Everyone Thinks This Personality Trait Is Super-Attractive, But Research Says There’s A Huge Catch
Or Hakim | UnsplashIf you’re single, you could be meeting the right people and not know they are the right people because you’re so focused on yourself and how awesome you are. At least, according to psychologists, this has become a huge catch to what we usually believe is an attractive personality trait.
Jean Twenge, Ph.D., wrote a book called Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before. Twenge believes Millennials (those of us born between 1982 and 2004) grew up to be more self-reliant than any other generation, thanks in part to the self-esteem movement — but there's a downside.
Having high self-esteem can be attractive, but research says there’s a huge catch
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Overflowing amounts of self-esteem might sound awesome, but it isn’t as great as it initially sounds
Research has suggested that Millennials find it hard to date and spend more time being single because we were raised to rely more on ourselves and are exceptionally good at being alone with only our own thoughts.
As a result, Millennials ended up with far more individual skills than relational skills, which means that connecting and relying on other people is difficult, because we’re so used to relying on ourselves. While this might have something to do with the prolific rise of latch-key kids in the '80s into the late '90s, it has more to do with self-esteem than just being okay with being alone.
Millennials were taught that self-love and acceptance were the most important things in their lives
They were told they shouldn’t care about what anyone else thought, and should only seek fulfillment in doing what made them happy. Being satisfied with yourself is great, but it has an unforeseeable side effect: If you don’t have any reason to take someone else’s needs, wants, or concerns into consideration, you won’t.
Being self-confident and overly self-loving has created a huge problem for people looking to date as adults. So many people advocate for loving yourself first and foremost and relying on your own skills so you can have a rich life. But according to Twenge and other psychologists, many Millennials totally overshot the good boundary of self-love and kept going, far beyond what was necessary.
Because many people are so independent in their opinions and rely on themselves, it makes it hard to reach out for personal reasons. Extreme independence makes connecting to another person that much more difficult. This, according to social worker Caitlin Cantor of Psychology Today, has created an army of one mentality that negatively affects relationships.
"Millennials were raised in a society that drilled self-esteem into them so fiercely that it morphed into something closer to unintended, misunderstood selfishness, rather than a high level of self-worth, and feelings of security and self-love. Luckily, as with any skills, the relational skills they need can be learned, practiced, and honed," explained Cantor.
For this reason, Millennials, more than other generations before us, struggle in areas of closeness, connection, vulnerability, and intimacy, since those are relational skills many people never learned, thanks to their proto-focus on self and loving themselves and their opinion of their actions. So yes, apparently there is such a thing as having too much self-esteem.
So, what to do if this hits too close to home? Cantor has some advice: "Rather than deciding you will always put yourself first, or never put yourself first, practice being flexible. As you go along on your relational or dating journey, you will always have to make choices. You can choose to do what’s best for your relationship, what’s best for someone else, or what’s best for yourself."
Merethe Najjar is a professional writer, editor, and award-winning fiction author. Her articles have been featured in The Aviator Magazine, Infinite Press, Yahoo, BRIDES, and more.
