Some women are attracted to men who cause them pain. This painful experience teaches them nothing: they inevitably fall into the same traps again. It’s not a matter of bad karma or destiny, but of the relationships they had with significant adults in childhood, primarily their mother.
“Three failed marriages! I thought I’d figured it all out, drawn the necessary conclusions, and here you go! I’ve chosen another bad guy! I’m so fed up with this! It’s ruining my life!”
“Sometimes I think about meeting someone. But I stop myself right away. It’s been too hard to recover from each time my partner broke my heart. It always happens again.”
“At 46, I’ve finally decided to stop expecting anything and be alone. I don’t have the strength to hope and then be disappointed again.”
I usually hear such stories from women who have already, or are close to, given up on finding happiness in their personal lives. Many of them admit that the men they are attracted to possess distinctly unpleasant traits, such as pronounced narcissism, a desire to control their partners, and rudeness.
But, alas, “nice guys” don’t attract such women. Here’s a typical confession from one of them: “I understand intellectually that Steve is a wonderful person: kind, predictable, modest. But the longer we’re together, the more I miss Bill, who was so attractive to me, despite his endless lies and dishonesty. I’m bored with Steve. Do I really need someone who hurts me?”
Many women who were not loved by their mothers ask such questions.
They constantly fear abandonment or rejection. This makes them emotionally unstable. Some believe they have freed themselves from her influence and strive to leave their family past behind. Others may rationalize their mother’s behavior, still hoping to one day experience her love.
But there are also those who realize they need help. They seek psychotherapy to understand how their childhood experiences have affected them. They can best be helped by therapists well-versed in child development, attachment theory, and trauma therapy. Here are some possible reasons why women may embrace those who make them suffer.
1. She is guided by the familiar
Of course, this doesn’t just apply to unloved daughters. We all unconsciously gravitate toward what’s familiar: we’re drawn to people, situations, and relationships that remind us of our earliest life experiences. Research shows that we form bonds and form alliances with those who remind us of our parents.
If your parents loved and protected you, made you feel like the world was a safe place and that people could be trusted, then you’ll likely choose a wonderful partner who will confirm that feeling. Unfortunately, the daughters of such mothers will seek a comfort zone where comfort doesn’t exist.
2. She lives in illusions
A man must win a woman over—this notion is largely shaped by our culture. Women often mistake attention and gifts (here he is, the prince who will turn Cinderella into a princess!) for genuine interest in her; she sees behind the intense courtship a desire to better know and understand her as a person. Unfortunately, (good) guys who don’t show such drive are considered boring or unsexy by women.
3. She mistakes drama for passion
Psychologist Craig Malkin, in his book “A New Look at Narcissism,” makes a powerful point: “The unknown in love turns us on.” This is especially true for women, who learned from childhood that love must be earned, fought for, and sought after, that it never comes easy. And when negative feelings arise—anger, pain, fear—they tend to mistake their suffering for passion.
Unfortunately, this isn’t a very healthy thing. Riding a roller coaster is exciting, but love and devotion have nothing to do with it.
4. She turns a blind eye to how she is treated.
If in childhood she was accustomed to being spoken to rudely, and her parents’ kindness had to be earned through obedience, then as an adult she may not notice that her partner humiliates her or that she neglects her needs and desires.
We all tend to accept our experiences as normal, and many of us tend to underestimate the depth of our emotional wounds. I usually draw an analogy with a scene you see in many homes: we become so accustomed to the shoes and boots lying in the hallway that we stop noticing them. Unloved daughters similarly fail to see that they are being manipulated or insulted.
5. She tends to blame herself for everything.
Her tendency toward self-criticism also developed in childhood: either she was directly told that everything was her fault, or she developed this way of coping with various situations. And now, she’s more likely to blame herself than her partner for failures. Situation: You’re flying somewhere together, and for some reason your partner remains sullenly silent or responds with great irritation. Wouldn’t you rush to tell yourself that it’s not the time to impose yourself on them, since you know they’re tired?
6. She doesn’t trust her feelings.
Controlling, aggressive mothers, or mothers with pronounced narcissistic personality traits, are masters at shifting blame onto their children. For example, they tell their daughters that they are overly sensitive or abnormal, causing them to doubt their own sanity.
As a result, daughters do not trust their thoughts and feelings.
Neglectful mothers may teach their daughters that their feelings are unimportant and unvaluable. In the future, they are more likely to let their partner make all the decisions for them. They are also very vulnerable to manipulation and control.
7. She doesn’t understand the reasons for her insecurity.
As an adult, she continues to unconsciously search for the love she missed out on as a child. But if such love looms on the horizon, she’ll likely fail to recognize it.
8. She doesn’t have a healthy relationship model.
Even if she begins to understand what an unhealthy relationship is, the concept of a healthy one still remains beyond her imagination. Psychotherapy can certainly help here.
9. She doesn’t know what love is and what it means to love
This is perhaps the biggest problem of all. If you grew up believing that love must be pursued, earned, and that it must be paid for one way or another, you will think that a relationship built on these conditions is love.
Likewise, if you grew up believing that love makes you vulnerable and often hurts, you’re more likely to accept relationships in which your partner treats you poorly. However, you can still discover secure attachment. This can be helped by psychotherapy or a close relationship with a partner you can trust and with whom you feel safe.
10. She is afraid of being alone.
As children, they feel that their case is unique, that they are the only children whose mothers do not love them, and this feeling of rejection, it seems to me, is no less traumatic than the lack of maternal love.
Because they lacked approval and support from their mother, and often from other family members as well, they continue to seek out people who will make them feel good about themselves. And so, being alone means confirming what they heard about themselves as a child: that they are unloved, unvalued, and inferior. To avoid these experiences, they may enter into relationships that only confirm these negative beliefs about themselves.
American writer Peg Streep knows firsthand what it’s like to be an unloved daughter. Nevertheless, she was able to become a loving mother to her daughter and overcome childhood trauma. The author shares effective strategies for healing childhood trauma and building genuine self-esteem.
