Why Can’t A Woman Give Up A Bad Man?
We all know ‘Boomerang Girls’ - the ones who after a stormy, if not violent bust-up, leave highly unsuitable relationships and then, boing! Strike me kangaroo down, they’re back again. Boomerang Girls don’t just give their partners second chances; they give them third and fourth chances, too, until their friends completely run out of sympathy. ‘But he promises to change,’ they say, their eyes moist with delight. ‘He says he’ll marry me/never hit me again/get help with his drinking problem/get a job!’ What is it that makes a woman return to a bad relationship time after time? Some become addicted to the adrenaline high they get from the drama of a moody relationship. Now and again it get too much for them, and they leave, but when they look around for the nice man they profess to want, they find a pile of boring men who, while loving and stable, don’t have that exciting edge. Anyway, having had a little time away from the stormy relationship, they often forget how bad it really was, like childbirth or being completely ‘right out of the tree and into the ground’ drunk. They also feel stronger. They also feel stronger. ‘This time I’ll be able to cope,’ they say. But they are no more able to cope than an alcoholic who stops drinking for a few months and feels so much fitter that he goes back to the booze. Men with personalities like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde attract Boomerang Girls. The girls leave Mr Hyde but lured back by the loving Dr Jekyll. Then they move back in, only to find Mr Hyde is grinning at them from the kitchen table. When a woman leaves a relationship after a violent outburst, it’s quite common for him to plead with her to come back. Faced with a bully who is sobbing like a little boy, she feels the pull of power. This tiny taste of being in charge is another attractive lure for the Boomerang Girl. But when she gets back, nothing has changed. His can’t-live-with-out-you tactics were no more than that - tactics. I went out with a man I had left time after time. When I finally left for good, he rang me and rattled a bottle of pills down the phone. If I didn’t return, he threatened, he would kill himself. I managed to resist going, and asked a friend of his to look in on him. He’d taken quite a few pills, but nothing like enough to make himself more than very sick. How can Boomerang Girls stop the pattern? Only through repeated and painful lessons. When we receive consistent pain from the same source, like a child who puts his hand too near a far, the penny eventually drops that it might be best to leave it alone. Sadly, it can sometimes take almost a lifetime to learn.
Source: Virginia Ironside, Daily Mail, June 15th, 1998.