Why Do I Keep Attracting Toxic People? The Answer Might Surprise You

Why Do I Keep Attracting Toxic People? The Answer Might Surprise You

MENTAL HEALTH & WELLNESS • April 9, 2026

LAST UPDATED: APRIL 2026

Last reviewed: June 2026 by Annie Wright, LMFT

The Moment You Start Counting

You’re seated at your kitchen table, the soft hum of evening rain tapping against the windowpane. The dim light casts gentle shadows as you pull out your phone, scrolling through recent texts, emails, and memories. Slowly, a list forms in your mind. The coworker who undermined you in front of your team, the friend who vanished when you needed her most, the boyfriend who twisted every argument until it felt like your fault. You’re not catastrophizing; you’re pattern-matching. The pattern is uncomfortable and clear: somehow, you keep ending up here, in relationships that drain you, confuse you, and leave you questioning your worth.

It’s not just one person. It’s a string of interactions, a series of connections that start with hope and warmth but end in exhaustion and self-doubt. You find yourself replaying conversations, trying to pinpoint where things went wrong. The memories linger with sensory detail. The sharp tone in a colleague’s voice, the sudden silence from a friend, the coldness behind a partner’s smile. Each moment sticks to you like a whisper in your bones, a reminder that something about these relationships isn’t right.

You’re not alone in this experience. Many driven and ambitious women notice these patterns, often blaming themselves quietly or wondering if they’re simply unlucky. But the truth is more complex and far less about personal flaw than you might think. It’s about relational patterns, nervous system responses, and societal expectations that shape how you connect and who you attract.

Right now, as you sit in the quiet with your list, you’re beginning to see the threads weaving through your relationships. This post is here to help you understand those threads. Not to blame, but to illuminate. Because understanding the “why” is the first step to changing the “what.”

What Is a Toxic Relationship?

The word “toxic” gets tossed around a lot, but what does it really mean in the context of relationships? Almost everyone experiences conflict or disappointment with people they care about. That’s normal. But a toxic relationship goes beyond occasional rough patches. It’s about a persistent pattern that leaves you feeling diminished and confused.

Key features of toxic relationships include:

• Power imbalance: One person consistently holds more control or influence, often undermining the other’s autonomy.
• Lack of reciprocity: The relationship feels one-sided, where your efforts and care aren’t matched or appreciated.
• Erosion of self-worth: Over time, you start doubting your value, feeling less confident, or questioning your reality.
• Persistent confusion: You often wonder if you’re overreacting, being too sensitive, or missing something. Which is a red flag.

Clinically, these patterns intersect with concepts like narcissistic dynamics, codependency, attachment dysregulation, and trauma bonding. Understanding this helps move away from blaming yourself and toward recognizing the actual dynamics at play.

The Neurological and Attachment Foundations. Why Familiarity Masquerades as Chemistry

Why do you keep ending up in the same types of relationships, even when you’re determined not to? The answer lies deep in your nervous system and attachment history.

Sigmund Freud first coined the term repetition compulsion to describe how people unconsciously repeat patterns from their past, especially traumatic or unresolved experiences. Contemporary trauma researchers like Bessel van der Kolk, MD, author of The Body Keeps the Score, have expanded on this idea, explaining that the nervous system is trying to master overwhelming experiences by recreating similar situations. Not because it wants suffering, but because it’s attempting to resolve what once felt unmanageable.

For driven and ambitious women, this neurological pull can be especially strong. You might unconsciously seek relationships that recreate early relational dynamics. Even difficult ones. Because they feel familiar and, paradoxically, manageable. Mastery feels possible where vulnerability with something new feels risky.

Attachment theory also plays a role here. If your early caregivers were inconsistent, dismissive, or emotionally unavailable, your attachment system might have adapted by seeking out relationships that echo those patterns. The nervous system is wired to seek safety, and familiarity often masquerades as safety, even when it’s harmful.

These unconscious patterns can make it feel like you’re stuck in a loop, repeatedly drawn to people who don’t treat you well, even when you consciously want better. Recognizing this neurological and attachment foundation is key to starting to shift your relational landscape.

Why Driven Women Are Disproportionately Affected

Meet Neha, a 38-year-old biotech executive. On her third HR complaint about a direct report who’s been subtly undermining her to peers, she remains calm and professional. She’s documented everything meticulously, managed the situation carefully, and maintained her reputation. What she hasn’t told anyone in those HR meetings is that this isn’t new. The exact pattern. Someone she tries to support chipping away at her behind the scenes. Has played out in three different contexts over the last decade. She doesn’t say it aloud, but on the drive home, she thinks about it. Why does this keep happening to her?

Women like Neha are often deeply competent, emotionally intelligent, and practiced at managing relationships and people. They derive a significant part of their identity from being helpful, capable, and in control. This profile is not a flaw. In fact, these qualities are strengths. But they also create vulnerabilities.

Driven and ambitious women are often the ones others turn to for support, guidance, and emotional labor. Unfortunately, this can attract people who know how to leverage that competence and care. These toxic individuals recognize the unspoken signals. The willingness to accommodate, the tendency to manage others’ feelings, the reluctance to rock the boat. And exploit them.

This is sometimes called the “capable trap.” The more capable you appear, the fewer people ask whether you’re okay. Your strength becomes a camouflage for your struggles. People overlook the cracks because they assume you don’t need help. And so the cycle continues: you keep attracting difficult people who push your limits while you keep carrying the load.

It’s important to see this not as personal failure, but as an understandable consequence of a particular relational context. Recognizing this dynamic allows you to start setting boundaries and prioritizing your own wellbeing without guilt.

The Fawn Response and People-Pleasing. The Under-Discussed Link

When you read that line, you might feel the weight of performance. The pressure to “tie on the red shoes” and dance, even if what you really need is to stop. This image captures a core reality for many women caught in toxic relational patterns: the need to perform being “fine” when inside you’re struggling.

Pete Walker, MFT, psychotherapist and author of Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, developed the concept of the fawn response. A trauma survival strategy where a person instinctively accommodates, pleases, and manages others to avoid conflict and ensure safety. This response often develops in chronically unsafe or unpredictable early environments.

Fawning can look like people-pleasing, over-accommodation, or constantly managing others’ emotions at the expense of your own. While these behaviors might feel like kindness or cooperation, they also signal safety to toxic people. Someone who instinctively accommodates is less likely to set boundaries or create consequences that challenge a toxic person’s behavior.

For driven and ambitious women, the fawn response can be especially ingrained. You might find yourself smoothing over conflict, explaining away bad behavior, or taking responsibility for others’ feelings. All in an effort to keep the peace and maintain connection. But this dynamic often perpetuates toxic patterns rather than resolving them.

Understanding the fawn response is a game-changer. It’s not about blaming yourself for being accommodating; it’s about recognizing how this survival strategy developed and learning to create new ways of relating that keep you safe and respected.

Both/And: You’re Not the Problem. And Your Patterns Matter

Here’s the single most important truth you need to hold: toxic people are responsible for their own behavior. Full stop. Their choices, actions, and manipulations are theirs alone.

And yet. Understanding what makes someone consistently available to toxic dynamics is the path to changing those dynamics. These two truths must coexist. Naming your patterns is not blame; it’s empowerment.

Let’s return to Elaine, a 32-year-old public defender. She finally cut off a friendship she’d been maintaining for four years out of guilt. Her therapist had named the dynamic six months earlier as toxic. Elaine kept waiting to feel relief, expecting a weight to lift. Instead, she felt anxiety. The sense that she’d done something wrong by leaving. That feeling, her therapist explained, was the work itself. It was the discomfort of breaking a pattern she’d lived with for years, a sign that real change was underway.

Both/And means you can hold compassion for yourself and clarity about what you need. You’re not broken or to blame. But your patterns. Shaped by attachment, nervous system, and survival strategies. Matter deeply. They are the key to unlocking different relational experiences.

The Systemic Lens: Why This Pattern Is More Common Than You Think

These patterns don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re shaped by the social systems and cultural messages that surround you.

Women, especially those who are driven and ambitious, are often socialized to prioritize accommodation, emotional labor, and relational management. From a young age, many women learn that being “good” means being available to others’ needs, smoothing over conflict, and putting their own needs last.

This cultural expectation creates fertile ground for toxic dynamics. When you’re expected to perform emotional labor at scale. Whether in your family, workplace, or social circles. It’s harder to recognize and resist exploitative relationships. The burden of being the caretaker or peacemaker can keep you locked in patterns of fawning and over-accommodation.

Class and race also play critical roles. Women who face additional marginalization often have less cultural permission to say no or set boundaries. They might be expected to work harder to prove their worth or accommodate more aggressively to avoid harm. These intersecting pressures make toxic relational patterns more common and more difficult to escape.

In workplaces, driven women often find themselves tasked with emotional management alongside their professional duties. This expectation can blur the line between professional responsibility and personal sacrifice. Making them targets for toxic dynamics that thrive on unreciprocated care.

Seeing these patterns through a systemic lens helps reduce self-blame and opens the door to collective change. It reminds you that your struggles are part of a larger social narrative, not just personal shortcomings.

How to Begin Changing the Pattern

Change is possible, and it starts with awareness and practical steps.

First, learn to recognize the specific feeling that pulls you toward managing someone else. The urge to soothe, fix, or accommodate when what’s truly needed is accountability. Notice the subtle signals your body and mind send when you’re stepping into old survival patterns.

Work with a therapist who understands attachment, trauma, and the fawn response. Therapy offers a safe space to explore these patterns, develop new relational strategies, and practice boundaries.

Practice tolerance for healthy, even boring, relationships. Not every connection needs to be intense or dramatic. Sometimes, steady, reliable, and uneventful relationships are exactly what your nervous system needs to heal.

Use tools like the attachment style quiz to deepen your understanding of your relational tendencies. Explore posts on the fawn response and repeating relationship patterns to gain insight.

Therapy with Annie can be a powerful part of this journey. In a trauma-informed space, you can unpack these patterns and build new foundations for healthier connections.

Remember Elaine? The anxiety she felt after ending her toxic friendship was hard, but it was also the beginning of freedom. The work is uncomfortable. Because real growth often is. But it’s worth it.

Healing these patterns is a process, not a quick fix. But with patience, support, and self-compassion, you can start inviting relationships that nourish rather than diminish you.

If what you’ve read here resonates, I want you to know that individual therapy and executive coaching are available for driven women ready to do this work. You can also explore my self-paced recovery courses or schedule a complimentary consultation to find the right fit.

Related Reading

Freyd, Jennifer. “Betrayal Trauma Theory.” In Trauma and Recovery, edited by Judith Herman, MD. Basic Books, 1992.

Herman, Judith, MD. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence, from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. Basic Books, 1997.

Walker, Pete, MFT. Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013.

van der Kolk, Bessel, MD. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking, 2014.

References

Peer-Reviewed Research (Vancouver)

1. van der Kolk BA, Wang JB, Yehuda R, Bedrosian L, Coker AR, Harrison C, et al. Effects of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD on self-experience. PLoS One. 2024;19(1):e0295926. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0295926. PMID: 38198456.
2. Cloitre M, Stolbach BC, Herman JL, van der Kolk B, Pynoos R, Wang J, et al. A developmental approach to complex PTSD: childhood and adult cumulative trauma as predictors of symptom complexity. J Trauma Stress. 2009;22(5):399-408. doi:10.1002/jts.20444. PMID: 19795402.

Books & Cultural Sources (Chicago Author-Date)

• Walker, Pete. Complex PTSD. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013.

Medical Disclaimer

Medical Disclaimer