WomensStuff

Well, yes certainly there is evidence that domestic abuse behavior is often repeated by children who grow up in that environment, but that's kind of an extreme example of what I'm trying to describe.

There's an attraction to the "bad boy" figures. It's deeply interwoven with the cultural experience of romance, and it's more subtle than obvious examples of physical violence. If you are a woman who has felt attraction to Steve McQueen, or John Bender (Judd Nelson) in The Breakfast Club, or Han Solo, or if you were on a "team" for the Twilight series (or you liked 50 Shades of Grey), etc... you experienced this.

Aggressive behavior is frequently associated with perceptions of strength and dominance (not in the D/s kink sense, but in the being in control or leadership sense) which are generally attractive.

So to bring it back to the original, I don't think it's valid to simplify this issue down to just "bad men" being deceptive. Certainly that does happen, but reality is far more complex than that and framing it this way paints the women as only helpless, foolish victims, which robs them of their own agency.

The truth is that women do in fact pick "bad men", not in ignorance or because they were deceived, but knowing full well what they're getting into (when your parents don't approve of your boyfriend and that just makes you want to keep him more)... this is bound up in thousands of years of human culture. There is absolutely need for change, but... It's just not as simple as the idea presented in the original post. People are far more complex than that, in their emotions, in their desires, in their relationships.

Hi Yiddish! Your name made me smile. We are women only so please don't comment again ❤️

Personally I'm extremely leery of echo chambers, so my opinion is yes, if you want to contribute to the discussion in a constructive way then do so.

After all, the only way to learn and grow beyond your own individual experience is to gain from someone else's experience.

IKR? Sometimes I feel like I'm loosing my marbles because the conversations (like this one) are so far away from the ones we should be having.

Obviously, this person was right in calling out the problem, but I really hope we can have more discussions about root causes and solutions that don't involve the victim/survivor just choosing better.

Edit: I didn't mean to be critical of the discussions in this post. I was just thinking more generally