Relationships/ Why Do We Choose the Wrong People?

     Many people have regrets, and some have transcended these to some sort of philosophical outlook.  I go back and forth between the two.  I married the wrong person when I was very young, but I stayed with him, and I had children with him.  It was pretty clear he did not love me, but I continued anyway. 
     When that finally ended, I got into a living together situation with another person who did not love me either, and also made it pretty clear by his actions and the way he treated me.
     I am not a victim.  Clearly, I chose this, but why?  Psychologists say that people look for people who are incapable of loving them or who have qualities of their parent or parents that made them feel unloved, rejected or even abused.  I do not know about all that.  Still, due to low self-esteem, a person can think they do not have much worth or value, and therefore assume they are lucky to have someone, even if that someone treats them with disrespect.
     A friend of mine called me several times to talk about his problems with various long term girlfriends, over the years.  I noticed that each girlfriend he would tell me about, sounded so much like the last one, and was doing the same things as the last.  I pointed this out to him, and I asked him, "what is it they have in common mostly?  You.  You are the one thing they truly have in common, so it is the fact that you are seeking out these types of women."  I was pointing out that it may have been partly due to the way he was with women.
     Hence, what I am saying is that I did not feel deserving of love for whatever reason, and therefore, I kept seeking out unloving partners for all the wrong reasons.
     I continued in this pattern, and my relationships remained destructive and unhealthy.  Once in a while, someone crossed my path, that things may have really worked with, but I never gave it enough energy, but continued to get involved with relationships that led absolutely nowhere and were disrespectful, until finally I just broke down and had enough.
     I spoke to a pastor at this point.  He told me that the next time a man showed me disrespect, to show him the door.  I did this, and I truly took his advise, because I had really hit bottom.  I was at the point of self-loathing, where you do not even know how you can live anymore.  I was basing my own self-worth on how others treated me or thought of me.  I took Reverend Jim Brown's words very, very seriously.
     I know I am not a great success in the area of relationships, but that is not the point.  The point is that I came through a lot, and I learned to respect myself.  I stopped putting up with crap, putting up with people talking smack to me, whatever.  Perhaps, I just grew up finally.  I was forty-two years old when I had that talk with Reverend Brown, and things have not always been smooth sailing for me, but I did however, learn to say, "there's the door," and truly mean it, as well as learning to walk out that door if that were the case, and never look back.  This does not make me hard, but it means that I am no longer naïve, and I will not stand for abuse of any kind.  Once you make this decision that you are most important, then being alone is something you have to learn to not only accept, but to like, because you like yourself.  Namaste.