Why do some nice intelligent women end up with crappy men?

[Thecowandcat]

I've been reading a few threads on here today that got me thinking, why do some women end up with such awful men?

I'm not talking about the horribly physically and emotionally abusive ones, where women get trapped and are intimidated and afraid so they end up staying.

I'm talking about the more everyday kind of awful man.

For example, a friend of mine is an amazing women. She has a great career, a great personality, is good looking, is funny, is wise and kind. She is one of the best people I know.

And yet . . .

She is married to this utter doilum. He makes creepy flirtatious comments to other women and clearly thinks the sun shines out of his arse. I avoid him when possible.

In fairness she seems fairly happy and it's possible that she doesn't know about the comments. He's pretty clever and the comments are sometimes open to interpretation, a lot of the creepiness is in the tone and they are never made in front of her, so maybe she is clueless about that side of him.

I just cannot understand how such an amazing women ended up with a man who is so far beneath her.

Anyone else observed this?

I reckon it does have a lot to do with the fact being a couple and having the perfect little life is seen as the thing to aspire to. My friend has recently ended her relationship after years of being cheated on and forgiving him. Yet she thought those of us who were single were the ones to be pitied because at least she had a man. It's depressing really.

I don't even know where one would go to find a decent man tbh. It seems they all just want to have sex with you, string you along and cheat.

Agreed, TheMummalo (ur name made me smile!), especially about looking for the good in people.

The thing I find is, I need someone to look past my own 'red flags' so it seems only fair to do it back! Eg. I've been out of work for almost 5 years due to anxiety/depression/complex PTSD/things, which isn't massively appealing to most men (for a start, they'd have to earn enough for both of you/potential children). I'm sort of seen as damaged goods/potential 'bunny boiler', and can't actually be honest about everything because of the nature of some my experiences (at least not until I REALLY trust someone). I don't really see myself as 'mental' so sort of forget the outside view, and I know I've been messed around by the NHS to the point I didn't start treatment until a year ago (private therapy). So I see myself as on the road to recovery at last, but it takes quite a lot for someone else to see that happening. I'm often not believed/don't want to go into detail (at first) about why the NHS has treated me like this/why I'm 'long term mental' and 'not better yet'. So I'll give the benefit of the doubt, and listen to explanations, because I need it too.

However, it seems to be fairly accepted that women will talk about emotional stuff/try to work it out... whereas men are more likely to 'act out' in anger, controlling tendencies, drink/substance abuse etc. So if you had two equally 'messed up' (sorry!) people in a relationship, she would be more likely to be working on her issues and want to give understanding, whereas he would be more likely to blame everything on her and be controlling or abusive or generally dysfunctional in an obvious way.

Obviously it does happen the other way round too.

My mum was a man hater, she never said good men were hard to come by, she said there was no such thing as a good man! That I would never find one and to stay with someone who was truly evil because thats just men and ill be alone forever if I keep believing in, what she considered to be, fairytails.

Intelligent women can fall into the trap of finding challenging men more interesting than well balanced ones. They can feel under stimulated by a well balanced man.

Element, this is very good point, I know all to well that no one is perfect, I certainly am not and totally agree that I have forgiven things I shouldn't because I have fed myself the old "no one's perfect, everyone makes mistakes, everyone deserves a second chance" but I now know that there is a huge difference between making a mistake and deliberately hurting others, there is a differences between struggles you can not control and struggles that are deliberately caused.
I have a horrendous amount of baggage that my husband has to deal with, he has never once used them as reasons not to be with me, he knows I have no control over it and even says it kills him t think of the stuff I went through alone and wishes he could have been there for me.
No one's perfect but that doesn't mean we have to forgive people who are deliberately cruel.

What Beaufort said:
"Because society still doesn't properly respect single, successful women and accept that they are good enough alone. Society too often revolves around coupledom and seems to revere it instead. It's based on insecurity and loneliness and the thought that the clock is ticking.
Women are conditioned to compromise."
A bit of a paat but there's another active thread at the moment where a woman is being castigated for sleeping with someone else when she's in an unhappy relationship. I think if we're all a bit more sanguine about relationships in the early days not being a gold standard to be cherished and nurtured however unsatisfying they are there'd be a lot fewer crap relationships with children, tenancies and mortgages to complicate things.

Again agree Zinxie, I broke up with men who treated me well because they weren't fun enough but stayed with men that were abusive or had alcohol/drug problems because it was dangerous, exciting etc etc
But i was VERY young then, would I have grown out of it naturally or did that change because of the experiences I've had?
I'll never know.

I have ended up with some crap women- sometimes you just don't know they're crap until they show their true colours. I guess the same can be true for guys.

Because when (some) women do find a lovely man they find him boring and not sexy? There are threads elsewhere on Mumsnet where women talk of having very lovely husbands but they're bored with them. Maybe relationships with selfish pigs who are good in bed are more exciting?

I have a friend who is intelligent, successful, attractive, fun. She has married a man who none of her friends like, he is rude and doesn't treat her right, sexist, selfish.

The thing is, she is only interested in alpha males with good jobs. It seems she'll put up with a lot of shit in order to have that. She went out with a lovely guy for a while who she obviously really liked, but dumped him because she was embarrassed about his low-status job.

Patriarchy!

Sometimes I think it can just be down to people valuing different things and I sometimes wonder if my standards are too high? I have a friend who is brilliant - really intelligent, driven, fun, attractive, interesting and sociable - a real catch! At uni she got a boyfriend who is (I think) not at all attractive, was a total drip, weird socially and just not capable of doing anything. He failed uni 3(!!!) times meaning she had to constantly put their plans to start a business together on hold. Then he couldn't/wouldn't get a job. He moved in with her and she had to pay all the rent and also had to pay for things for him meaning she could never go out/buy new clothes etc. Whenever they met up with our group of friends he was rude, anti social and wouldn't interact with anyone - none of us could work out why on earth she stayed with him.

So they moved to a new town, he eventually got a job and they got married last year, and at the wedding it suddenly became clear to me how much he adores her. He cried as she walked down the aisle, made the most moving speech about all her many qualities he admires and how she is his absolute world, and I caught him looking lovingly at her all evening and he could barely spend a moment away from her. It suddenly occurred to me that yes my boyfriends have always been more intelligent, successful, sociable and generally functioning than her husband and I don't think I could put up with her husband's traits - but at the same time none of my boyfriends had ever loved me as much or been as totally devoted to me as her husband is to her. It does make me wonder sometimes whether my priorities are skewed or whether she was willing to settle for someone less "good" in order to have true love and devotion?

My exh treated me like shite. Gaslighting, emotional abuse, financial abuse and finally sexual abuse. It was a build up over a very long time. He had me questioning myself over every tiny little thing.

I'm reasonably intelligent (I think) but by the time I started to realise what was going on I was married with twins (both autistic) and getting away seemed impossible.

I did get away eventually but it took a lot to do it. My partner is completely different. Kind, thoughtful, quiet hung like a horse . I have never met a man like him in all my 45 years.

I was told that I appear to have a history of attracting troubled men. And it's true - none of my relationships are straight forward. Is it because I'm slightly troubled myself, despite being reasonably attractive and intelligent? Do I just like drama? Maybe. I do know of people who absolutely thrive off having arguments and then making up.

I was in a relationship recently where he would twist things so that no matter what happened, I always ended up apologising. But it was done very subtly. He used to act out in such a way that I automatically felt guilty and starting listing off all the people who have left him and I'm another heartless bitch in a long line (he didn't word it like that but that's what he was implying). Someone told me she thought it was abuse although I didn't agree. I'm still not sure it was abuse. He was never violent to me, never called me unkind names or said unkind things, was always very complimentary. Yet the fact this person thought he was abusing me was a bit of a wake-up call. I even found myself thinking like an abuse victim, thinking everything was my fault. The men who do this are very manipulative and clever. Before that relationship, I could never understand why women stay with men who hit them or cheat on them. Sadly, now I can. Not that I think it's right they stay but I can understand the mindset behind why they do.

I had a baby with someone I knew to be a wrong 'un, simply because - this embarrasses me - it was the only offer on the table. I was single almost all my life before him and I've been single ever since (six years).

Mostly I'm quite happy to be single, but it does make me wonder why nobody seems interested. Is it some vibe I'm giving off? It's possible that I have quite high defences (not sure I even know why) and ex managed to crash through them simply because he ignores all boundaries.

Probably already covered but I think it's a combination of the following, and I'm generalising of course:

Women have a huge fear of being 'on the shelf' as a result of centuries of social conditioning

Related to that, there can be stigma about being a single woman that is not the case for single men

Very real biological ticking clock and maternal instinct

Successful men can feel threatened by successful, confident women. Again, because of social conditioning and mothers of boys that treat them like a prince so that when he grows up he wants a wife who worships him like mummy did. Another side of this coin is that women can want a man to 'mother'. And yet another side is that many mothers are overcritical of daughters leaving them always thinking they're not good enough and should be grateful for any man at all.

All of the above mean women are prepared to compromise.

low self esteem for me, which is odd and took me a while to realise, because I'm generally quite a strong and confident person. But in some areas, at some times of my life especially when I was younger, I had very little self esteem.

I had a very happy childhood and lovely parents, but they weren't ones to build your confidence up, quite the opposite to be honest. I was shy and quiet, because I was encouraged to be shy and quiet. 'Showing off' is a bad thing. Attracting attention of any sort is a bad thing. This is how my parents are themselves. Not confident people. No one in our family ever argues or disagrees with each other, never has. I wasn't able to see the effect of this until quite recently.

I can analyse it detail - and frequently do! But what I used to say, before all the analysis, is still a decent summary. It applies to both my marriages.
We had two things in common:

1. We were both in love with him.
2. We both felt I was lucky to have him.

One of XH2's few sane & balanced friends wrote in our wedding book "Galrick, you could have done so much better!" I kept that book for years, just because of this comment.

I think any relationship that starts off with this kind of power/respect imbalance, albeit subtle and unspoken, is only going to get worse. But if you begin by expecting an imbalance, that's what you're going to get.
My parents' marriage was a constant battle for the upper hand, which my father always won. As a template, it explains everything that happened in my own relationships.

Interesting this. Two of my cousins, are 'nice' men in their 30s, with job, own house, not weird looking etc. Yet women don't seem to be interested.

Maybe they're not interested, whats

I think we are naturally biased towards our friends, obviously. I have female friends that have set me up a date with their "intelligent, beautiful, funny...." Friends/colleagues. It turned out that they were none of these things (obviously they may have thought the same about myself). I think it's hard to really judge a friends relationship worth.

Because the devil doesn't show his horns when he wants something, so they say

I consider myself intelligent enough but twice in my life have been caught out by men who were lovely, ticked all the boxes treated me well. Until after we were married or longterm.

There's a notion that people can't hide their nasty character. That women who are fooled by these men are somehow gullible. No, women aren't gullible. & yes, it is perfectly possible to hide a nasty, unpleasant, narcissistic nature for a VERY long time. in fact as long as it takes to get who and what you want. The 2 men I mentioned if I'd heard about men such as this in my younger days I'd never have believed it - I'd have said sorry no, the woman must be foolish there's no way she wouldn't have seen very early signs. Growing up and going through life taught me that very often we only see the face someone wants us to see, for as long as they want us to see it depending on what they need from you.

I also agree with what some have said re. low self-esteem although that wasn't it, in my case. Whilst I've known of women who have low self-esteem and have been taken advantage of in so many sad ways and then can't or won't leave, equally there are women who have been targeted by misogynists in very good disguises...

I tend not to think "why do women fall for such awful men" tho..something about that question is a bit "blame & shame", for me. It puts the onus back on the victims of awful men, to somehow be less at fault and stop "picking" these men and choosing to be a victim. Yet its the perpetrator thats the monster.

Galrick, last sentence should have ended.....'saying they are too nice'.

whatsthatcomingoverthehill just read your comment, it made me think. When I met my 1st hubby that was him..good looking, solvent, own home, in a good job, personable and polite. Very courteous. I loved his voice..its very calming. He had a counselling qualification and I used to say to him his voice would be an asset in soothing people.

I remember I used to smile as if we were ever out and had to get on a train or bus, he'd always stand back and let women on 1st. The type to offer to carry heavy bags and cases as well. Everybody liked him.

I found out within 2 years of our marriage why every woman he'd been in a relationship with ran a mile, though. I think he must have written the blueprint for emotional abuse..he could think of so many ways to make life utterly miserable.

I still wake up odd days thinking thank God I kicked him & his ego, pride, misogyny & 1000 rules for 2nd class citizens aka women idiotic self to the kerb