How many times have you found yourself drawn to someone you know you shouldn’t be with? Do you cringe when your friends’ actions scream, “I can fix them!”? Or maybe… you’re that friend?
While we all admire your confidence, if you couldn’t fix the last three situationships, it might be time to try something new.
Jokes aside, hindsight is real – everyone has caught themselves wondering, “Why didn’t I see that before? It was so obvious.”
The good news is it’s not just you… evolution’s to blame. So, what keeps us wearing rose-tinted glasses, chasing charmers, and staying a little longer than logic would have us?
The Honeymoon Phase (Limerence)
You know the beginning of a relationship when things feel so perfect that it’s basically like a drug? Well, it more or less is! At the beginning of relationships, or the “honeymoon phase,” your brain is flooded with dopamine, making you basically feel like you’re on an endless winning streak.
This same brain mechanism, however, reduces activity in the area of your brain responsible for thinking “this seems like a terrible idea.” As a result, there is nothing stopping you from acting impulsively. This effect lasts just long enough for another chemical, oxytocin, to create a bond that keeps you coming back.
Now, you might not be so pleased with your brain, but remember, for hundreds of thousands of years, its only function was to make sure you had kids and passed down your genes. Long-term compatibility was secondary to survival, and evolution certainly didn’t care about your star signs, or the fact that they still live with their ex because the lease is in both their names, but anyways…
Toxic Yet Charming (The Dark Triad)
Have you met someone who instantly captivated you? Perhaps with a confident, smooth-talking, no-****’s given attitude? Confidence is key, true, but we aren’t very good at telling apart unjustified confidence from the real deal, and that lands us in all sorts of trouble. People high in “Dark Triad” traits like narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy have often been recognized as more attractive or desirable in various studies. People who only care about themselves will do anything to get their way and feel little to no remorse for their actions, and end up being the most likely to trick our brains. The science shows that if your brain prefers excitement over stability, congratulations! You’re dating on hard mode with no tutorial.
Evolution wired our brains to equate confidence gained through experience with the ability to fight off predators, provide resources, and build communities. In evolutionary times, being close to someone confident could save your life, but if that person was convincing enough as a fake, attraction would take over regardless of action. That’s when your stone-age brain would flood itself with enough dopamine to make you think you met the tribe’s best, when you really just met your future financial liability, whose only survival skill is gaslighting.
And Yet You Stay? (Sunk-Cost Bias)
Yep. But don’t worry, you can blame evolution for this one, too!
Experts call this sunk cost bias – that feeling when the charm fades, and those red flags pop up out of…absolutely nowhere… and you think, “but we’ve gone through so much together…”. Ancestrally, it was typically safer to have a partner than not, and sticking with the devil you know would often seem better than testing the waters with the devil you don’t. Having a partner meant you likely had better access to resources and the opportunity to pass on your genes. Unfortunately for you, that means it’s realistic you might stay in situations you are better off leaving, held back by insecurities and anxieties and making the same mistakes as your ancestors.
So, Now What?
Well, there’s no easy way to say this, but your biology might be conspiring against you. However, that doesn’t mean you’re doomed to suffer the consequences of your rose-tinted glasses, over-confident crushes, and sunk-cost bias forever – there’s a way to beat the system! But I’ll warn you, it might not be as exciting as you expect. In any case, you read this far, so I guess you’re pretty committed to figuring out how to stop falling face-first into steaming piles of… red flags.
So without further ado, here it is:
Slow down.
Yep. That’s it – your new Hollywood Romance. My bad, but it’s that simple. Don’t rush. Lengthening the friendship stage and getting to know each other first will help ease you through all the chemicals your brain is pumping you full of. If you can let that initial high wear off, you’ll be more likely to see people for who they actually are, but no promise that you’ll always like what you see! Romance is built on connection. While a genuine connection will last far beyond that initial high, it’s not easy to disregard our evolutionary pressure to rush, even when it’s not necessarily in our best interest.
Keeping this in mind could help you find a partner you can truly connect with long-term. Your future self will thank you, and your therapist will have to find another source of income.
がんばってね!
Hang in there!
Leave a Reply