How otherwise strong and smart women end up with users, losers and abusers

All little girls want to feel special.

This dates to our relationships, as a very small children, with our folks.

We decide that we can prove our loveability (this is the part of our personalities where we are strong and smart).

Two things to know about loveability:
1. it is one of the five core states... so it's one of the five most powerful drives we have ... in the same set of basic needs as being OK, being at peace, being happy, and being safe. The fact that it's a core need also makes it as powerful as the need to eat, sleep, drink water, be dry and be warm. That said, it will make you do amazingly inappropriate things because it is powerful and we are unconscious to its strength.
2. Loveability is inate... you were born with it. Someone - anyone's - inability to love you is about them... your parents who were immature, selfish freaks, not baby girl. And it's the guy who is uncapable of loving correctly, not the adult woman who is unlovable.

The problem happens when we want to know why our needs aren't being met. We think about it (with our primitive toddler brains) and we decide it must be our fault. Not because we're always told that, but literally because the human is wired (biologically) to be a self-contained thing. Again, this is the brain trying to insure the survival of the being. If it's your fault, you can fix it, or prevent it from happening again.

You go about trying to win the love of your parents/grandparents/teachers/whomever. You succeed or fail depending on their personal neurosis. And you grow up with this deeply intrenched belief: I am not lovable and I know this because I have no proof that I am, and lots of proof that I'm not.

So then you meet this guy... he meets a lot of your personality criteria.
1. He's smart
2. He's a good earner
3. He likes women with rounded edges
4. He's a lot of fun.
5. He loves kids

Course these are just some of the examples and yours are yours alone...

Anyway, you are attracted to those characteristics (and maybe physically attracted as well), but the main reason you're attracted is because he's a hard nut to crack - a hard guy to get to fall in love with you.

There you have it... your "perfect storm."

If you can get this hard, loveless ass to fall in love with you, become socialized, soften, be kind, it will once and for all, unequivically PROVE for now and for evermore that you ARE IN FACT LOVABLE... you're special.

But you were always lovable... and you are the only person who doesn't have proof. And he was never capable of loving... 'nuff said on that.

That, my dear, is why you loved him.
And every time he did not do what a loving mate should do, it reinforced your basic understanding that you are not lovable and made you try that much harder...

That's why you fall. And that is why you stay!