What Tyes of People are Attracted to Edgy Partners?

Understanding attraction to intense and unpredictable partners.

The field of psychology highlights each new discovery as it emerges over time, interweaving what has been into what is becoming. Having been a part of this fascinating and challenging process for over four decades, I have rechallenged and reintegrated my own therapeutic style in accordance with those changes, while making sure that those changes do not undermine my personal integrity.

As a case in point, there is now a major emphasis on patients with narcissistic personality disorder and how those labeled as such use and manipulate their partners. The media, in many forms, is focusing heavily on how many people are unknowingly in relationships with narcissists and need expert guidance on how to get out of these relationships before their sense of worth is permanently destroyed.

Some of those feeling that they might be in a doomed relationship with a narcissistic person have made their own attempts to figure that out. They have peered into the DSM’s chapters on personality disorders, searching for which of the nine symptoms of narcissistic personality disorders their partner has, or just wondered why they have stayed. Many describe their relationships as agony/ecstasy partnerships that have given them highs they can’t give up and lows they can no longer tolerate.

Though some of these now labeled narcissistic personality disorders, I have found that many other variables can explain those behaviors that can be easily overlooked in the desperate attempt to find, label, and predict the culprit. I firmly believe that these seemingly self-serving people exhibit behaviors that should be examined without automatic adherence to a label that may limit a better understanding of both the acclaimed narcissist and the kinds of people who are attracted to them.

I believe that we should look more closely at the array of symptoms that repeatedly show up in people who are described as narcissistic and exploitive by their partners. I prefer to call them “edgy,” and their appeal comes directly from the behaviors they exhibit.

Often disillusioned romantics, they frequently have had severe childhood trauma and are emotionally dysregulated when triggered. That can make them hard to predict, unable to commit, highly reactive when cornered, unable to accept criticism, armored against nurturing, and vulnerable to substance abuse.

Yet their partners hear them crying out for acceptance while turning away comfort and feel they can heal them if they just love them enough and in the right way. That devotion may bring that partner closer and more vulnerable in one moment but then cold and distant the next. That pattern often makes their partners feel the most important and valued they have ever felt, but worthless when they fail.

In order for the partners of edgy people to realize why they are attracted to these relationship partners and to realize they are rarely healable, they must look at their own susceptibility to be drawn to them, and let go and grow beyond them.

The following five personal characteristics frequently exist in people who are attracted to edgy partners:

1. Co-Dependent

Co-dependency most often describes a relationship where both partners are firmly attached to the reciprocal behaviors of the other. In a repeating pattern, they cannot escape their mutual reactivity and recreation of the interdependence between them.

Example: Edgy people will not allow themselves to be owned by another because they don’t trust intimacy but imply that they could if they just found the right person. Their co-dependent partners fall prey to intermittent rewards when they are shown they might be “the one.”

2. Inconsistent Parenting

Now you see them, now you don’t. Children of parents who show up and indulge, but then disappear without warning, can hold a child's nose to the window, not willing to let go or seek autonomy for fear they will miss a hungered visit. They expect love to be intertwined with inconsistency and choose the familiarity that they came to expect as children. The pain of loss and thrill of connection are intertwined.

Example: Edgy people often disappear without warning or choose something that excludes their partner, only to return with love-bombing phrases of atonement and promises of consistency in the future. If the rewards are sufficient, a partner will put up with their powerlessness to control the outcome.

3. Sexual Chemistry

Being unpredictable when gone but fully and passionately present when returning is often experienced by others as sexually dramatic and dynamic. The tension built up between episodes transfers to physical ecstasy when reconnection occurs.

Example: Edgy people are often experienced by others as flirtatious, self-absorbed, and readily on the search for adventure. That risk-taking readiness is often felt as a call to arms to a susceptible partner who will prove to the edgy person that they have found their match.

4. Suppression of Self

When a person is emotionally and sexually suppressed and controlled as a child, they often bury their own passionate needs for fear of punishment. The psyche, hungry for completion, searches for someone who manifests what they have suppressed and a feeling of pseudo-wholeness occurs in that connection and makes it hard to let go.

Example: Edgy people often have an appetite for innocence, seeking to be reborn from their own inability to find permanent comfort in a relationship. Sadly, once they gain control of a suppressed person and turn them into someone more like themselves, they lose interest and leave that person behind but drowning in confusion and self-doubt.

5. Fear of Abandonment or Retaliation

Children who feel that they are the reason for their parents’ problems control their behavior to avoid being blamed for being a burden, and, therefore, deserve to be left behind. They cling to the hopes that, if they behave perfectly according to their parents’ wishes, they will be allowed to stay at the same time as they feel they will be punished if they stop trying.

Example: When edgy people want temporary or permanent separation from a partner, they will often oscillate between making it their partner’s fault for why they pull away. The partner who accepts that blame tries harder to atone or else fear that the edgy partner’s blame will amplify if they try to leave.

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