Why do I keep attracting the wrong people?
in Psychology ·
Larry Torres4 said:So, I was watching this segment on Oprah 🙄 ...and I realize how cheesy it sounds, but hear me out. It was about these mothers who had struggled with eating disorders back in their youth, though they had completely moved past those issues and never actually displayed any negative attitude toward food in front of their kids. Yet, despite the mothers behaving perfectly normally, their children—some as young as four or five—still ended up feeling "fat," or refusing to eat altogether. The takeaway was that these mothers were unconsciously passing down that deep-seated negativity toward food to their children, even if, on a purely physical level, everything seemed fine and the mothers had long since conquered their own struggles. My point, I suppose, is that people can sense things; they can feel who is susceptible to manipulation, who is a victim, or who is genuinely open, even if they don't know someone very well. So, why is it that when you have two people at work who seem practically identical in character, one becomes the target of workplace bullying while the other remains untouched?
If you have two employees who are essentially the same, and there's some toxic troublemaker looking to bully someone, he'll probably just pick whichever person happens to be most convenient at that moment. The choice might just be entirely random, wouldn't you agree?
Have you ever heard the story about Buridan's donkey?