Why Do Smart Women Cling To Bad Men?

This post is about domestic violence. It is an edited version of an older post that I re-wrote in order to better illustrate my point. Plus, the older one was just too long anyway.

Lately I’ve been watching a crazy situation unfold with an acquaintance of mine. It's so messed up that it almost seems like something you'd see on an episode of Jerry Springer. As a rather straight-forward thinking woman with some common sense, it all seems very outrageous from my viewpoint and it really struck a chord with me. After thinking about it and observing other female friends, acquaintances, and strangers, I started to see that this is a much more common phenomenon than I had previously thought. And as someone who strives to empower women, I feel this issue needs to be heavily addressed.

Two years ago, this acquaintance of mine discovered that her husband was leading a double life. He had been lying to her and cheating on her all throughout their marriage. He was literally “servicing” every unhappily married or lonely divorced woman in their town. He was having unprotected sex with scores of women, and thus putting his wife at risk of contracting HIV or other STD’s from him. At one point, about half a dozen middle-aged divorced women all thought he was their “boyfriend” without any clue that they were just one of many. Later on towards the end of their marriage, he started physically hitting her. He even lost his job as a police officer due to his violent outbursts. I think the most unbelievable incident was when he was sent out to investigate a domestic dispute call and arrested a girl for stabbing her husband with a kitchen knife…and then went on to have a love affair with the girl…after arresting her for stabbing a man. I didn’t know it was even possible to be that stupid! So as you can see, this woman’s husband was about as bad as it gets.

After he began hitting her, I expected she would draw the line at that and get herself out of that situation. Many women unfortunately find themselves forced to stay with their abusers because they lack good education and skills and are thus dependent on the men for shelter, sustenance, and money. Others find it difficult to leave because they have young children with their abuser. But this woman is one of the lucky few. She is highly educated, has a successful career, has no children, and even made more money than her husband. So she could literally walk away from him at any time. But she didn’t. Instead of leaving him or at least forcing him to face some consequences for his abusive behavior towards her, she remained with him and clung even tighter to him by buying him gifts and taking him on exotic vacations. At one point, she DID get up the nerve to get an order of protection against him after he hit her, but then took him down to the Caribbean with her only a week later as if nothing had happened. They eventually divorced and moved into separate homes, but she still continued clinging to him…even paying his bills for him now that he had no job! Then several months later, she gleefully announced she was pregnant with his child. And this isn’t her first pregnancy announcement since their divorce, either. There was another one that was either a miscarriage or a false alarm. That means this has been an ongoing thing since they split…she has been trying to get pregnant with her ex-husband who abused her.


Those of us who know her and know about the situation were absolutely dumbfounded. After picking our jaws up from the floor, we all wondered aloud “What the hell is she thinking?!” This woman’s husband had abused her, disrespected her, and put her at all kinds of risks. Now that she was divorced from him, she had the opportunity to walk away in the other direction and start a better life for herself…but instead she chose to cling to him and purposely conceive a child with him so that she will now be tied to him for the rest of her life. And his behavior has not improved one bit; he is still cavorting around with every female he sees, drinking all the time, and taking his aggression out on others. While she is proudly showing off her pregnant belly as if they were still happily married, he could care less that he has a child on the way. And since she already knew that he was having unprotected sex with scores of women, that means she willingly put herself at risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease from him in her pursuit to get pregnant by him. Purposely creating a new life just to trap someone into staying in your life forever and knowingly putting your own physical health in jeopardy is about as selfish and irresponsible as it gets. Did she ever stop to think that perhaps a man who has violent tendencies, drinks heavily, and can’t hold down a job probably would not make a very good parent for a child? She doesn’t seem to realize that getting pregnant by a man she was already long divorced from isn’t exactly something to be proud of. I also don’t think she realizes what her life will be like 20 years from now when she’ll still be single and half of her life will have passed her by because she will have spent all her years clinging to this jerk and fighting with him over their child. In many ways, she has ended her own life and robbed herself of a future.


I’ve just been baffled by all this because I can’t understand for the life of me why any woman would ever put up with such unacceptable behavior from a man or insist on clinging to such a jerk at all costs. I have never really been in a relationship where I endured physical abuse, but I have had my share of relationships where the man tried to exercise control over me or cat around with other women behind my back. And I refuse to put up with it for one second. When a man tries to tell me how to dress, how to wear my hair, what I can or can't read, go, or do, I tell him to get lost. When he sleeps with other women behind my back, I kick him into the gutter and leave him there with the garbage where he belongs. If a man ever hit me, he’d only get to hit me ONCE…and then I would break every bone in his body with a baseball bat. I would not remain friends with him afterwards, I would not buy him gifts, I would not take him on vacation with me, I would not pay his bills for him, I would not continue sleeping with him, and I most certainly would not try to get pregnant on purpose with him!! This is why I want so badly to shake this girl and yell at her “Look at what you’re doing; how could you possibly be so STUPID?!” But then I noticed other women doing the exact same thing--stubbornly clinging to men who were abusive and clearly not good for them--and that‘s when I realized that this is not an isolated incident. It’s an epidemic. And I couldn’t help but wonder why so many women seem to choose to be victimized. Why are so many beautiful, intelligent women so desperate and willing to sabotage their own lives and happiness by doing anything they can to remain involved with unhealthy or even dangerous men?? What has happened to cause so many women to think so little of themselves and what they truly deserve?? Why have so many women come to believe that being involved with an abusive, cheating jerk is the best option they have for a relationship?? That’s when I realized that it’s not because so many women are “stupid”…it’s because they have absolutely no self-esteem at all.


This story illustrates a huge problem that is rampant in our culture and needs to be addressed: Women like my acquaintance cling to men who are unhealthy for them because they have little self-esteem and believe that their happiness, success, and value as a human relies upon being attached to a man. To them, having ANY man at their side--even a very bad one--is better than not having a man at all, because they truly believe that they are worth less when they are single. This explains why so many women I have known have stayed with abusive men and would not leave them until they had another new boyfriend lined up and ready to immediately transition to. They could not stand the thought of being single and “alone” for one minute; they had to immediately jump from one relationship into another to preserve their sense of self-worth. They have never allowed themselves to have any “alone time” to get to know themselves better and tend to their own needs, wants, and goals.  This is why the acquaintance of mine continued to be friends with her ex-husband and continued sleeping with him even after they divorced.  She wanted to continue being with him in any way she could even though he had physically abused her and treated her like dirt.  She would rather tie herself to him for the rest of her life by purposely conceiving a child with him rather than leave him in the gutter where he belongs and try to start a new life for herself with a better man who would treat her the way a man should treat a woman.  She has always been a rather heavy-figured girl and doesn't have a lot of self-confidence, and so she thinks this loser is the best guy she will ever be able to have.  It's really sad.  Ladies, we have all GOT to start loving and respecting ourselves more and stop settling for less than what we deserve!! And that includes NOT settling for or clinging to men who disrespect us, abuse us, or don’t treat us as the Princesses we all are!! If you are in a relationship with a man who cheats on you, beats you up, verbally abuses you, controls every aspect of your life, or does anything else that infringes on your happiness and autonomy, GET RID OF HIM!!! Run away as fast as you can and don’t look back!! Do NOT suppress your unhappiness and stay with him just so you can have a boyfriend/husband, do NOT hang on to him if you do leave him or if he leaves you, and for God’s sake do NOT get pregnant with him on purpose!!! Some of you who are reading this may be in bad relationships yourselves. If so, I hope this blog post will be a wake-up call for you. The fate of my acquaintance is sealed; she has chosen to doom herself for life. But YOU don’t have to make that same mistake. My acquaintance made the decision to be trapped and unhappy for the rest of her life, but you can actively make the decision to be happy and free if that is what you desire! Love and respect yourself enough to have a happy, successful, and safe life that you deserve, both for you and your children. Like they say on the L’Oreal hair color commercials, “Because you’re worth it!”