How do horrid men attract nice women?

[Zeldahilda123]

I know it’s none of my business but it was just a thought that goes around in my head with no obvious answer. After I left my narcissistic, abusive and (frankly very dangerous) partner, he immediately found his next victim and moved in with her after 2 months, they are now happily engaged and very very happy (according to mutual friends). I have completely cut contact so have no communication with either of them but I just don’t understand. She’s a social worker who works with people, who as I understand it, has to have some sort of psychoanalytic training. She’s apparently very very nice and lovely, but he’s just… not. Red flags aplenty, don’t want to go into details of what he did, but he has no friends or family as they have all realised that he has absolutely no empathy or care for anyone but himself.

I just don’t get it, if she makes him a better human being then I’m all for it, but how can someone so nice be with someone so horrible. A cheating, manipulative, abusive, horrid man. He controlled everything I did, what I looked like, who I saw, etc etc etc.

Again know it’s nothing to do with me and I’m grateful he doesn’t get to abuse me anymore but I guess it’s just curiosity! Has anyone else thought this?

That’s right, they do turn when you need them most. Oh I wish I’d read Mumsnet before getting married. Sometimes I fantasise that I’d done a ‘guys what do you think about this’ post.

I wish the MN had existed when I met my now Ex.

Hindsight is the most exact science & I now see red flags galore, but I didn't even know what one was, or boundaries!

I grew up in a lovely warm, loving home, with fantastic parents.

However, I was so naïve and unprepared for people like my ex - they did not exist in my sheltered little bubble.

I was like a lamb to the slaughter.....

You might as well ask 'why are women attracted to men'. At one point he was your fabulous, exciting new man. And now someone else is getting that too. If you'd been 'warned' about him you're unlikely to have taken much notice. Some women might even dig in harder and see it as her and him against the world.

It will always be this way.

But what do you think @MorrisZapp? That these men can be all those things? Because I think a normal man might go from being exciting and new to being not (thinking of an ex boyfriend I had who was a fine person we just really grew apart). But the kind of men we’re talking about are definitely wrongheaded and cruel. Unless it’s a mistake to take the cruel bit as their ‘real’ selves and allow that it might be produced by the relationship somehow. I’m not sure.