Ozymandias42 at the great NSWATM blog has written a long post that attempts to answer this question. I usually like everything this talented blogger writes. In this post, however, nothing resonated with me as even remotely true or useful. The post offers a collection of extremely superficial explanations that people use to hide from the real reason why jerks attract them like a magnet.
The real answer – albeit one that many people try to avoid – is that some of us get attracted to jerks for exactly the same reason that some get attracted to adoring, caring, amazing partners.
As we grow up, we observe the couple that is the closest to us and learn what it means to be in a relationship from that couple. If what we see is a jerk who is abusing, insulting and victimizing the adult (parent, relative, grandparent, guardian, sibling) we identify with, we will spend our entire life enacting and reenacting this pattern with the jerk and abuser of our own (or, more likely, a string of jerks and abusers). If, however, we saw the adult we identify with being adored and worshiped by his or her partner, we will spend our entire life being idolized and loved by the partners we choose.
As a result, we often see two groups of people forming. One consists of firm believers in the “all men are jerks” or “all women are bitches” philosophy. And they are right in a way. The only kind of men (or women) their early experiences conditioned them to meet are, indeed, jerks (or bitches.) Members of the second group have only seen wonderful things from the men (women) in their lives and are spoiled enough to believe that their partner has victimized them by forgetting to bring them flowers one week.
There is, of course, an entire spectrum of possibilities between these two extremes. Each of these possibilities, however, relies on the relational model one absorbed while growing up.
Every statement of the “all men ( women) are / want / prefer/ believe XYZ” can be deciphered as “the significant adult I observed when I was growing up was / wanted / preferred XYZ, so now I have to believe all men (women) are this way because that is all I know.”
So if you are a “Nice Guy” who is constantly used and discarded by women (or the female equivalent thereof*), remember that analyzing the motives of the women (or men) who consistently mistreat you is a huge waste of time. Their motives for treating you badly are exactly the same as your motives for pursuing those people who are the most likely to treat you like garbage.
And I really hope that my readers are enlightened enough not to need a reminder that this is not a gender issue. Discussing it as if it were is an avoidance strategy. Such childish avoidance bores me, so I hope that people don’t bring it to my blog**.
* You can see that female equivalent rendered beautifully in Sex and City. Women who gather in groups to repeat like a mantra “we are so fantastic, smart, stunning and successful, so why does nobody want us?” are the equivalent of the proverbial Nice Guys. Both groups have absolutely no interest in being in a relationship. All they want is vent their grievances towards an offending parental figure through the medium of “all men” or “all women.” Both groups are heavily homosocial and have no use for the opposite gender (except as a pretext for bonding with their own gender group.)
** The reason why I put this disclaimer in the post is that I tried reading the comments to Ozymandias42’s post. Oy, people. And once again, oy.
Clarissa's Blog 
B b b but! “Sex and the City” was such an empowering show for the ladies! Serious professionals blow complete strangers in their offices and drool over the expensive shoes they prefer to other human beings. Just like all real life women! Or is that just me?
A lot of television went into my own psychological and social development. It’s been a hell of a job deprogramming. [pun!]
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Product placement aside, the show resonated because the number of such emotionally stunted, intellectually undeveloped, profoundly immature people who try to theorize their personal limitations with some general “wisdoms” about men and women is huge. Look at my recent post on the death of the GMP blog. The male founder of the blog I quoted there repeats verbatim some of the favorite commonplaces of Sex and the City.
Yet again, this is not a gender issue. Immaturity has no gender.
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Otherwise said high-esteem individuals attract high-esteem individuals, low self-esteem individuals attract other low self- esteem individuals who are generally manipulative and prone to sadistic and masochistic behaviours.
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Not at all. I don’t see how this follows in the least. If the couple you are imitating had one low self-esteem person and one high self-esteem person, that’s what you will replicate. If you are imitating an emotionally and relationally S&M couple, then that’s what you will recreate.
(“You” is general here, of course).
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I don’t think there are true high/low esteem couples. That is I think there might be a diference in self-esteem but not to big, if it’s they wouldn’t be attracted to one another. So replication would only be of either of the two models hi-hi, or hi-lo.
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“I don’t think there are true high/low esteem couples.”
– It’s really funny that you are telling me that, of all people. 🙂 🙂 Yes, we exist. And there are quite a few of us. 🙂 Opposites attract, you know.
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I meant to say only High-High or Low-Low
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Are you saying you’re attracted to me? : ) I have yet to meet a Hi-Lo couple but perhaps, I need to look out more. Most couples I know from friends and family and my own experiences seemed to fit either the Hi-Hi or the Lo-Lo model…
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I don’t know if you’re not giving people enough credit, or if I give them too much – but I believe people are capable of looking at the relationships of those who raised them and objectively evaluate what was right & wrong from that and build good relationships themselves.
As for the ‘jerks’ and ‘bitches’ of the world – some people are just a-holes.
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That’s a good posting. I like the equivalence between Nice Guys(tm) and the women of Sex and the City. What’s funny is many Nice Guys(tm) hate Sex and the City while they are exactly like these characters.
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I think there’s a lot of truth to this, but at the same time I’m wary of overly Freudian explanations that try to boil everything down to conflicts between a given person and his/her parents.
For instance, the men I tend to fall for do not resemble any of the men in my family in any way. My father and my brother are temperamental, controlling, and closed-off, whereas I prefer men who are open-minded and gentle. In fact, sometimes I get in trouble when I go for men who are too passive, rather than too temperamental and controlling.
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In my understanding, one does not necessarily identify with the parent of the same sex.
In other words, you may in fact identify more closely with your father (I think this is actually quite common among high-achieving women) and look (subconsciously) for the qualities that your mother had in your own partner.
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I agree that identification can cross-genders, to some degree. But its a mixed bag. I also don’t think its that a person is attracted to a “jerk” because that’s certainly not how they see it at the time. They are in love! The person just doesn’t love them back the way they want, and therein lies the rub. It’s not that they love a jerk, or want a jerk. Its that they have a need to replay an unresolved parental drama over and over again until it feels better. Not just because its the only model of parenthood they have – but also because the relationship with the parent to the child was dramatic. Both are being played out as a stage in our psychic development. So people who are “attracted to jerks” are on some level simply not done replaying the drama. They find mates that will participate. So I don’t think its this “self-esteem” concept so much as a dramatic reenactment of past hurts. Those who skip this step have skipped this need. When a person decides they want to live in another type of play, they will stop being “attracted to jerks” (who are really only projections of their own relationships with their parents, not just the parental relationship to each other) and more attracted to partners who provide a new story for them.
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So maybe you identify with the father instead of the mother.
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If we are trying to reenact what we have seen when we were growing up, how do we end up emulating one side and not the other? I mean when you witness a relationship with one abusive person and one abused person, what makes someone being an abusive person looking out for someone out to abuse and not the other way around?
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Nope. Didn’t have this issue. All my long term partners (two) have been just fine. Very easy-going, earthy types. The opposite of my parents.
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I’m not saying your partners will be like your parents. The dynamics of the relationship will be the same.
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And what are they in terms of?
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Correction, why are women attracted to jerks? And because women think that if they can get this man who doesn’t like anyone, they must be the best. Of course there are other reasons too.
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Please try to read the post before commenting, OK?
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I suppose if I dig really deep, I can come up with dynamics that were similar. These are very broad. When I was very young, my father went to war. He said that when he came back, I rejected him. I couldn’t have been much older than three. I believe I probably thought he was insane (even back then). I have a marked tendency in my personality to wholly reject people whom I think are insane. I cast a pretty wide net for this and avoid “complex” people as a whole.
I would say that the relationship that Mike and I have is strongly based on the ethos of avoiding the expression of any kind of insanity or out of control behaviour. We can joke around, be politically correct or whatever. But we are not to be insane.
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Correction “politically INcorrect”.
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