“The soul mate of you dreams is going to become the cellmate of your nightmares.”
Ross Rosenbergs father said this to him as a joke 30 years before he wrote this book. There is a lot of psychological insight in this joke. Especially since Rosenberg grew up to be a codependent.
In a magnet-like fashion, codependent people are attracted by self-absorbed emotional manipulators. We have all witnessed this phenomenon and scratched ourselves in the head in bewilderment: ‘Why do these people don’t see that their relationship is dysfunctional?’
The magnet-like force that pulls the codependent and the narcissist to each other is what Rosenberg aims to explain in this book.
Video Review: The Human Magnet Syndrome
Notes and Highlights
📝 Codependent and emotional manipulators are naturally attracted to each other because of their perfectly compatible dysfunctional inverse personalities.
📝 Consciously we desire relationships based on similarities. But this is only secondary to our unconscious preferences: “…We unconsciously gravitate towards relationships that are familiar and reminiscent of those experienced during our childhood.”
📝 People of similar polarities seems uninteresting to each other. When dating someone who “on paper” would be the perfect partner you can feel that the “chemistry” is missing.
📝 These types of relationships are resistant to break-up because neither the codependent or the manipulator can’t stand being alone.
📝 Most families, especially dysfunctional ones, tend to resist change since it is experienced as stressful and uncomfortable. A child, in an attempt to gain independence, might be seen as a threat. “Hence, all families, especially dysfunctional ones, not only resist change, but pass down their shared emotional function to the next generation.”
⭐️ TAKEAWAY:
‘What makes me sad about the world we live in?’ I have been pondering this question lately and I think I’ve found one answer: How unfair it can be when children have to inherit the unresolved problems from their parents.
⚖️ VERDICT: The Human Magnet Syndrome
A good book if you want to get an introduction to the common personality disorders. A fantastic book if you find yourself an unending loop of dysfunctional relationships.
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ out of 5
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