Modern Wisdom Podcast #1020

Why We Fall for the Wrong People

Guest: Jessica Baum
Host: Chris Williamson
Date: November 15, 2025

Episode Overview

Chris Williamson sits down with psychotherapist and attachment expert Jessica Baum to unravel why we fall for the wrong people, how our childhood wounds shape adult relationships, and what it really takes to build lasting, secure connections. Drawing on insights from Baum’s book Safe, they explore attachment theory, intergenerational trauma, emotional regulation, "anchors" in relationships, and actionable steps to heal deep-seated wounds. The conversation is rich with personal anecdotes, neuroscience, and practical applications for anyone seeking deeper intimacy and self-understanding.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Is Safety in Relationships?

Timestamps: 00:58–03:20

• Safety is more than just a feeling within—it can be “outsourced” to supportive connections.
  • Jessica: “Sometimes in life we're not okay. But what gives me safety is knowing I have support, that no matter what happens… I have people around me.” (02:12)
• Secure attachment derives from early experiences of consistent, attuned care, which get internalized as a blueprint for safety.
• Signals of feeling unsafe: gut drop, racing heart, feeling “the ball’s going to drop,” smothered, abandoned (03:28).

2. Protective Strategies & Coping Mechanisms

Timestamps: 03:32–06:02

• Inner Protectors: Coping behaviors—like workaholism, compulsive exercise, drinking, device use—arise to avoid intolerable feelings from the body.
• Jessica: “If we don’t have safe places and safe ways to process what’s going on with us, we usually develop behaviors... to protect ourselves from deeper feelings we’re not ready to face.” (04:45)
• Blank stares, dissociation, or micro-expressions can trigger deep-seated threats to safety.

3. The Trap of Independence and Disconnection

Timestamps: 06:02–11:37

• Emphasis on individualism (“boss energy”) is rewarded in society but comes at the cost of meaningful connection.
• Living life in “left brain” mode—task-focused, productive, survival-oriented—can lead to disembodiment and emotional numbness.
• Chris: “It’s a slow drip, drip, drip, of disconnection and misery as opposed to the big rollercoaster carousel... So it is protective, albeit in a quite unholistic way internally. And it’s rewarded, albeit in a very shallow, meritocratic, capitalist way externally.” (07:07)
• Jessica: “You’re disconnected from self as a self-protective way. And you keep feeding the monster by saying ‘I’m just going to do more, do more.’” (09:25)
• Signs you’re stuck: chronic stress, inability to slow down, anxiety, emptiness, loneliness, difficulty being present (10:55).

4. Why Success Alone Doesn’t Fulfill Us

Timestamps: 11:56–19:06

• External validation—money, titles, status—offers fleeting rewards and can’t resolve deep emotional needs.
• Jessica: “Being successful is not what makes me happy. It's my connections, it's my relationships. That's what gives me meaning.” (06:49)
• Chris: “It’s actually quicker to just become rich and realize that it's not going to fix your problem than it is to try and dispense with the dream... that this is going to be the answer to my questions.” (16:12)

5. How Childhood Wounds Repeat and Shape Our Partner Choices

Timestamps: 19:06–23:41

• Our current relationships mirror unresolved patterns from childhood—“we attract the familiar.”
• Jessica: “What happens is, as we grow up, we attract the familiar... It recreates familiar patterns from our childhood because that's what our system knows.” (20:31)
• Partners often echo the emotional landscape ("temperature") of our home growing up, whether that was chaotic, neglectful, or nurturing.

6. Why We Fall for Familiar Pain & Why Familiarity Isn’t Safety

Timestamps: 23:41–38:26

• We mistake familiarity for safety and intensity/chaos for chemistry, seeking partners who replay or trigger the very wounds we carry.
• Jessica: “Most people with insecure childhoods and insecure patterns tend to feel more resonant with someone who matches that—ironically repeats the very trauma that they experienced.” (22:45)
• Emotional availability and presence are often missing in childhood, passed down intergenerationally as “emotional unavailability.”
• The “inner child” isn’t just “woo”—it’s science: our bodies store implicit, sensory memory before explicit memory.

7. Confusing Intensity with Intimacy

Timestamps: 32:40–38:26

• Intensity, love bombing, or chaos early in a relationship can mimic love, but often indicate activation of deep wounds, not true closeness.
• True “homecoming” in relationships involves both partners recreating and (ideally) healing early attachment wounds.

8. The Vulnerability of Real Safety & The Challenge of Accepting It

Timestamps: 39:34–43:15

• For those unaccustomed to safety, calm, and true presence, healthy love can feel boring, scary, or vulnerable at first.
• Jessica: “When true safety shows up, it can feel very foreign.” (40:40)
• If you or your partner struggle with receiving safety, start by seeking “anchors” (safe others, not necessarily romantic partners) who can model emotional presence.

9. The Role of Co-Regulation, “Anchors,” and the Ventral State

Timestamps: 43:49–48:30

• Healing attachment wounds requires co-regulation—one person's regulated, present nervous system helps bring the other back to safety (ventral vagal state).
• “Anchors” are people with a regulated, expansive nervous system who can “sit” with you in discomfort without fixing or judging.
• Jessica: “We can’t move trauma alone. We actually need co-regulation and adult anchoring to be with what's in the body with us, so we can start to move the earlier wounds.” (44:00)

10. Attachment Styles: Anxious, Avoidant, and the Push-Pull Dance

Timestamps: 47:06–49:50

• Anxious and avoidant types are “magnetically” attracted but trigger each other’s wounds—one pursues, the other withdraws.
• To soothe an anxious partner: repeated reassurance, secure presence, and sometimes professional support for deep abandonment wounds.

11. How Healing Actually Happens

Timestamps: 49:54–56:58

• Healing is a humbling, vulnerable process of “regressing” to earlier wounded states, allowing them to be witnessed and cared for now.
• Jessica: “What was wounded in relationship must be healed in relationship… you need to meet the wound and the wound needs to receive what it didn’t get at the time it was created.” (51:07)
• For men, especially, opening up emotionally in front of a partner or friend can feel incompatible with traditional masculinity, making relational healing especially fraught.
• Chris: “It doesn’t seem particularly well rewarded or incentivized [for men to be emotionally vulnerable].” (55:24)
• Jessica: “I think that true masculinity comes from this portal of being vulnerable and going there. And it’s what women say they want.” (55:24)

12. Practices for Couples: Regulation, Repair, and Intimacy

Timestamps: 58:06–73:01

• Strong relationships normalize rupture and repair: conflict isn’t failure, but an opportunity for deepened intimacy—if you can actually process and integrate the lesson together.
  • Jessica: “True rupture and repair… Really understanding what your partner is going through... When we have conflict, it’s an opportunity not only to repair on a deep level, but to build deeper intimacy.” (63:40)
• Recognizing when your nervous system is activated and communicating from that place, rather than acting out old patterns.
• Asking: “What do I need when I’m dysregulated?” and learning to request it from your partner, whether it’s reassurance, space, or presence.
• Chris: “There must be a unique challenge to healing from wounds that are created inside of the relationship that you’re trying to heal them in.” (65:17)
• The importance of disconfirming experiences: moments when a trusted person responds in a new, healing way, eroding old negative beliefs.

13. When to Stay or Leave: Identifying Unhealable Patterns

Timestamps: 67:57–73:01

• Sometimes wounds are so deep or traumas overlap so much that individual healing is required before a relationship can thrive.
• Recognizing trauma bonds and the difference between healthy challenge and repeating damaging cycles.
• The frequency and depth of rupture versus your ability to repair matters—if it’s a loop with no growth, it may be time to step back.

14. Where to Begin: The Wheel of Attachment & Self-Reflection

Timestamps: 73:12–74:09

• Jessica offers The Wheel of Attachment as a starting point—a tool to reflect on your earliest relationship dynamics, felt sense of safety, and current relational patterns.
• Ask: With whom did I feel safe? Unsafe? What dynamics from my family of origin am I repeating now? Where do I feel these patterns in my body?

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On emotional presence:
  “It's the feeling of with that gives a child safety and it's the feeling of with that gives us all safety.”
  —Jessica Baum (29:19)

• On healing alone vs. together:
  “I would be doing the science an injustice if I said read this book and fix yourself. That’s just not how developmental trauma heals… a lot of what I needed to heal inside, I needed the right support.”
  —Jessica Baum (61:10)

• On the paradox of “familiarity” and “safety”:
  “It feels so fucking cosmically unfair that our nervous systems confuse familiarity with safety.”
  —Chris Williamson (23:41)

• On the role of rupture and repair:
  “If we have conflict, it’s an opportunity not only to repair on a deep level, but to build deeper intimacy.”
  —Jessica Baum (63:40)

• On masculinity & vulnerability:
  “True masculinity comes from this portal of being vulnerable and going there. And it’s what women, a lot of women say they want. Right. And it's what we have to go through to get to the other side of this.”
  —Jessica Baum (55:24)

Practical Takeaways

• To begin healing:
  Reflect on your earliest relationship experiences and how they show up in current patterns (The Wheel of Attachment).
• Seek “anchors”:
  Find people, therapeutic or otherwise, who are emotionally available and present.
• Communicate nervous system states:
  Practice speaking from and about your internal state, instead of blaming or defaulting to behaviors.
• Normalize rupture and repair:
  Embrace (healthy) conflict as a portal to deeper relationship satisfaction—look for evidence that you’re able to repair and grow, not just return to status quo.
• Healing happens together:
  Prioritize co-regulation and community—not just self-help—for lasting change.

Final Resources

• Free Wheel of Attachment Guide: Download via Jessica’s website or the link in episode notes.
• Jessica Baum: Search “Jessica Baum” for her work, social media, and the latest resources.
• Book: Safe – An Attachment-Informed Guide to Building Secure Relationships and Coming Home to Yourself

For further information:

• [Jessica Baum on social media / website]
• ChrisWillX.com/books for Chris’s top book recommendations, including Jessica’s.

This summary centers on the core ideas and takeaways from a deep and vulnerable conversation, aiming to help listeners and non-listeners alike reflect on their relationship patterns and begin the journey toward greater intimacy and healing.