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It's never just bad luck.
By Samantha Rodman Whiten — Written on Jun 02, 2023
I’ve written before about the guy who says he "hates drama" but for some unknown reason keeps getting entangled with "crazy," "dramatic" women.
A more general variant of this type of blame-deflecting person is the individual who has a long history of supposedly being victimized by exes.
This can be either gender, although it is more often a man who says his ex is crazy and a woman who says she has only dated jerks.
There are two reasons that someone says they have always been mistreated by exes. No matter which reason it is, you need to keep your eyes open and your wits about you when considering starting a relationship with this person.
The first option is that your potential partner is telling the truth, and they are consistently drawn to people who treat them terribly (The option where they just have bad luck over and over and over again is not an option. Patterns mean something.).
This is usually because they were abused or neglected by a parent. This is no good because guess what? They are drawn to you too.
This either means that you are actually a hell of a lot more self-centered and difficult than you think you are, or that you may be the person they WANT to like but they will actually tire of you and go back to someone who treats them as poorly as they deeply and subconsciously feel that they deserve.
A person who has always been abused or exploited may need a codependent relationship with a "problem person" in order to feel worthwhile because their main value is to either help their loved one or be their punching bag.
If this person doesn’t get therapy, it is unlikely that they will just change their entire self-concept because you are nice and loving. More likely, they will feel better over time and then this will happen.
The second option is that your potential partner is unable to see their own contribution to their past relationships’ conflicts.
They, therefore, caricature their exes as "jerks" when they themselves acted in equally destructive ways.
It may well be that if you were a fly on the wall observing them with their ex, you would not even recognize the "toxic” or “abusive" treatment that your partner has recounted to you. You would see two people locked in conflict, both behaving pretty terribly to each other.
If you are considering getting into a relationship with someone who conceives of themselves primarily as a victim of terrible treatment by exes, think about what they will say about you years down the road. If they are unable to shift this vision of themselves, it is highly likely that you will eventually turn into their next oppressor.
If you are already in a long-term relationship or marriage with a partner who identifies as a victim, you have likely already felt pushed into the perpetrator role in early arguments.
Couples counseling can help you if you are already with a partner who conceives of themselves as a perennial victim.
If they can learn that it takes two to argue, and can see their own contribution to the conflict with you as well as with prior partners, this can be a game-changer for your dynamic. It takes a skilled clinician to work patiently with someone with a victim mentality and ease them into the idea that they may be contributing to their difficulties in relationships, but it can work and can be transformative.
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Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten, aka Dr. Psych Mom, is a clinical psychologist in private practice and the founder of DrPsychMom. She works with adults and couples in her group practice Best Life Behavioral Health.
This article was originally published at Medium. Reprinted with permission from the author.