Why Men Fall for Dangerous Relationships - Part 2 of 3

Seven Types of Women Who Can Conspire in a Man’s Downfall

In many ways, the seven types of women most likely to conspire to bring a man down parallel the seven types of men who are most vulnerable to them. They are a good fit. As with the men, the seven types of women run the gamut from benign to malignant. Not all the players fit neatly into one type. Sometimes a woman will display traits from one or more of the following types:

1. The Damsel in Distress: This is the woman who is looking for the White Knight to rescue her. Some damsels are truly dependent and need a man to save them from one crisis to another, and some men are total suckers for this type of woman. They feel better about themselves when they can rescue her from a dragon or some other potential tragedy in the making. The downside of this type is that sometimes the woman’s helplessness masks defects in character or pathology that get revealed later on. Like the Naïve Man, the Damsel in Distress doesn’t want to grow up. She does not mature because to do so would mean embracing the aging process.

2. The Drama Queen: This woman needs to be the center of attention. Often lively and dramatic, she may initially charm new acquaintances by her enthusiasm, apparent openness or flirtatiousness. These qualities wear thin, however, as she continually demands to be in the spotlight. She is theatrical; she exaggerates expressions of emotion. She often embarrasses friends and acquaintances by excessive public displays of emotion that seem to be turned on and off too quickly to be deeply felt. She has problems with intimacy in romantic or sexual relationships.

Flights into romantic fantasy are common. Without being aware of it, these women often act out a role such as queen or victim in their relationships with others. When a man who would be king partners with a woman who is acting the role of queen while disguising her inveterate princess tendencies, he will eventually become disenchanted. Drama Queens typically remain unrequited princesses incapable of ascending to the queen’s throne. They do not want to mature, because to do so would mean to accept and embrace the process being an adult. This is an intimidating prospect and is to be avoided at all cost.

3. The Seductress: She seeks control of her partner through emotional manipulation or seductiveness on one level, while displaying a marked dependency on him on another. She comports herself as the archetype of the Vixen, Siren or Fury. She requires the attention of all the men in the room and gets it by dressing provocatively and displaying a variety of sexually suggestive behaviors. She tends to have impaired relationships with same sex friends because of her sexually provocative interpersonal style. She craves novelty, stimulation and excitement and has a tendency to become bored with the usual routine. If not the center of attention, she may become depressed.

One of my clients told me about a meal with a seductress in which she ate a hot dog in a most sensually erotic fashion. It might have been enticing if the performance had not been graphically acted out in front of his parents and his minor age children. He felt like crawling under the table but was afraid that she might follow him. I’ve had patients involved with such women tell me, “Even though the relationship with the psycho babe was a roller coaster ride from hell, it was the best sex I’ve ever had.” Or, “Nothing like a little psycho-sex to work the kinks out.”

4. The Power Seeker: She’s only interested in men who have personal power, men who can advance her life-style in some generous fashion. These women are social climbers who use relationships to elevate themselves on the ladder of success, even though it is leaning against his wall, not hers. Getting to the top and taking advantage of the prizes along the way is the primary focus. Some women like this are derogatorily referred to as “star-fuckers.” They can leave a man in the rubble of his indiscretion while they rise out of the ashes of his destruction like a phoenix. They may launch an acting career, start their own clothing line, or become newsworthy in some other manner. The men’s stars fall while the women’s continue to twinkle.

Obviously, not every woman who dates or marries a powerful man fits this type. However, where a pattern is established in which men are traded and discarded as one more powerful takes the place of the preceding one, it may be evidence that the power seeker is at work. Often, these women have no personal power of their own and tend to cash in on the man’s station in life. Some time ago in Los Angeles there was a group called The Ladies, made up of the ex-wives of famous men. Many shared their desire to get themselves another famous man to marry, unsatisfied with marrying “just anybody.”

5. The Desperate Woman: She sets up a man to marry her or impregnate her simply to have a baby. The primary agenda is the baby, even under adverse conditions. Sometimes a woman gets pregnant to assure that the man will stay – to trap him. Desperate, she feels that she will be fulfilled only if she can have a child. She also wants to have the financial support so that she can put her attention into mothering rather than employment. Many paternity suits are filed each year to determine the father of origin of a baby.

I have worked with a number of these men in therapy who have told me stories about being in brief relationships in which the woman gets pregnant, has no intention of terminating the pregnancy, and is not interested in whether or not he sticks around. She does want to make sure that the check arrives on a monthly basis until the child turns eighteen. Often, these men want to have access to the child as father and the woman blocks this in some way, including moving out of state.

One man said he met a woman in a bar and had sex with her in the bathroom after she lured him in and locked the door. On their next date they had sex on his boat. He had used protection. When he withdrew after coitus, he was shocked to see that the condom was not where it should have been. He remembered her hand working its way down toward his penis during intercourse. He realized that she had rolled the condom off during the act. Surprise: she wound up pregnant, and after she won the paternity suit and full custody of the child, he wound up with a ruling to pay a lump sum per month each year until the child was no longer of minor age. Some women go after married men specifically because they believe that they will get the kid and the money without being exposed. Most of these married men will not want to reveal the scenario, running the risk of losing everything.

6. The Borderline: Characterized by extreme feats of attention seeking, manipulative behavior and rapidly shifting emotions, this woman is also distinguished by self-destructiveness, angry disruptions in close relationships, chronic feelings of deep emptiness, and identity disturbance including hostile and even violent acting-out forms of conduct disorder. She may appear normal until a stress incident sends her regressing into a more primitive psychotic state. Typically, she suffers from a deeper form of traumatic wounding marked by abandonment and perceived rejection typically by the mother at a very early age. She exhibits an attachment disorder and has learned to distrust that people will be there for her. She is hypersensitive to abandonment (real or imagined), yet is terrified of closeness and attachment. If a man gets too close, she pushes him away; if he steps back, she will try to lure him back with everything she’s got -- or she’ll lash out with a vengeance if he doesn’t respond. Because she feels so empty, she’ll seek out relationships where she can get involved quickly to fill up that emptiness.

While the male narcissistically wounded personality thrives on being mirrored as special, the female Borderline Personality is driven by an intense, often debilitating fear of abandonment and longing for connection. Having suffered the real physical and/or, emotional abandonment of a primary caregiver during early childhood, borderlines grow to idealize potential caregivers. The borderline will tend to initially mirror her attractor in an idealized fashion, only to later knock him off his pedestal when she discovers that he’s just like all the other men that have betrayed, abused and abandoned her. Her one-time prince becomes the “prick” that he obviously was all along. Male and female borderlines tend to become entwined as their connection devolves into a symbiotic enmeshment. A major power struggle over issues of control ensues as the push-pull, approach-avoidance dance spirals into chaos. Like an insect on flypaper, the more one struggles to get free the more entrapped one becomes. Disentangling a relationship between two borderlines can seem a lot like herding cats.

7. The Sex Addict: A fine line exists between what may be considered by most people acceptable sexual behavior and what is sexually addictive or compulsive. This is especially true for women in a society such as ours where sex is often treated as a commodity. Our culture at one time had discouraged women from being assertive and direct in the expression of their sexual needs, thereby encouraging a less direct and potentially seductive or manipulative style. Since the women’s movement of the 60’s we have witnessed a progressively more overt style of sexual expression among women. Some women, however, go beyond these culturally sanctioned behaviors and use sex compulsively as a means of gaining power, control and love.

The idea of being “sexually alluring” may be preferred by sexually addicted women because it fits the romantic, nurturer model of woman, whereas the term "sex addict" connotes a pejorative image of a "nymphomaniac", "slut", or "whore". The "love" that these women describe is often an addiction to the yearning or euphoria of romance, but has little to do with love.

The elements of sex addiction (and any addiction for that matter: compulsion, continuation despite adverse consequences, and preoccupation or obsession) are the same in women as in men. Most sexually addicted women have not had parental role modeling for how to have emotional intimacy in nonsexual ways. Research has shown that there is often a combination of rigidity and lack of emotional support in the sex addict's family of origin. The majority of women sex addicts were sexually abused in childhood -- 78% in one study.

The article concludes next month with Part 3 - Twelve Things Men Can Do to Avoid "Dangerous Relationships"

To read Part 1 click HERE