Why you keep attracting abusive relationships?

Have you ever wondered why you keep attracting abusive relationships? How come you constantly end up in an abusive relationship, where you’re evolving your whole life around them, to find they never respect your needs or give you what you need in a relationship? Many put up with their  anger, in the hope of being loved or fear being on being on their own. What risk factors makes someone a magnet for attracting an abusive relationship?

• Many enter an abusive relationship by jumping into a relationship too quickly, before getting to know what the person is like.
• Ignoring the warning signs that something isn’t right. Not listening to your gut’.
• Feeling pressured by someone else, over the pace of the relationship’.
• Giving up ones life, by giving up your friends, plans or pursuits to spend time with your partner.
• Feeling lucky someone wants you and want to keep them happy so they do not leave.
• Leaving your decisions up to them or letting them take over.
• Making your partner the person who guides your , decisions, friends.  Letting them think for you.
• Let them take responsibility for you, so you feel dependent on them and scared to leave
• Not allowed to have a mind of your own. Giving up your own mind.
• Not feeling worthy on the inside, so rely on a partner to make you feel good. .
• Giving up the things that make you happy and relying on your relationship for happiness.
• No boundaries or limits on what you will put up with – putting up with too much..
• Not  listen to your ‘self’ – (thoughts and feelings) and letting your concerns slide.
• Making excuses for the things your partner does that bother you. “It must be my fault”
• Bringing up their behaviour causes them to turn on you, so you’re wrong, crazy and so on.
• Feel guilty going out with friends,  so he controls your behavior. Stop going out, letting his insecurities control you.
• Sense your partner is leading a double life, but tells you you’re insecure
• He will not commit to you, so you’re left holding on.
• Your partner makes you feel lucky he has you, because he can get better, so you feel more desperate to keep him.
• Your partner indirectly puts you down.
• Avoidance and denial when your partner is abusive, controlling, has addictions & affairs. Enabling it to continue
• Not Raise issues until it’s too late when their behaviour  is out of control and too hard to address.
• Too afraid to assert your ‘self’ or express yourself  – your partner is too sensitive or gets angry.
• Placate your partners anger by giving into them.
• When raising issues, you feel unheard or the issue gets turned around, so you back down or give up
• Co-dependency.
• Relying on your partner for happiness or confidence, not meeting your own needs.
• Evolve yourself around your partner, fitting in with them

Not listening to yourself makes you more vulnerable to attracting abusive relationships

Not listening to yourself puts you a risk of attracting abusive relationships, by ignoring the warning signs or your gut instincts that tells you that something is not right.

Many, who are vulnerable for love and jump in quickly become magnets for attracting abusive relationships. The more you accommodate other peoples needs, the more rope you give them to do what ever they want. So your needs never get fulfilled. Without setting limits on how people treat us or not setting boundaries, they keep getting  their way.

So, how does one end up in a controlling, toxic or abusive relationships?

Many mistakenly think that if they get their happiness from their partner, they will in turn  be happy. Wrong. Making others happy doesn’t guarantee  happiness.  When you’ve given up the things that make you happy, then you will be unhappy because your not living your life.

Many heart broken women say they thought they were doing the right thing by meeting someone else’s needs. Yet, they gave up themselves for their relationship. We teach people how we want to be treated. If we put up with something destructive to ourselves, then we enable our partner to treat us this way. The more we let others control us, the less we have control of our lives. Many confuse controlling or possessive behavior for love. They say that they hoped that their partner would change because they believed that they loved them.

Holding onto the fantasy of being loved can blind them from seeing signs of abuse. Trauma bonding has been depicted as the reason why so many individuals bond with an abusive partner, when it ties them to the love they received from an abusive parent in their past. As children, in order to feel loved, they repressed all the abusive treatment in order to protect the notion of the good parent, while pushing down any bad feelings of worthlessness and abandonment that they felt. So, deep down they feel bad about themselves. Whereby, they continue this pattern of splitting in adult relationships. So, others are see as good, while they feel bad internally.

Many individuals with borderline personality disorder use splitting to defend against seeing the bad aspects of a partner so they can feel loved or good, in order to escape the bad feelings. When they feel good (loved) they split off the bad feeling within themselves, so they can feel good enough. When being abused they stay connected by internalising the bad as existing within themselves and blame themselves for the abuse, thinking they must of done something wrong to deserve it, while protecting the good image of the partner. So they remain bad and the partner is good, distorting their reality.

A woman may feel good dating with a man, seeing him as good. She may be denying the red flags which suggest that he could be possessive and controlling by seeing it as giving her the attention she desires, avoiding  the bad aspects of him. In splitting, when you see the good in others, you avoid the bad traits about them, often not seeing signs of abuse.

Many abusive partners get referred for anger management counselling Melbourne and often deny that they are abusive, often  feeling provoked. Many abusive partners suffer from narcissistic personality disorder who attract women who are searching for love, who are magnets for attracting narcissists, since they serve as a perfect supply. Once hooked into a relationship they become discarded, devalued and gaslighted when the narcissist tells them that their sense of reality is not real, causing them to doubt themselves, causing them to walk on egg shells to avoid triggering narcissistic rage.  They are told that they are crazy for suspecting them to be having affairs, so they can get away with it. Their sense of self becomes eroded and diminished, by giving themselves up and protecting the abusive partner by hiding the abuse.

How to stop attracting abusive relationships and rebuild yourself

In a healthy relationship, we must meet our own needs, not let others determine things for us. So we must register our self ( thoughts, feelings, needs, concerns, boundaries) and protect ourselves. Our partners have to work within our boundaries or limits, so we take back control of our ‘self’, by meeting our needs and letting others know our boundaries. If a behaviour violates us, we do not have to put up with that.

Nancy Carbone specialises relational trauma and abusive relationships, trained in the treatment of  personality disorders from the Psychoanalytic International Masterson Institute.  As a relationship therapist at Counselling Service Melbourne, she has a M Soc Soc (Couns). If you want help overcoming abusive relationships contact Nancy on her enquiry form or call 0449 861147 for an appointment.  You can sign up on her newsletter for free tips and relationship advice.

Relationship Counselling Melbourne

Nancy Carbone