QC

I want to be really clear that I'm not trying to "victim-blame" here. It sucks that some people reliably attract abusers into their lives whatever the causal mechanism. I want to understand what's actually going on so we can actually improve people's lives.

People have "fields" - ways of being that strongly influence how other people behave towards them, that radiate out through words and actions, but also through facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, etc.

The most durable fields are self-reinforcing; e.g. if you have a "niceness field" such that people feel you're nice and want to be nice to you, you experience a world full of niceness, which makes you more nice, etc.

Some people have "victim fields": their faces, bodies, etc. broadcast that they can be bullied, harassed, abused. So they attract abusers and experience a world full of abuse, which makes them more traumatized, which strengthens the victim field. This sucks.

Symmetrically, some people are looking for victims to abuse, and find them. Less sure about their fields; some kind of reassuring strength thing? Probably tied up with parent projections; "daddy issues" are super real as far as I can tell.

"Victim fields" is just one example, there are others. This POV suggests that not only will people get worse at relationships over time by default, they'll keep having the same terrible relationship each time - same pattern of abuse, or attachment trauma, etc.

I've used the phrase "by default" a lot here. So what's the non-default, for improving at relationships? This is a whole other huge topic, but my best guess, in short: the entirety of psychological / spiritual / personal / interpersonal development.

Learning about attachment and trauma is a fine place to start, tho intellectual understanding needs to be supported by experiential, somatic understanding; you need to be able to experience what your attachment wounds feel like in your body.