Why do women have no standards?

[deeter]

Yes, men and their actions are the fundamental problem. I'm not shifting blame. But why are so many women choosing abusive men that are red flags from the get go? I understand the practicalities of leaving a toxic, enmeshed situation is not easy. What can we teach our daughters to prevent this from reoccurring? Why are so many women afraid of being single?

@GingerIsBest - that's it, these men prey on empathy. I do see a lot of women, even after the worst relationships, going 'but I don't want to make him homeless' and so on. Even when the man wouldn't think twice of doing the same to her... even if he's been unfaithful and abusive.

I saw a great post online the other day which inadvertently says a lot about this dynamic, it was something like 'A women can be going through the most traumatic shit but be getting on with her errands with a smile stuck to her face; a man's parents can get divorced when he's 12 and the world spends the rest of his life paying for it'

What I know to be red flags now, I didn't in my early 20's. I didn't even know what a narcissist was.

Being single at 30 has shown me society's obsession with women's dating lives. In even extremely professional settings I'll be asked by my seniors what my evening plans are/if I've got a date planned. As if dating must be my only priority.

I am trying to leave an abuser. I consider myself to be rational & kind, I grew up in a healthy parental relationship. I cannot tell you how I got into this mess but I will tell you stupid comments like this, that blame the victim do not help us. I hope to god my children never grow up like their father, we can only teach our children to be better.

I think it dates from when women couldn’t own property so any husband was better than none.

I think it starts in childhood and the way a person is bought up. It also has to do with how a child's parents are. If your mother is with a lazy man with no job and she has work and do all the housework you may think this is the norm. The same if your father is drunk, abusive ect.
I knew then that some woman can be the problem also. They have kids but never really wanted them and can be verbally abusive to them telling them they are useless ect.
Then some mothers can be heavy drinkers or take drugs, can't mind their kids and family members step in to help out or the father does the minding as much as possible.

If this is what you grow up with you think this is normal. I knew then as well that some woman very much tell their daughters from a young age it important to met a man, get married and have kids. Years ago as a woman you could not have a bank account, were paid less than a man having a boyfriend and getting married was important.

I have friend who is single in her early 50s. In her early 40s she wanted to get into a relationship with a man she knew for a long time. He just kept her on the side between his other woman. My friend asked him to met her one day and he made a last minute excuse. She then found out he was lying to her and they had a major falling out.
He went on to get his new girlfriend pregnant within a year but they never married. My friend heard several other things about him as well that made her realise she had a lucky escape.

I have also seen men who keep going towards the same type of woman and when they brake up they are upset. Rather than learn from this they rush into the same or similar situation as before. I know one man who turned a fabulous woman for him to get involved with a woman with loads of red flags. He then had a child with her and after some time realised the situation he was in. He got in contact with the woman he turned down. They were chatting for while and wanted to get into a friends with benefits situation with her.
She told him we can only be friends. She told me later that she was not getting involved with a man living with another woman and one with a small child as well.

You only have to read threads on here about the use of Ms and Mrs to see how much being in a relationship gives women status in many people's eyes.

Lots of great points on this thread, especially about societal conditioning which I think is the biggest factor.
One absolute minor thing:

When a woman gets pregnant by a man already known to be rubbish, and is wavering on whether to keep the pregnancy, you will see plenty of posters on here going 'go it alone, you have to do what's right for you, you don't need him, I was raised by a single mum and it was hard but great'
And while the sentiment is lovely, and these posters are really just doing their best to reassure someone whose scared, it makes me want to cry. This is how women end up lumbered with these arseholes for life. Lumbering their child with an arsehole father. It puts the man in close proximity of them, which in turn makes it more likely they will get back with them and have another child. And worst of all, it creates yet another human being whose going to have a shit example for a parent, and who will continue the same cycle.
It breaks my heart. Yes, sometimes it turns out okay. But most of the time it perpetuates a cycle where women and children suffer. Your body, your choice - but please for the love of God if he's already shown himself to be an arsehole, really THINK about the fact you are exposing your child to him for life.

Single women often make people uncomfortable.

Not well adjusted people obviously, but a lot of people are not well adjusted.

They make attached women who are not in good relationships (many) uncomfortable - because you represent a threat to the relationship; someone for their man to cheat with or leave for.

They project their desperation to be in a relationship onto you and presume you must be trying to get a man, any man - too.

Widows and divorcees on here have outlined their common experiences on this front. The corresponding experience to the threatened, uncomfortable, hostile, suspicious attached women .. is the sleazy attached men.

I found they could be sleazy whether they were actually up for cheating/leaving or not. They - again;- project both their desperation to be in a couple and their desperation for sex - onto single women .. and presume that you are available, sex starved and desperate. The cheaters will make overtures. Many of the non cheaters will still have a smarmy attitude in my experience. Some seem to believe that - because you're single - they could have you if they weren't attached. I've many a time thought to myself "no mate, I wouldn't have gone out with you if you were single .... you're delusional".

On top of all the mating game dynamics that make both women and men uncomfortable around single women ... Esp of child bearing age; there is a general attitude that women are supposed to couple up and produce kids and it's unnatural and a waste and a sad case if they don't. So you get lots of "well meaning" questions and low level harassment about why you're not coupled up and what you're doing about finding a man etc etc.

I think some of this is genuinely rooted in the historic situation in our society ... Where women who didn't marry and stayed spinsters had so few options for making decent money and being comfortably off - that ppl were genuinely worried about then remaining single and having no decent/second wage coming in, no kids to look after them in old age (before social welfare, nursing homes etc). Look at how different the perceptions of the word bachelor and spinster are.

Easy enough to say if you grew up in a good household and had healthy relationships modelled for you.

I was incredibly naive at 21 when I met my abusive ex. He was only my 2nd boyfriend.

I knew nothing about red flags, although there were plenty in hindsight.

It's usually about the patterns embedded in people from childhood. Women who had healthy role models and relationships with their parents as kids tend not to choose these men, or tend to understand sooner it was a mistake. But if it's what your grew up seeing, it's what you'll naturally gravitate towards. My parents were loving but emotionally very fragile people, so I ended up gravitating towards very vulnerable men who often tended towards abuse. I had to do therapy and learn to ignore that impulse to seek out what was familiar to me in order to end up in a healthy relationship.

The fact is that it's generally a cycle, and many women (and men) are caught in it. History repeats itself over and over and unless people are capable of extreme self-reflection they just won't get out of it.

Tell them you're reading Proust, then strumming one out.

In society's view im looked down upon because I would rather stay a single parent than be with any man I've recently met they are just so unhealthy enmeshed with everything no sign of a healthy attachment anywhere I know one man throws everything out the window should his adult child call he thinks I'm cold for giving my (adult) "child" phone advice first before I rush in and swoop her up he asked me on a date I gently suggested we were not compatible he told his therapist and then told me his therapist disagreed with my piss poor parenting practices

Apparently asking "are you fucking unhinged" is another example

I want an island to hide on with no red flags

Women tend to try and solve issues, and some think they can achieve what the ex could not maybe?

I think people tend to do the best they can with the knowledge they have at the time.
Nobody goes into a relationship with a crystal ball, some people bring out the worst in one another. Most of us end up learning the hard way and that maybe has something to do with record level of women over 50 happily choosing to live alone.

There isn’t a lot of education on what makes a good relationship. So many times on here you read, ‘ but when we get on it’s so great’. The quality of a relationship is not how well you get on when it’s great, but how well you can negotiate when things are not going well. But so many don’t realise this.

And we normalize shit relationships. If a woman complains about her partner, her mates are likely to respond with ‘ men! What are the like!’ And relate their anecdotes of their partners being a bit rubbish. And this normalizes shit behaviour and makes it harder to spot the need to leave.

Yes. I think we do need to also educate girls and women on these through sharing of stories and experiences. The woman I talked about above - the red flags, in retrospect, were endless. But she didn't recognise them and I can honestly say that neither did I, or any of our friends.

I can tell you some of the things that I do/don't say to DD in my effort to start this retraining process:

I will NEVER say, or accept, any version of,
"Ooh, he's only chasing you/hittig you/calling you names because actually he likes you."

I regularly say, "it's okay to push back or shout if someone touches you or hurts you. Even in the classroom. If he touches you again, and the teacher gets cross with you for shouting, I PROMISE that I will be behind you 100%."

I have also been known to tell DD that "it's okay to laugh or ridiculous someone who says stupid thinks like 'girls can't play football' or 'girls and boys can't be friends'."

But it is RELENTLESS.

Simply put there is something superficially charming and alluring about a lot of psychopaths and sociopaths. At first look there is something seemingly quite liberating in their approach to life, they don’t really hold true to the restrictions and taboos of society. Why would they? They only truly care about themselves.

Couple that with the heavy levels of love bombing in the early stages of the relationship it can be intoxicating to feel you have found someone who worships the ground you walk on. Especially if you have never experienced a healthy version of love in your life, and indeed may feel you may never find it again.

Then comes the change and it goes in cycles. You are made to feel each and every abuse against you is your fault. You remember the person you honestly fell in love with, and are desperate to get them back. You find a stability IN the chaos as you become acclimatised to it. If it ever grinds you down to the point you may actually leave then it’s back to step one, the love bombing, so of course you take them back.

Remember that during all of this your are subtly and not so subtly conditioned and brainwashed so they become in all practical terms your only meaningful point of contact with another human being. In terms of what we do to teach children so they don’t grow up vulnerable to such people? Well I’m not entirely sure, but I’d say the starting point has to be at home. If children don’t get to see a healthy model of a relationship at home what chance do they have?

Oh, and I'm endlessly banging on to DD that if people say mean things or do mean things, even if it's just while playing etc, it's okay for her to choose to walk away/not play with that person. The "it was just a joke" or "it's just a game" or "it doesn't mean anything" excuse gets short shift over here.

I also agree with this.

Lot of men have a knack of swooping on women who are vulnerable in some way, it's like a sixth sense they have. If there's a self-esteem issue in the woman it seems to bring the abusers and incels flocking.

You’re being awful to blame women. There are so many reasons. Your post is very ignorant

I know schools are stretched but I really can't think of an alternative way to teach kids what should and should not be accepted.

Boys learn their behavior from their fathers. There is research on this.