WHY Some WOMEN Choose THE WRONG MAN Time and Time and Time Again

Ebony, July, 1999 by Lynn Norment

WE all know women who repeatedly get hooked up with the wrong man. The pattern of disastrous love is rather clear to everyone around them, but these blinded-by-love females do not seem to notice that they always fall for the same kind of man--the wrong man, and it never works out.

Perhaps you are a victim of blind love yourself. Maybe you thought you had finally found your love match only to realize much later, many heartaches and agonizing nights later, that Mr. Wonderful was not so wonderful after all. In fact, he was pretty much like that other awful man you thought was your true love, or the past beau you felt you could not live without but had to when he left you for that other woman.

Most times it is not just bad luck that steers women to the wrong man time and time again. Sometimes the pattern of loser-lovers is indicative of a deeper, more serious flaw in the woman's personality or character. Or the problem may stem from the woman's family history. And it usually is rooted in lack of self-esteem and self-love. In addition, far too many women blindly get involved with man after man without stopping to assess what went wrong in previous relationships. "Many women do not evaluate themselves or their relationships," says Dr. Joyce Hamilton Berry, a clinical psychologist in the Washington, D.C., area. "Consequently, they do not recognize the similarities that attract them to certain types of men."

Dr. Berry explains that when a woman repeatedly chooses the wrong man, those bad choices attempt to fulfill "needs" that sometimes go back to the woman's childhood, back to the time when she was not capable of analyzing the information at hand. Women who grow up and see their mothers in bad relationships, or grow up with fathers who are abusive, alcoholic or addicted to drugs, as children they watch these situations and think of ways their mothers should resolve the problem. "When they grow up themselves," says Dr. Berry, "they select men who are very much like their fathers. When they grow up in abusive families, they marry men who are abusive because they want to change the man. They tell themselves, `I can do what mommy was not able to do.' They are influenced by childhood fairy tales in which the prince rescues the damsel in distress, and they believe they will live `happily ever after.' They believe that you can take a frog, or a man with negative characteristics, and kiss him, and he will turn into a prince or, rather, the man of their dreams."

Relationship therapist and author Audrey B. Chapman writes that numerous studies point to the fact that a woman's capacity for mutually loving and sexually fulfilling relationships is directly related to her relationship with her father In her book, Getting Good Loving: How Black Men and Women Can Make Love Work, she writes: "Women who are unable to sustain romantic relationships almost always had fathers who could not be counted on, or who were emotionally or physically unavailable when they were growing up. A loving mother is not enough to offset those difficulties.

"A missing father can mean a lifetime search for daddy figures in every romantic endeavor. Too many girls grow up not being affirmed by a man, not knowing what it's like to be nurtured, protected or acknowledged by a paternal figure. As women, they often seek love and closeness in dysfunctional relationships, tolerating distant, nonnurturing men who exhibit behaviors similar to those in their absent or fantasized fathers."

Another reason women repeatedly get involved in bad relationships, according to counselors, is that women often feel they can change the man. "We as women assume responsibility for the relationship and feel that we must make it work," says Dr. Berry. "But women don't realize that we cannot control relationships or the actions of another person. You can't make a man do one thing or another. You can't make a man love you, even though Jennifer Holliday passionately sings about that in the powerful song from Dream Girls. I often think about how the women in the audience stood and applauded when she sang that song. But we can't make a man love us. We keep getting into negative relationships thinking that we can change the man and make it work. We think we have that power in a relationship, but we don't."

Dr. Berry points out that women often find themselves in such circumstances because society puts the burden of maintaining the relationship or marriage on the female. She says in everyday social interactions we continue to hear comments such as "She let her man get away" when in fact the woman never had him, or perhaps he lost her. "By the same token, many abused women believe they did something wrong and that is why they are abused," Dr. Berry adds.

Along those same lines, women continue to select men who are all wrong for them because they are looking for the wrong qualities in a man. Far too many women consider priorities to be good looks, money and material assets. However, those elements do not speak to a man's character or caring or ability to give love. One particular businesswoman in Chicago often laments the fact she cannot "find a good man," but when she is introduced to a Brother who has a solid job and could be a loving mate, she complains that he doesn't "turn me on." Further conversation reveals that she is attracted to what she calls "bad boys," men who are flashy, who are players, men who expect women to be at their beck and call but offer little in return. That is the kind of man she has been in hurtful relationships with in the past, but she refuses to see the error in her priorities.