Why You Keep Attracting the Wrong People (& How to Attract the Right Ones) | (#024) Beyond Success: Psychology & Philosophy for Achievers, with David Tian, Ph.D.

Most people struggling with attraction or dating don’t realize they’re trapped in a cycle they don’t even see. They think if they just find the right person, crack the code or improve themselves enough, then everything will finally click. They’ll finally feel loved, desired, and secure.

But it doesn’t work like that because attraction struggles aren’t about luck, strategy or even personal improvement. They come from deep patterns running in the background, shaping your choices, your attractiveness, and how you show up in relationships without you even realizing it. Until you start breaking down those patterns, you’ll keep repeating the same frustrations, the same heartbreaks, the same invisible walls that keep you from real confidence and connection. That’s what this episode is about. [01:01.8]

This isn’t some surface-level self-help. We’re going deep into the parts of your mind that have been holding you back your whole life into the actual process of healing and transformation, because when you actually go through this process, when you finally stop running from yourself and start integrating the parts of you that have been sabotaging your relationships, then your whole experience of life changes. Attraction becomes natural. Confidence stops feeling like an act. Relationships stop being a battle for power or validation and start feeling real. But let’s be clear, if you don’t do this work, you will keep living out the same patterns.

We covered this in the last two episodes. We looked at how so many people project their insecurities onto dating and relationships, externalizing the problem instead of facing the parts of themselves that need healing. We broke down the grandiosity–shame cycle that keeps people stuck, swinging between moments of power and moments of collapse. We exposed how unresolved wounds from childhood get played out in adult relationships, leading to endless cycles of attraction, rejection and emotional dysfunction. [02:07.1]

If you keep ignoring these patterns, they will keep running your life. If you keep chasing validation instead of healing the parts of you that still feel unworthy, then no amount of dating success will ever feel like enough. You’ll either burn yourself out chasing the next high or withdraw completely, telling yourself relationships just don’t work for you, or worse, you’ll settle. You’ll accept something that doesn’t truly fulfill you, because deep down, parts of you don’t believe you deserve any better.

But there’s another way and that’s what we’re diving into today—the process of reintegrating the lost parts of yourself, healing the wounds that have been driving your attraction struggles, stepping into the kind of confidence that doesn’t come from performance or validation, but from being whole.

I’m David Tian, and for almost the past two decades, I’ve been helping hundreds of thousands of people from over 87 countries attain success, fulfillment and happiness in their personal and professional lives. In this episode, I’ve got three main points, and the first point is owning your Shadow. [03:08.7]

A lot of people struggle with attraction in dating not because they lack skills or because the dating market is rigged, but because they refuse to face what’s really running the show. They think the problem is external, dating apps, social media, hypergamy, Chads, or whatever excuse feels most convenient to them. But that’s all just a distraction, because the real issue isn’t out there. It’s inside.

Jungian psychology tells us that the parts of ourselves that we suppress, the fears we ignore, the insecurities that we deny, the anger we pretend isn’t there, they don’t just go away. They live in the unconscious, and worse, they control us from the background. This is what Carl Jung called the Shadow. The Shadow is everything about you that you’ve rejected, buried or decided is too painful to deal with, and when you don’t own your Shadow, it owns you. It leaks into your thoughts, your emotions, and especially, your relationships. [04:07.4]

Let’s make this real. I had a client, let’s call him Andrew, and on paper, he seemed to have it all together. He had a great career. He was in great shape physically. He was a smart guy. But his dating life was a big mess. The women he liked ghosted him constantly. He struggled to get past their first few dates, and the ones who did stick around never seemed to take him seriously, and his explanation was that “Women only want guys with more status than me,” or “They just go for the hottest guy in the room,” or “Dating is just a numbers game. It’s all rigged anyway.”

Now, was any of this technically false? Not exactly. Some women do chase status. Some prioritize looks. But that wasn’t why Andrew was failing. Andrew’s real problem was that he was projecting his own deepest fears onto them and onto the dating world at large. When we dug deeper into it, he admitted that he never felt like he was enough, not just in dating, but in many areas of life. [05:08.2]

He had spent his entire life feeling like he had to prove his value to be worthy of attention or admiration or connection, and that’s why he was obsessed with optimizing his life, get a better job, better physique, better social status. But no matter how much he improved himself, he never actually felt better for very long, because deep down, he believed he was only valuable as what he could offer, and because he was blind to this painful belief or refused to face this belief directly, he ended up externalizing it onto the women. He projected it onto the women.

That’s why he was so convinced that women only cared about his status. It wasn’t because it was necessarily true of them. It was because he believed his value depended on his status and his achievements—and that’s how the Shadow works. The things we fear most about ourselves, we project them onto the world. [06:04.5]

When a guy feels deep down like he’s not good enough, he tells himself that women are shallow. When a woman feels like she’s unlovable, she tells herself that men are all emotionally unavailable. When someone fears rejection, they convince themselves that dating is just a numbers game. But these aren’t truths about the world necessarily. They’re reflections of the parts of ourselves that we refuse to own, and perhaps the worst part is, when you don’t face your Shadow, it doesn’t just mess up your dating life. It runs your entire life.

Andrew had spent years pretending that none of this affected him, that he had things figured out, but when I had him start paying attention to what triggered him the most, what pissed him off most about women, what made him feel insecure in a room full of other achievers, what thoughts kept looping in his head when he was alone, that’s when his real inner work started. [07:00.8]

He realized that every time he saw a guy effortlessly attracting women, he wasn’t just annoyed. He was, in fact, furious, not because those guys were better than him, but because they represented something that he had rejected in himself, his ability to be loved for who he was, not for what he could achieve.

When he turned toward his anger with curiosity, acceptance and understanding, when he started unpacking it instead of running from it or exiling it, then his experience of life changed, because once you own your Shadow, once you face the fears, insecurities and hidden desires you’ve been avoiding, they begin to stop controlling you. They trust you more and relax back.

Andrew didn’t need better dating strategies. He needed to stop rejecting the parts of himself that wanted to feel loved without having to earn it. Once he did that, his experience of life from the inside changed and his energy around others completely changed. He no longer tried so hard to prove himself, and ironically, that made him far more attractive. [08:06.5]

If you’ve been struggling in dating or attraction, or with relationships in general, pay attention to what you’re projecting. What do you believe about attraction, about love, about your own worth? And, more importantly, where did those beliefs come from? Where did you get those beliefs? Because until you face the part of yourself that you’ve been running from, it will keep running your life.

Okay, let’s move on to the second point, which is that attraction follows a blueprint, a blueprint that was set long before you ever swiped right or walked up to someone at a bar, and unless you rewrite that unconscious blueprint, you will keep repeating the same toxic patterns over and over. [08:50.1]

The way we experience relationships as adults is wired into us early in our formative years. Long before you ever went on your first date or before your first crush, before you even understood what romance was, the people who raised you, how they loved you or how they neglected you, how they made you feel safe or abandoned or criticized, all of that shaped the way you experience connection now as an adult, and the biggest mindfuck is that we’re drawn to what feels familiar, not what’s healthy.

If love felt inconsistent growing up, then you’ll end up being attracted to inconsistency as an adult. If you were trained to believe that affection had to be earned, you’ll seek out relationships where you have to prove yourself constantly. If you felt unseen as a kid, you’ll find yourself drawn to people who ignore you, not because you want to suffer, but because deep down, parts of you are still trying to fix what went wrong back then. [09:56.2]

I had a client, let’s call him Jason. When he came to see me, he was in his early-30s. He was an entrepreneur, a successful one. On paper, he had a lot going for him, but when it came to relationships, he was a disaster. Every woman he dated either didn’t respect him or pulled away emotionally over time or treated him like just another option.

When he finally did get into a committed relationship, he sabotaged it. He withdrew, pushed her away, picked fights over nothing, and then the moment she left, he fell apart and begged her to come back. The part that really wrecked him was that he didn’t know why he was doing any of this. He was doing everything right. He was confident, successful, well-traveled, but no matter how much he improved himself, he always ended up in the same situation in his personal life. So, we looked deeper. We started unpacking his past. [10:49.7]

Turns out Jason’s father was a real hard ass. He never gave him any approval, never showed him approval. He always pushed him to achieve more, be better, be stronger. Affection was scarce. He grew up believing that love had to be earned, and his mother was emotionally distant. When she was around, she was kind, but she was mostly absent, emotionally and physically. She seemed to love him, but she wasn’t really there.

Jason’s entire experience of love as a child was chasing approval from someone who never fully gave it—so, guess what kind of women he was attracted to, naturally feeling chemistry with? They’re distant, hard to please, unavailable. Whenever he did meet a woman who actually treated him well, who was open and warm and emotionally available, he would quickly lose interest. He told himself, “She’s boring,” that there was no spark. But in reality, his nervous system didn’t know how to handle love that came freely. That’s how deep this unconscious blueprint of his ran. [11:58.2]

These blueprints don’t just shape your attraction. It shapes what you think is attractive. This is why so many people sabotage what seem like healthy relationships. If love always felt uncertain, then safe love feels wrong. If your value always had to be earned, then unconditional love feels wrong. It feels undeserved. If you had to perform in order to earn being seen, relationships where you don’t have to perform feel uncomfortable.

This isn’t just about attraction. It’s about how we show up in long-term relationships, too. Some people like Jason cope with their attachment wounds by constantly chasing validation, they develop grandiosity. They go all in on status, success and becoming the high-value man or woman, because deep down, they believe if they aren’t impressive, then they won’t be loved. [12:55.5]

Others go the opposite way. They assume no one will ever fully love them, so they just shut down. They avoid emotional intimacy. They never let themselves get too close. They treat dating like a numbers game. If you’ve ever met someone who seems detached or seems like he’s too cool to care, then chances are they care more than anyone. They just don’t trust relationships enough to let themselves feel it.

Then there’s one of the worst loops, the one Jason found himself caught in, just the grandiosity–shame toxic cycle. One moment he felt like he was the prize, that he had the power, that he could walk away and not care, and then the next, he was spiraling into self-doubt, desperate for her attention, falling apart if she pulled away. This toxic cycle doesn’t fix itself. No amount of self-improvement or dating tactics will rewrite it. There’s only one way out, this therapeutic process to rewire your relationship blueprint. [13:59.4]

First, you need to recognize who you’re unconsciously trying to win love from. The person you chase in dating isn’t random. It’s your past showing up in your present, the unavailable woman or the critical man, or the emotionally distant partner. The person you’re drawn to is a mirror of an old wound that you haven’t healed. This is your unfinished business.

Second, you need to stop performing and start actually connecting. Jason’s biggest breakthrough that he could see immediately wasn’t when he learned some new dating technique. It was when he stopped trying to prove himself to women and started showing up as a full person, as far as he knew. Not the charming, successful “got it all together” persona, but the real him.

Third, you need to build secure emotional connections, first with yourself, and then with others. Before Jason could have a healthy relationship, he had to give himself the validation that he had spent years trying to get from women and from others. Until you do that, you will always be trying to extract worth from other people. [15:09.0]

Most people think confidence comes from status, experience or learning how to win at attraction, but real confidence, the kind that lasts, comes from knowing that you don’t have to chase anyone in order to be worthy of love. Jason finally broke the pattern. He started choosing partners who actually valued him. He stopped pushing away women who showed up for him emotionally, and when he met his now girlfriend, he wasn’t playing a role. He was just being himself.

If you don’t rewrite your unconscious blueprint, then you’ll keep running the same toxic program, the same attraction patterns, the same emotional highs and lows, the same frustration over and over again. [15:54.3]

Many high-achievers struggle when it comes to managing their emotions or navigating their relationships, and they hit a wall when it comes to emotional mastery. Maybe you’ve noticed that stress, frustration or anger is seeping into your personal or professional life, or you feel disconnected from those you care about.

That’s where David Tian’s “Emotional Mastery” program comes in. It’s based on peer-reviewed, evidence-backed therapeutic methods to help you find happiness, love and real fulfillment. Learn how to break free from the emotional roller-coaster and start thriving in every area of your life. You can find out more at DavidTianPhD.com/EmotionalMastery. That’s D-A-V-I-D-T-I-A-N-P-H-D [dot] com [slash] emotional mastery.

Let’s move down to the third and final point. By now, you’ve probably noticed something—the struggles people face in dating and attraction, like feeling stuck, rejected or unworthy, they aren’t actually about dating and attraction. They’re about the unresolved issues and burdened parts of themselves that keep running the same old patterns. [17:08.5]

You can break down your Shadow. You can start rewriting your relationship blueprint. But until you go through the deepest level of healing, until you stop outsourcing your confidence to external validation, you’ll always be looking for something outside of you to make you feel whole. This last step is about finally stopping that cycle.

Internal Family Systems therapy, or IFS therapy, gives us a scientifically validated way to heal from the inside out, to stop performing confidence and actually become it, because attraction problems aren’t about being good enough. They come from parts of you that are working overtime to shield you from some deeper pain.

Most people struggling and dating an attraction aren’t even showing up as their true selves. They think they are, but they’re actually acting from protector parts. These are the parts of us that step in to make sure that we never feel the kind of rejection, abandonment or humiliation that we once felt before in our formative years. [18:08.1]

Maybe your protector is like the performer, the version of you that’s always playing a role, trying to be charismatic, impressive, desirable, or maybe it’s the high-status guy, the version of you that’s cold, controlled, emotionally untouchable, convinced that feelings make you weak. Or maybe it’s the detached observer, the part that sits back, never fully engaging, analyzing every situation from a safe distance, like you’re watching it from behind a glass.

These parts have been working hard, too hard. They’ve been carrying the weight of protecting you from pain for so long that you probably don’t even know who you are without them. That’s why no amount of self-improvement ever feels like enough, because these parts weren’t meant to run your life. They were never supposed to be in control. [19:00.3]

The real you, the true you, the unburdened you, that core of you is naturally confident, naturally attractive, naturally at ease in relationships. But the only way to get there is to heal the wounds that your protector parts have been trying to cover up.

Let’s give an illustration of this. I had a client, we’ll call him Matt, early-40s, incredibly successful, has his own business, takes care of himself, and had plenty of dating experience by the time he met me. But despite all of that, he never felt secure in relationships. Even when things were going well, he was always bracing for the moment when the woman would pull away or lose interest or leave, and when that happened, because eventually it always did, he either shut down completely or spiraled into anxiety.

Sometimes he told himself he didn’t care. Other times, he found himself desperate to get her back. Sometimes he’d also lay between the two in a single session. Either way, it wrecked him emotionally. On the surface, it didn’t make sense, right? He was attractive, successful, and self-aware. He had done therapy plenty of times before he met me, he had read a lot of books about therapy and self-help, but when we started working together, we uncovered something much deeper. [20:15.3]

Matt had been running the high-status guy protector for decades. He thought confidence meant never letting anyone see him sweat. He believed power in relationships came from having the upper hand, always being a little more detached, never needing anyone too much, caring less. But beneath that, he had exiled parts, younger versions of himself that still carried the pain of feeling unwanted, unseen, unworthy.

When we traced it back, it all started with his father, a man who rarely showed affection, rarely gave praise, and whose love always came with conditions. Matt learned early on that needing love was dangerous, that if he ever showed how much he cared, how much he really cared, then he would be rejected. [21:04.6]

So, he built a protector part that made sure he never had to feel that pain again, and it worked, at least for a while. He became successful. He became respected. Women were drawn to his confidence, to his outer confidence. But no matter how many women he dated, he never actually felt safe, definitely not safe enough to let himself love, because love isn’t about control. It’s about presence, and presence requires vulnerability, and it’s about connection.

We worked through the process of unburdening. First, we recognized and appreciated his protector part. Instead of trying to shut it down or bypass it, we thanked it, because it had spent decades working to keep him safe. It wasn’t the enemy. It was just stuck in a job it was never meant to do forever. [21:53.4]

Then we started cultivating more self-energy in Matt, the real Matt, the True Self, the core of him that was calm, confident and connected, not because of external success, but because he was finally starting to trust himself. Once he was able to get more and more self-energy activated and online, and available and accessible to his system, we were able to build trust with this protector part so that the protector part would be able to step back, relax back, and for the first time, Matt wasn’t clinging to the idea that he had to be untouchable in order to be respected. He started feeling his emotions without fear.

That’s when we moved on to the most delicate step, to unburden his exiled part. He connected with a younger version of himself, a much younger version, a kid who just wanted to be loved for who he was, not for what he could accomplish or perform. Instead of rejecting that part, he gave it what it had been missing for decades. He released the belief that love had to be earned, that vulnerability was weakness, that being open would lead to pain. [23:03.2]

Once that happened, his protectors that were arranged around this kid stopped having to work overtime. And the high-status guy? He didn’t disappear. He just shifted into a more natural role for him as a protector. Instead of being a wall between Matt and his emotions, he stepped into true confidence, grounded, secure, and unshaken.

In his relationships, things really changed. He stopped feeling like he had to manage attraction. He stopped getting anxious if a woman seemed to pull away. He started showing up fully, without fear and without having to play games. The irony was that that was when he became more attractive than he’d ever been, not because he was trying to be, but because he didn’t need to prove anything to anyone else anymore.

Okay, so what was the process? Here’s the process. First, you recognize the parts of you that have been running the show. These are going to be protector parts, the ones trying to protect you, the ones that have been working way too hard. [24:03.7]

Then you strengthen your access to yourself, the core of you that doesn’t need validation in order to be fulfilled or whole. Once you do that, you can start building trust with your protector parts, so they can begin to step back and stop running your life, which they don’t really even enjoy that much.

Then you finally face the exiled parts, the younger, wounded versions of yourself that have been carrying your deepest fears, and these are the ones that your protector parts have been protecting. Instead of ignoring them or exiling them, you turn towards them, give them your understanding and compassion, and you begin to heal them, and this is a delicate process. I highly recommend that you get professional guidance through this.

Once those wounds are released, then your whole experience of life shifts. Your confidence stops being about performance. Attraction becomes effortless. It’s just natural. Love stops being a battlefield, because you’re no longer looking for something outside of you to fill the gaps inside you. Most people think dating and attraction struggles mean they need better strategies. They don’t. They need to heal the parts of themselves that have been keeping them stuck. [25:19.5]

We covered a lot of ground today, so let’s bring it all together. If you’ve been struggling with attraction, confidence or relationships, the problem isn’t some external force working against you. It’s not dating apps. It’s not women. It’s not bad luck. The real issue has to do with the unconscious patterns running your life.

First we talked about owning your Shadow, the traits or parts of you that you reject, the fears, insecurities and hidden desires you push away. They don’t just disappear. They control you from the shadows, from the background, shaping your choices, unconsciously sabotaging your relationships and keeping you stuck in cycles of frustration. Until you face those parts of yourself, you’ll keep externalizing, projecting your struggles instead of actually solving them. [26:05.2]

Then we went deeper into rewriting your relationship blueprint. You aren’t just randomly attracted to certain people. You’re repeating the same emotional patterns from childhood, seeking out familiar dynamics, even when they lead to pain. Until you heal your attachment wounds, you’ll keep chasing validation or pushing away real connection, and you won’t even realize why.

Finally, we broke down the process of unburdening your past and stepping into your true confidence. Most people struggling and dating an attraction aren’t operating from their real, grounded, secure Self. They’re acting from protector parts, roles they’ve played for so long that they don’t even know who they are without them.

The real work isn’t about performing better. It’s about integrating those parts, healing your deepest wounds, and accessing the natural confidence, presence and power that has been there all along. This is the process I guide people through inside my life coaching programs. If you’re ready to finally break these patterns for good, to stop chasing attraction and start naturally embodying it. I’ll be guiding people through each step, step by step in my programs. [27:14.1]

The alternative is to keep running the same loops, keep getting in your own way, keep watching yourself sabotage connection, or settle for relationships that never quite feel right, keep outsourcing your self-worth to the next date, the next win, the next fleeting moment of validation. Or you could invest in yourself, finally break free from the cycles keeping you stuck, and step into a life where confidence isn’t a performance. It’s just who you are, where relationships feel natural and fulfilling instead of exhausting and uncertain, where love isn’t something you have to earn, but something that flows freely from you and that you can actually trust. That’s the choice in front of you. I hope you make the right one.

Thank you so much for listening. If this has helped you in any way, please share it with anyone else that you think could benefit from it. If you liked it, hit a like or give it a good review on whatever platform you’re listening to the song. If you have any comments, any feedback whatsoever, please leave a comment or send me an email or message. I’d love to get your feedback.I look forward to welcoming you to the next episode. Until then, David Tian, signing out. [28:15.5]