When Defilements Fall in Love

You might have experienced this: You haven't really gotten to know the person yet. Yet somehow you feel intensely attracted to this person. You just can’t help it. You have fallen in love—or so you may believe.

Think about it: You barely know the person. So, what are you actually feeling so intensely attracted to? And why are you attracted to that?

One of my students messaged me about meeting a new guy whom she was intensely attracted to. She said she remembered my caution against such a situation, and asked me if she should back off.

I thought to myself, “Would it be useful to say anything?” Nope. But still I answered her, “Yes, it’s better to back off.” And still she got involved with him, and suffered till she couldn’t stand it anymore and broke off with him. When she told me about it months later, I couldn’t help but say, “I told you so.”
Some people fall into this situation over and over. For example, the above person’s elder sister (who’s also my student) told me earlier that she had had three boyfriends, all of whom criticised her a lot. Logically, she should have learnt from her first experience, and not need to experience two more hypercritical boyfriends. Well, it doesn’t work that way. Let me explain.

There’s something similar in the two sisters above: being drawn to people who are hypercritical of them. “Why are they so drawn to such people?” you may ask. It’s one of the many possible strange behaviours of people who have come to believe that they are defective or inferior. (If you are interested to know more, you can look up Defectiveness Schema.) They may also be drawn to people who are romantically committed to another, or are in other ways unavailable, such as monastics. So long as this sense of defectiveness remains in them, they will have strange tendencies like this one.

After telling me her unpleasant experience, the younger sister told me there are guys who are very nice to her, but she finds them boring. (She told me many days later, “It’s actually because I don’t think I deserve them being nice to me.”) Instead, she gets interested in those who criticise her a lot. She asked, “Isn’t it perverted (变态)?” I said, “Defilements are necessarily perverted.”

The sense of defectiveness is just one of the many negative mental patterns that make you fall in love with unsuitable people. For example, if you have a self-sacrifice pattern, you get attracted to people with an entitlement problem. (To know more about this kind of attraction, look up Schema Chemistry.) If you get involved with people because of a negative mental pattern in you, you’re sure to suffer and perhaps also cause them to suffer.

So, next time you find yourself intensely attracted to a person you barely know, ask yourself, “What am I actually attracted to?” When you’ve identified that, then ask, “Why am I attracted to that?”

Don’t guess. Look within. In doing this, not only can you save yourself a lot of pain, you may also get valuable insights about yourself.

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