Why We’re Drawn to Complicated People: The Psychology of Emotional Puzzles

Because the heart chases what the mind can’t easily solve.

Because the heart chases what the mind can’t easily solve. We never choose the easy ones first.

We’re polite to them. We appreciate them. We might even wish we could fall for them. But the truth is brutal: many of us are drawn to complicated people, the ones who unsettle, intrigue, and stir something in us that feels half-dangerous, half-magnetic.

We don’t talk about this openly—not because it’s rare, but because it exposes something raw about who we are. This attraction isn’t random. It’s not a character flaw. It is psychology, neurobiology, attachment patterns, and human storytelling colliding at full speed.

And once you understand why we’re drawn to complicated people, you’ll appreciate yourself more honestly than you ever have.

I. The Dopamine Trap: Why Mystery Feels Like Intimacy

The first reason we’re drawn to complicated people is biological: Humans are wired to chase the unpredictable. When someone is consistent, the brain relaxes. When someone is unpredictable—warm one moment, distant the next—your dopamine system activates the same way it does in gambling reinforcement cycles (Cooper et al., 2021). This is called intermittent reinforcement, and it is one of the strongest psychological hooks known to science.

You don’t get dopamine when someone gives you attention. You get dopamine when you hope they will. Complicated people don’t hand you certainty. They hand you a possibility. And possibility is intoxicating. Neuroscience research shows that unpredictability intensifies emotional arousal, making you misinterpret adrenaline as attraction or depth (Reynolds & Monti, 2021). This is why calm people feel “boring” and chaotic people feel “deep.”

You’re not confusing toxicity for love.

Your nervous system is responding exactly as designed.

II. The Attachment Blueprint: Chaos That Feels Like Home

If you grew up around inconsistent caregivers—loving one minute, withdrawn the next—your brain learned a painful lesson:

Love is unpredictable.

Love must be earned.

Adults with anxious or disorganized attachment patterns are statistically more likely to be drawn to complicated people because the pattern matches the emotional template formed in childhood (Fonagy et al., 2020).

It isn’t that you want chaos.

It’s that chaos feels familiar.

And familiarity feels safe, even when it hurts. But even securely attached people can fall into this dynamic—if the person appears emotionally complex, enigmatic, or wounded. Complexity can mimic depth, and depth mimics intimacy. We assume what feels complicated must also be meaningful.

The truth?

Sometimes it is.

Sometimes it isn’t.

But the attachment pull is real.

III. The Illusion of Depth: When Hard to Read Feels Like Worth Understanding

Humans are storytelling creatures. When someone gives us only fragments of themselves, our brains rush to fill in the missing pieces. This is narrative projection—a cognitive phenomenon in which we create meaning from incomplete information(Vallacher & Nowak, 2020).

When someone is complicated, inconsistent, or emotionally guarded, we imagine reasons:

• “They’re like this because they’ve been hurt.”

• “They’re deeper than they seem.”

• “There’s something incredible beneath the surface.”

We subconsciously build a story around them. And the more effort we put into the story, the more important the person becomes. Easy people don’t trigger this narrative machinery. Complicated people activate every creative and psychological system we have.

This is why falling for them feels cinematic.

You’re not just relating to a person.

You’re relating to the mystery.

IV. Emotional Mirrors: Complicated People Reveal the Parts of Us We Hide

Here is the part no one likes to admit: We’re often drawn to complicated people because something in them reflects something unresolved in us.

Not the obvious parts.

The hidden ones.

Research on relational self-concept shows that we gravitate toward people who activate “unfinished emotional business” from earlier life experiences (Chen et al., 2021).

We choose them because they make old wounds vibrate, forcing us to confront pieces of ourselves we never thoroughly examined.

Complicated people mirror:

• our unhealed trauma

• our longing to be chosen

• our desire to be “the one who breaks through”

• our fantasies about rescuing someone or being rescued

• our hunger for emotional intensity

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This is not weakness.

This is human nature trying to resolve old patterns through new relationships.

Sometimes these connections teach us the truth.

Sometimes they teach us the same lesson again until we’re finally ready to stop repeating it.

V. The Rescuer Reflex: Why We Want to Save the Wounded

Many people—especially caregivers, empaths, and those who grew up in unstable households—carry what psychologists call the rescuer identity (Heshmati et al., 2022). This is the belief that your worth comes from fixing someone who is emotionally damaged.

Complicated people awaken this instinct immediately.

• They’re difficult → you feel challenged.

• They’re wounded → you feel necessary.

• They’re inconsistent → you try harder.

• They’re mysterious → you want to be the exception.

  
  

This creates a cycle where helping feels like bonding, and bonding feels like purpose.

It’s not love.

It’s identity.

And because the brain rewards helping behavior with oxytocin, the bond feels biologically reinforced — even when the relationship is unbalanced or emotionally draining.

VI. When Complexity Becomes Chaos: The Emotional Exhaustion Line

Not all complicated people are harmful — many simply carry depth, trauma, or layers that make them hard to read. That’s normal. But some cross into chaos.

Here’s how you know the difference:

Healthy Complexity

• emotionally deep

• introspective

• accountable

• open to growth

• layered but stable

• challenging but respectful

Harmful Complexity

• inconsistent

• emotionally unavailable

• unpredictable

• manipulative through silence or inconsistency

• non-communicative

• creates confusion instead of clarity

If being drawn to complicated people consistently leads you to relationships full of anxiety, self-doubt, or waiting, that’s not complexity — it’s dysregulation. And your nervous system knows the difference, even when your heart doesn’t want to listen.

VII. Why You Can’t Let Go: The Loop of “Almost”

Complicated relationships run on almosts:

• almost available

• almost committed

• almost vulnerable

• almost ready

• almost healed

Psychologists call this partial reinforcement extinction resistance—the more inconsistent the reward, the harder it is to stop pursuing it (Sutton et al., 2020). This is why people stay attached long after logic says they shouldn’t. Your brain is addicted to the possibility of resolution. The hope of breakthrough. The fantasy of “if I just love them enough.”

Complicated people activate hope.

And hope is a hell of a drug.

VIII. Breaking the Pattern: How to Stop Being Drawn to Complicated People

Patterns don’t break through judgment.

They break through awareness.

1. Identify what “complicated” represents to you

Is it excitement?

Validation?

Familiar chaos?

A chance to rewrite your past?

2. Rewire your attraction system

Research shows attraction shifts when people learn to associate safety with excitement (Mattingly et al., 2022).

3. Recognize that stability is not boring

Healthy people can be profound, intense, passionate, and complex — without being chaotic.

4. Build tolerance for consistent affection

Consistency feels uncomfortable at first if inconsistency was your norm.

5. Learn to choose clarity over confusion

Confusion is not chemistry.

Confusion is the nervous system's response to uncertainty.

Conclusion — We’re Drawn to Complicated People Because We’re Searching for Ourselves

At the root of it all, we chase complicated people because they awaken something unfinished inside us. They activate our curiosity, our wounds, our hope, our desire to understand and be understood.

They make us feel alive in ways that calm people sometimes can’t.

But aliveness is not the same thing as alignment. Being drawn to complicated people says less about their depth and more about your hunger—for meaning, for connection, for the emotional puzzle you were never allowed to solve in your younger life.

Once you understand the pattern, you stop chasing the puzzle. You choose the person. And the person you choose will choose you back—without the emotional maze.

References

Chen, S., DeWall, C. N., Poon, K., & Chen, Z. (2021). When interpersonal bonds are threatened: Relational self-concept and emotional responses. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 120(4), 851–870.

Cooper, S., Robison, A. J., & Maze, I. (2021). Reward circuitry and addiction: A modern view on dopamine’s role in unpredictability. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 22(10), 623–639.

Fonagy, P., Luyten, P., Allison, E., & Campbell, C. (2020). Mentalizing, attachment, and trauma: Implications for contemporary psychotherapy. The Lancet Psychiatry, 7(7), 611–626.

Heshmati, S., Oravecz, Z., & Jacobs, D. (2022). The interpersonal dynamics of emotional rescuers: Psychological needs and behavioral motivations. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 39(6), 1690–1710.

Mattingly, B. A., Clark, E. M., & Wilson, K. (2022). Rewriting attraction: Conditioning stability as desire in adult relationships. Personal Relationships, 29(1), 38–56.

Reynolds, E. K., & Monti, P. M. (2021). Neurobiological pathways of emotional arousal and misattribution in human romantic attraction. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 15, 624391.

Sutton, R. S., Barto, A. G., & Williams, R. J. (2020). Reinforcement learning and resistance to extinction in human decision-making. Psychological Review, 127(6), 1013–1032.

Vallacher, R. R., & Nowak, A. (2020). Dynamical systems and meaning-making in human relationships. Review of General Psychology, 24(3), 255–270.