The Human Magnet Syndrome (Book Excerpt)

The book will explain why patient, giving and selfless individuals – codependents – are predictably attracted to selfish, self-centered and controlling partners – emotionally manipulators.  Like clockwork, codependents and emotional manipulators find themselves habitually and irresistibly drawn into a relationship that begins with emotional and sexual highs, but later transforms into a painful and disappointing dysfunctional “relationship dance.”  The dance of the codependent and emotional manipulator is paradoxical in nature in that the two opposite personalities participate in a relationship that begins with excitement, joy and euphoria, but always transforms into one that is strewn with drama, conflict and feelings of being trapped.

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This book is about real-life relationships — common everyday relationships — that many of us have experienced, but wish we hadn’t.  It is also about codependents and emotional manipulators and the ubiquitous “magnetic force” that brings them together into a lasting dysfunctional romantic relationship. The reader will learn why codependents and emotional manipulators are always attracted to each other and why, despite major personal and emotional upheavals, they remain together.  This book has the capacity to change lives.

More from YourTango: The Human Magnet Syndrome (Book Excerpt)

This book examines the intricacies of the dysfunctional relationship dynamic shared between codependents and emotional manipulators.  This dynamic will be illustrated through my continuum of self model, which ties together the complex web of underlying psychological forces that “magnetizes” emotional manipulators and codependents into enduring and mutually unavoidable relationships.  This book will explain the nature of these binding relationships which are typically immune to personal or professional assistance.

If there was just one purpose of this book, it would be to give hope to others who, like myself, yearned for “true love” but, instead, kept finding “true dysfunction.”  I am hopeful that the Continuum of Self Theory, as well as the other conceptual material in this book, wll help the reader to understand why so many of us fall prey to our dysfunctional instincts.  It is my hope that helping professionals, as well as the general public, will benefit from this book.  I have gone to great lengths to reduce complicated relationship dynamics into intuitive, concrete and relatable explanations.  Mental health professionals and general audiences alike should learn what specifically drives and sustains the emotional manipulator and codependent relationship.