares You for Your Spouse

49m

Relationships and Family Life

My ‘Single’ Desire

1h 24m

When it’s not Good for Man to be Alone

1h 9m

The 7 Secrets of a Successful Love Story

49m

Singleness, Dating, and Relationships in the Church

Swipe Right, Part 2

37m

“Singly-Minded”

1h

Alan and Nicole Parker: Letting God Write Your Love Story

Single and Satisfied

58m

Singleness, Marriage and Divorce

35m

God's Love Stories (Noon Meetings)

10. Doing Right

43m

Biblical Relationships (Afternoon meetings)

Overcoming the Myths of Marriage

32m

God’s Design for Marriage

37m

The God-Arranged and Blessed Marriage

Let Her Be the One

1h 2m

Sound Doctrine