Avaelle wrote:

There are women that always date men that physically attack, abuse/beat them. It is because it is a specific quality they are attracting. 

This is 100% true, and I will go on record to state this was my personal experience. I was raised by a physically violent father and a verbally abusive mother, and acting as partners they were both neglectful unless they were beating me. The beatings started when I was around six years old, and not surprisingly, this is what I conflated with "love." Our original caregivers in our families of origin teach us what love looks like, so this is what I equated with love: a man who was physically violent, a man who was neglectful, a man who ignored me or responded with silence (until or unless he wanted something only I could provide), a man who had no respect for my physical boundaries or my emotional needs.

Guess what? Every single man I dated fit this description. Over and over again, I dated the same type of man.

Then I got therapy (still ongoing), became mentally healthy and started respecting myself, treating myself better, standing up for myself, and saying "no" to relationships involving pain or suffering. When I discovered self-esteem, the Universe responded: all these men started dropping out of my life or keeping away from me. This also goes back to Sanshi's point about our belief systems. When I believed that toxic, neglectful, violent love was all I deserved, that is all the Universe gave me.

(This is my first post on this forum, so you can probably tell how strongly I feel about this topic.)