Intimacy can feel unusually intense with a partner who is wrong for us, including in a toxic relationship. That intensity usually comes from unresolved personal history, the pull of the forbidden, and emotional needs the wrong person meets, at least temporarily.
Spotting these dynamics matters. It helps us tell a fleeting, powerful love story from a sustainable life story. The second one needs shared values and the ability to navigate life’s complexities together.
Key Takeaways
- Familiarity: Partners who echo childhood caregivers feel familiar, and familiar is easily mistaken for chemistry.
- Unmet Needs: Rescuing, outsourcing and enmeshment can feel like closeness while quietly serving old needs.
- Self-Worth: Low self-esteem can make an unavailable partner more attractive than an available one, so the chase becomes a quest for validation.
- Arousal Confusion: Fear, conflict and uncertainty speed up the body, which can misread that arousal as attraction.
- Forbidden Love: Secrecy, risk and novelty make affairs feel alive, which is not the same as feeling deeply connected.
- Trauma Bonding: A power imbalance combined with on-off treatment can bind people tightly to a partner who hurts them.
- Evidence Limits: Research links insecure attachment to these patterns, but most studies are correlational and cannot prove cause.
Unresolved Needs
When we feel a strong sense of intimacy with someone wrong, it may be because the dynamic taps into these deep-seated emotional needs that stem from our personal histories, particularly our childhood.
1. Recreating Familiar Dynamics
We are often drawn to partners who allow us to recreate familiar emotional landscapes from our past.
There are only two relationships that truly mirror each other: the one with our primary caregivers and the one with our romantic partners.
Often, we unconsciously choose partners who resemble our parents or caregivers, creating a dynamic that feels familiar, even if it was painful. Familiar does not mean safe.
This is known as repetition compulsion: an unconscious attempt to resolve core conflicts that arose in our early attachments.
If a person grew up with an emotionally unavailable or rejecting parent, they may unconsciously seek out partners who mirror this pattern.
The familiar feeling of working hard to earn love becomes their psychological “center of gravity” in relationships.
The “Fixer” or “Rescuer” Role
Some people are drawn to “projects”: partners with significant problems, like addiction or emotional issues.
This “rescuer” role provides a sense of significance and purpose: “If I can be the reason for this person’s change, then I am worthy”.
This dynamic, however, prevents true emotional intimacy because it establishes an unequal power dynamic of healer and patient, rather than a partnership of equals.
2. Outsourcing Needs
We are often attracted to people who express the parts of ourselves that we don’t want to deal with directly.
For example, a person who fears losing their independence might be drawn to a partner who actively seeks connection, thereby outsourcing their own need for closeness.
This dynamic can feel intensely compelling because the other person seems to complete us, embodying the very qualities we long for but have disavowed in ourselves.
3. Enmeshment and Lack of Boundaries
Sometimes, what feels like intense intimacy is actually an unhealthy enmeshment, where boundaries are blurred and individuals become overly dependent on each other for emotional validation and identity.
This can feel good because it creates a sense of constant connection and validation, but it sacrifices personal growth and autonomy.
An enmeshed relationship often starts in a “honeymoon stage” or a “love fog” that feels intoxicating but is an immature view of intimacy.
The Allure of the Unhealthy
We can find ourselves drawn to dynamics that, while unhealthy, feel familiar or provide a temporary boost to our self-esteem.
4. Low Self-Esteem and Validation
A core reason for this pattern is low self-esteem.
When a person doesn’t feel worthy of love, they are often repelled by those who are readily available and interested in them. Unconsciously, they think:
“What’s wrong with them that they would be into me?”
Instead, they are drawn to the challenge of winning over someone who is unavailable.
The pursuit becomes an ego-driven quest for validation. If they can get this person to love them, it proves their worthiness.
5. Familiarity Mistaken for Chemistry
We are often instinctively drawn to what is familiar, even if that familiarity is unhealthy.
If you grew up in a chaotic environment or with caregivers who were emotionally unavailable, you might unconsciously seek out partners who replicate those dynamics.
The resulting turmoil can be mistaken for passion or intense chemistry because it resonates with old, unresolved emotional wounds. The feeling is real, but its source is old.
This “spark” is often your unconscious mind trying to complete an unfinished pattern from your past, seeking to finally “win” a love that was previously withheld.
Intense, “out of control” chemistry can be dangerous because it clouds judgement and causes individuals to ignore significant red flags.
6. The Thrill of the Chase
The feeling of earning someone’s love can be highly addictive.
An emotionally unavailable person creates a dynamic where you are constantly trying to win them over, which can feel like a powerful romantic drama.
This chase can create an intense attraction. It is often confused with deep connection. In reality, it’s a pattern rooted in low self-worth and a need to prove oneself.
A partner’s unavailability can make them seem more valuable due to a scarcity mindset, making the moments of connection feel euphoric and intensely rewarding.
7. Chaos and Drama Feel Like Passion
Some relationships are fuelled by a cycle of breaking up and making up, creating highs and lows that can be addictive.
Healthy relationships can feel boring in comparison. They lack this volatility.
The “arousal confusion” theory describes how we mistake one kind of bodily arousal, such as the stress of a fight, for desire. A faster heart rate and dilated pupils can mirror sexual arousal, so angry sex can feel intensely passionate.
A classic field study shows how easily this happens. Dutton and Aron (1974) had an attractive female researcher approach men one at a time. Each man had just crossed either a high, wobbly suspension bridge or a low, solid one.
The men who crossed the frightening bridge rated her as more attractive and were more likely to contact her afterwards. Fear had been misread as attraction.
Some people become addicted to the thrill of these ups and downs.
Lust Isn’t Love (But It Can Fool You)
Lust is a primal, chemical experience that can feel incredibly powerful and alive.
This intense “honeymoon phase” is not the same as enduring love. The table sets the two side by side.
| Lust and the honeymoon phase | Enduring love | |
|---|---|---|
| Nature | Primal and chemical | A choice and a practice |
| Timing | Early on, when hormones are high and everything feels new and exciting | Grows over time as you get to know a person’s character (the “slow burn”) |
| Foundation | Novelty, charisma, projection and fantasy | Friendship, trust and shared values |
8. The Spark can be Deceptive
That instant “spark” we all crave? It’s often overrated.
Charismatic or even narcissistic people can generate this feeling. They give everyone the same intensity. That is not a unique connection to you.
Research suggests that only about 11% of long-term, successful couples experience “love at first sight”.
Lasting attraction often grows over time as you get to know a person’s character, a concept known as the “slow burn”.
What we mistake for connection is often charisma, projection, or fantasy.
9. We Fall in Love with a Fantasy
Early in dating, we often project our idealised fantasies onto a person we barely know.
The intense feelings of connection are often with this imagined version of the person, not the real individual.
This is particularly true in situationships. The lack of real commitment allows the fantasy to live on, unchallenged by the realities of a long-term relationship.
This is because the relationship exists in a bubble, separate from the responsibilities and mundanities of daily life.
The fantasy of what could be, unburdened by reality, creates a powerful sense of connection and excitement. That is its appeal. It can feel more real and intimate than a relationship grounded in day-to-day life.
10. The Appeal of the “Bad Boy”
Some women are drawn to the confidence and assertiveness often projected by “bad boys“.
This confidence makes a woman feel safe and can be very attractive, even if it’s a facade masking deeper insecurities.
There can be a “comfort in the dysfunction” because the bad behaviour is expected, removing the anxiety of searching for flaws that might exist in a “good guy“.
Affairs and Forbidden Love
Secret or forbidden relationships, such as affairs, can create a supercharged sense of intimacy and excitement.
11. The Erotic Charge of Breaking Rules
There’s something inherently erotic about the forbidden.
Affairs and secret relationships are often electric, not because the connection is deep, but because it’s laced with risk, novelty, and escape.
As Esther Perel says, an affair is often less about the other person and more about the version of yourself you get to be in their presence.
It’s not about love. It’s about aliveness.
Secret relationships tend to be supercharged because the excitement is fuelled by the thrill of something being hidden or “naughty,” rather than the health of the connection itself.
As psychotherapist Esther Perel explains on her podcast Where Should We Begin?, long-term relationships can become “mired in routine”. Conversation gives way to logistics, such as who is picking up the children. The couple loses “the power of the erotic.”
Breaking out of that routine, she suggests, thrives on “playfulness, with the unknown, with the unexpected.” Perel points to the sheer energy of an affair as evidence. People who are “never too busy, nor too tired, nor too stressed” for a secret relationship suddenly have “energy galore.”
That energy is not proof of a better match. It is the charge of breaking from routine and secrecy.
Perel also complicates a simple moral reading of affairs. A person having one can reach “forbidden needs, wishes, longings” they had never let themselves feel. They may hold two views at once: “this isn’t me” and “this is the most me I’ve ever been.”
12. The Affair Partner Dynamic
An affair can feed each person’s sense of self in a different way:
- The pursued partner: The idea that someone would risk so much for them can boost their libido and ego. This is known as “object of desire self-consciousness.”
- The partner having the affair: They are often seeking a different version of themselves, a self that feels lost in their primary relationship. Chasing this “new self” can feel exhilarating.
13. Desire for the Unattainable
For some, the experience of loving is tied to the pursuit of someone who is unavailable.
This pattern can start in childhood with crushes on people who could never reciprocate those feelings, making the pursuit itself the source of excitement.
The longing and fantasy involved in wanting what one cannot have can create a powerful sense of aliveness, which gets mistaken for deep intimacy and love.
Trauma Bonding and Intense Intimacy
Some of the patterns above have a formal name in the research literature: traumatic bonding. It helps explain why chaos followed by tenderness can feel like deep intimacy.
The Theory of Traumatic Bonding
Psychologists Donald Dutton and Susan Painter (1981) coined the term to explain why some women stay deeply attached to partners who abuse them. They argued that two features of the relationship, not the woman’s personality, produce the bond.
- Power imbalance: One partner controls the other’s safety, resources or sense of self-worth. This lowers the other’s self-esteem and deepens their dependence on the dominant partner’s approval.
- Intermittency: Cruelty alternates with kindness, remorse or affection instead of staying constant. The relief that follows a frightening episode feels disproportionately rewarding.
On this account, the person becomes attached to the emotional cycle itself, not just to the partner.
Dutton and Painter (1993) tested the theory in 75 women who had recently left abusive relationships, 50 of them involving physical violence.
Women were assessed just after separation and again six months later. The results supported the theory. Total abuse, intermittency and power differences together explained 55% of the variation in how attached women still felt.
Intermittent Reinforcement and Attachment Style
A learning principle explains why unpredictability binds so tightly. Ferster and Skinner (1957) showed that unpredictable, occasional rewards produce faster and more persistent responding than rewarding every response. The behaviour is also far harder to stop.
Now imagine a partner who is warm one day and distant the next. The pursuer never knows which attempt at closeness will pay off. So they keep trying.
Checking in, trying harder and forgiving all become hard to give up, even when the average reward is low. It is the same logic that makes a slot machine harder to walk away from than one that pays out every time (Ferster & Skinner, 1957).
Attachment style adds a second layer. Hazan and Shaver (1987) showed that adults display recognisable attachment styles in romantic relationships, which parallel infant patterns.
People with an anxious attachment style fear abandonment and need frequent reassurance. Push-pull dynamics can feel magnetic to them, rather than alarming.
The two accounts fit together. Attachment theory explains who is most likely to be drawn in. Intermittent reinforcement explains why leaving feels so hard once inside.
Contemporary Research
Who is most likely to form a traumatic bond? Shaughnessy et al. (2023) studied 354 adults currently in abusive relationships.
Childhood maltreatment and insecure attachment each predicted traumatic bonding, over and above romantic love.
The link was strongest among the most insecurely attached. Traumatic bonding was also associated with PTSD symptoms.
Insecure attachment also shows up across the wider literature. Spencer, Keilholtz, and Stith (2021) pooled 33 studies in a meta-analysis of attachment styles and physical intimate partner violence.
Anxious, avoidant and disorganised attachment were each linked to both perpetrating and experiencing violence. Secure attachment was linked to less of both.
Secrecy has its own psychology. Cole and Stonebrook (2025) identified seven motives for deceiving a romantic partner, including malicious intent, attention seeking, conflict avoidance and privacy protection.
In a follow-up study of 549 people, avoidant attachment was linked to motives of emotional distance and autonomy.
Anxious attachment was linked to seeking reassurance and, unexpectedly, to malicious intent and conflict avoidance.
Betrayal can wound without violence. Davidar, Ballal, and Premlal (2026) synthesised 12 qualitative studies of 207 people describing attachment injuries, most often triggered by infidelity.
They found intense emotional responses and grief, damaged self-worth and lasting difficulty sustaining relationships.
“It was never going to be the same. I’d had all the disappointment that I could take. I wasn’t going to put myself in that position again.”
One participant, as reported in Davidar et al. (2026)
What This Means in Practice
Naming the mechanism helps. Therapists can use these ideas to help clients separate how intense a relationship feels from how healthy it is.
The euphoria of a reconciliation is a predictable product of the on-off cycle (Dutton & Painter, 1981). It is no sign the relationship is “meant to be.”
Treat an overwhelming, unpredictable “spark” as a signal to look closer, not as proof of compatibility. Unpredictability itself, rather than the partner’s qualities, is what makes a dynamic feel so consuming.
These ideas have limits. Applied too widely, trauma-bonding language can turn ordinary early-relationship uncertainty into a red flag. Even securely attached people report intense early feelings that later settle (Hazan & Shaver, 1987).
Explanations built around childhood needs can also sound like blame. Dutton and Painter’s model avoids this by locating the cause in the relationship’s structure, not the person who stays.
Most of the evidence is correlational, so it cannot show whether insecure attachment causes these bonds or results from them. It also leans heavily on Western samples and on women’s experiences of abuse.
References
Cole, T., & Stonebrook, K. (2025). Deceptive hearts: Insecure attachment and motives underlying deception in romantic relationships. Personal Relationships, 32(3), Article e70020. https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.70020
Davidar, R. S., Ballal, D., & Premlal, D. (2026). Systematic review and framework synthesis of attachment injuries among romantic couples. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 43(9), 2682–2706. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075261436570
Dutton, D. G., & Aron, A. P. (1974). Some evidence for heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30(4), 510–517. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0037031
Dutton, D. G., & Painter, S. L. (1981). Traumatic bonding: The development of emotional attachments in battered women and other relationships of intermittent abuse. Victimology, 6(1–4), 139–155.
Dutton, D. G., & Painter, S. (1993). Emotional attachments in abusive relationships: A test of traumatic bonding theory. Violence and Victims, 8(2), 105–120. https://doi.org/10.1891/0886-6708.8.2.105
Ferster, C. B., & Skinner, B. F. (1957). Schedules of reinforcement. Appleton-Century-Crofts. https://doi.org/10.1037/10627-000
Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. R. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(3), 511–524. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.52.3.511
Shaughnessy, E. V., Simons, R. M., Simons, J. S., & Freeman, H. (2023). Risk factors for traumatic bonding and associations with PTSD symptoms: A moderated mediation. Child Abuse & Neglect, 144, Article 106390. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2023.106390
Spencer, C. M., Keilholtz, B. M., & Stith, S. M. (2021). The association between attachment styles and physical intimate partner violence perpetration and victimization: A meta-analysis. Family Process, 60(1), 270–284. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12545
