Help me unpick why I always got this type of guy

[NoMoreStupidGuys]

I hope some of you can give me some insight. I have been doing some retrospective thinking. Every man I have been involved with - EVERY SINGLE ONE with NO EXCEPTION - has always been complicated in that they have been:

Married
Allegedly separated
Cheaters
Mixed up with exes they haven't got over
Mixed up with exes who haven't got over them and want them back
Involved in the past with 'psycho exes'
Players with lots of women hanging around them or that they are stringing along

EVERY SINGLE ONE. Only two have not gone into that category but I didn't fancy them though I did like them a lot as friends and it never progressed to a proper relationship.

These men have included long term relationships (three, all of whom I got engaged to, one of which I married and divorced), men I met who stood me up, men I liked and had inappropriate crushes on, men I chased after meeting once, work colleagues and so on.

I won't fall into that sort of trap again. I haven't had a relationship for coming up 4 years now. What I can't unpick is WHY I would willingly choose to chase this sort of character, looking back they were all bad bets, but I didn't see it. All I saw was that I had to be good enough for them and if it wasn't working then I clearly wasn't good enough for them. Why?

Are they all very attractive/charismatic?

Because you don't willingly choose these men, you unconsciously choose them. We recognise what's familiar to us, or what we are still trying to fix or 'win' out over. It's all patterns and programming from the past. I've spent years in one-to-one therapy and yet I still messed up with my last partner and chose an avoidant humdinger. Honestly, this stuff is hard to shift. 😞

I have a friend like this. I think her interest is piqued by the drama in these men's lives and sometimes a feeling of being a rescuer for the poor hurt lamb. When she met one of my friends at a party of mine who was interested in her and asked me for her number, she said he was boring because he was single and had been for a while, a bit of a homebody who worked a lot and was close to his family. What I saw as stable and family oriented, she saw as boring and square.

I have a different (ex)friend who is attracted to married men again because of the drama, sneaking around, forbidden love, intensity etc. A large part of the attraction seemed to be telling me all the details how it was just so utterly romantic and true love - luckily I moved away and never contacted her again, I was sick of being told all this stuff.

Sorry I've just read back your post and I can't see that the married men were ones you knew were married or not when first meeting them - if not, disregard the second anecdote in my post!

Anyway I agree that these patterns are often habitual and a therapist can help unpick the patterns with you. What did you learn about relationships growing up I wonder? What was your parent's relationship like?

(I've heard ChatGPT makes a surprisingly good stopgap therapist if you can't find one without a long wait...!!)

These go back years. Some were, some weren't and I wondered why I bothered with them, now.

@Xiaoxiong My parents' relationship was not good. My father was abusive, my mother was compliant. I never saw them do things as a couple. They never went out together. He went out a lot. He was abusive verbally and physically to me. He was mercurial. I didn't like him - I didn't try to please him or make him be nice to me. I wished he would just vanish if I am honest.

What was your parents relationship like?. What sort of an example did they show you?. We learn about relationships first and foremost from our parents so that is why I've asked.

Who taught you to be either a rescuer or saviour to such men?. Being either never works out at all well in relationships.

What are your boundaries like re men?.

Did your dad walk out on you or was he otherwise emotionally unavailable to either your mother or you?. Did you always have to try and get his attention and or approval?.

Have a read of Baggage reclaim and find a decent therapist to work with; such dysfunctional patterns take a long time to unlearn.

And that is precisely why your relationships with men have been disastrous from the start. You have answered your own question really. You are replicating the patterns your parents showed you in their own codependent and otherwise dysfunctional relationship and he was abusive to you.

I would contact NAPAC as they are very good at helping people who have experienced abuse in childhood.

You go for ‘emotionally unavailable’ men.

Recommended reading/ audio book: “Mr Unavailable & the Fallback Girl: The Definitive Guide to Understanding Emotionally Unavailable Men and the Women that Love Them” by Natalie Lue.

Did you feel you had to be good enough for your parents (dad in particular) and if you were not it was your fault?.

You were but a child at the time and should never have carried such a burden. They are at fault here and they failed you as both parents and human beings abjectly.

As pp have said: we learn implicit relationship patterns from what was around us growing up. We will then feel a sense of the familiar if we are around someone who has similar or complementary patterns to us. Those who might be what we would actually and logically prefer may seem dull or ‘friend material’ if what they offer doesn’t seem familiar. Your pattern is unavailable men - psychologically or actually. You have said very powerfully that you’d rather your abusive dad had vanished and that your mum was compliant with his demands. You had an incredibly unavailable dad and it was safer when he was absent. Somewhere in the map of relationships, unavailable absent men are the norm you grew up with. What can you do? I’d engage with a good therapist and work on the past and how it shows up in the present. No, therapy won’t erase an attraction to unavailable men but it will give you wider perspectives and options.

This! My first thought.

I never heard of NAPAC but I have just looked up their website. No my dad didn't walk out. He was a rubbish provider though. He should never have had a family.

"All I saw was that I had to be good enough for them and if it wasn't working then I clearly wasn't good enough for them."

You need to look at yourself first. You need to feel happy with who you are and be sure of your own self worth. You need to feel self confident. Have a strong sense of what you like and what you value. Value yourself above anyone else. All very much easier said than done. But if you project an air of confidence, high expectations and that you'll not be messed around, these pathetic wastrels of men won't come near you.

It’s because you either have a bad sense of judgement or subconsciously like the drama that goes with it, or a little bit of both.

i suspect you generally rush into relationships without sensing the red flags , maybe because you want to feel wanted or maybe it’s lust.

i would like to point out not all men are like this and in fact, only a minority are. Once you have been bitten, it should be relatively easy to find the red flags, if you really wanted to IMO

Probably right with your middle paragraph.

I don't like drama at all, but when younger I liked the idea of being a heroine in a book. Not now. I had no sense of judgement at all about anything I don't think.

Never would rush into a relationship now, in fact I don't want one.