Relationships: Why Do Some Women Sabotage Healthy Relationships with Men?

While a woman can say to herself and others that she wants to be in a relationship with a man who is healthy and functional, it doesn’t mean that she will be attracted to a man who is like this. This can relate to woman who can’t seem to attract a guy that is healthy and for women who do attract them and yet sabotage the relationship shortly after.

And just because one can feel attracted to someone, it doesn’t mean that this attraction is a good sign. And as this challenge shows, one can be attracted to someone that is unhealthy and even dangerous. What they are attracted to doesn’t enhance their wellbeing, it compromises it.

The Ideal

Their ideal man could be one who is: loving, supportive, reliable, confident, trustworthy, respectful, kind, generous, funny, honest and strong for instance. Someone who not only listens to what they have to say, but who cares about what they do say.

For some women the requirements will vary, but the ideal is unlikely to be man that is abusive in any way. They will be there during the good times and where everything is going well and when there are bad times and challenges need to be dealt with.

Reality

However, although this can be the idea that they have in their mind and what they tell their close friends that they want for example, there is a disconnection. The kind of man they are attracted to is nothing like what they say they want. In fact, he could be the complete opposite.

And then there are going to be women who do find their ideal man, but he may well be lost as soon as he is found. How long this relationship will last will depend on different factors. There is of course the possibility that a woman could gradually adapt to the healthy relationship. One thing it can depend on is how aware they are.

The Dysfunctional Man

As this is a man that is nothing like what they say they want, the traits are going to either be the opposite of what they wanted or as what could be described as pseudo versions. So instead of confidence will be arrogance or it will be physical strength in the place of emotional strength.

And this is man that could be: dishonest, unsupportive, unreliable, disrespectful and disingenuous. There could also be some kind of emotional, physical or verbal abuse that regularly takes place.

It Doesn’t Feel Right

It is clear to see that there is a massive difference between these two men. And this is why some women will either not attract a man who is emotionally healthy or end up sabotaging a relationship with a man that is.

Even though there is the conscious desire to be with a healthy man, at a deeper level, they only feel comfortable with men that are dysfunctional. In this situation, the mind and body are not in alignment, they are fighting each other.

Consequences

So a woman can know what she wants and even experience it and when she does, a sense of unease will arise. And this can play out in many different ways. The desire to have a man that is reliable can be there and yet when the man is reliable, it doesn’t feel right. What would feel right is if he was unreliable.

He could be respectful and treat the woman as his equal and while this is what she consciously wants, it feels wrong. If he was disrespectful, it would feel fine and even normal.

Another thing that can create unrest is if the man is peaceful, calm or down to earth for instance. What the woman feels comfortable with is drama and the highs and the lows; so fighting, arguments and uncertainty. On some level, this kind of man will not be stimulating enough and could be perceived as boring.

What Going On?

This can be hard to comprehend for the woman who is experiencing this conflict and for the man who has treated a woman so well and ends up being left. If a woman’s body was in sync with her mind, then these problems would not exist.

And the kind of man a woman will be attracted to and feel comfortable with, will typically be the result of what her father was like. So this will be how her father treated her and how he treated the women around her.

Expectations

During this time, a woman will form expectations of what men are like and what they are not like. And how her father treated her, can then become how all men will treat her. It won’t matter if his behaviour was functional or dysfunctional, as the woman will gradually feel comfortable with the behaviour, regardless of how healthy it is.

So if the father was emotionally healthy, it would have created a good model for the woman to internalise. But if this wasn’t the case, a woman can end up internalising something that will cause her problems until this model is changed.

This could have been a father that was abusive in some way. Perhaps he didn’t have healthy boundaries and ended our going into his daughter’s personal space; causing her to feel: overwhelmed smothered, taken advantage of and compromised. Or maybe he was unreliable, always making promises and yet breaking them.

Awareness

What will need to occur here is for the woman to feel uncomfortable with men that are abusive and comfortable with men that are healthy; for the body to be working with the mind and not against it.

The early experiences that a woman had with her father would have resulted in certain feelings being created and they could have become trapped in the woman’s body. These feelings are causing the conflict and defining the kind of man that they are attracted to in later life.

So as these feelings are released from the body, the kind of men they feel comfortable with will begin to change. This can be done with the assistance of a therapist or healer who will allow them to face their feelings and release them.