Why do Women Choose the Wrong Man? 1

Why Do Women Choose The Wrong Man?
Part 1 - Sexually Abusive Father

By Pamela Hunter
I would recommend to any woman who reads this and is in a difficult situation to please submit a prayer request regarding your situation. Also, if your man has left you, please consult with the Lord before you find another. You may have some healing and changing to do yourself so you don’t make the same mistake again.

MAKE A PRAYER REQUEST

3 "You shall have no other gods before Me.
4 "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth;
5 you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,
6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

Why do we do it!?!

Throughout the years my husband Everette and I have learned a great deal about this problem. Some things were learned from life experience, others from training in counseling and college. We try to stay abreast of research in the areas of counseling and psychology. Yet we try to base everything we do, including application of information, on the Bible.

The most important factor in a woman’s life, one that affects her entire future, is her relationship with her father. If the father was abusive and controlling, then the likelihood of choosing a mate similar to the father is higher. If the father was absent, many times a woman will spend her life looking for that father figure. This goes beyond just our natural fathers. It goes to God and how we view Him in relation to our view of our earthly father.

Sexual Abuse by Father or Father Figure
Absent Father
Verbally Abusive Father
Mentally and Emotionally Abusive Father
Overly Controlling Father
Alcoholic Father (and or drug abuser)

Let’s look at a few areas that can cause a woman to seek out men who are not good for them.

Sexual Abuse by Father or Father Figure

When the issue in a woman’s past is sexual abuse by the father or father figure it causes deep emotional, mental and spiritual wounds. These wounds create a fertile ground for planting harmful relationships. Often the memories of abuse are buried for years, a painful secret that lays, apparently, dormant for possibly decades. However, these memories can, and usually do, cause choices of partners to be unhealthy and even irrational.

How can I say this? I know, because a VERY close member of my immediate family sexually abused me for years. I hesitate to say whom, since this person is still living. Yet he knows, I know, and my husband knows about the abuse. It has caused me to make terrible choices in my life. Ones that are still affecting my children and me today. This is a deep and troubling story…difficult to face….equally difficult to deal with.

For many years I lived with the promise I made to myself that “No man will ever control me again.” This promise affected my relationships with men, but mostly it affected my relationship with God. How could I possibly trust God when He is a male…after all, man was created in His image, right? So, if man was created in God’s image, and man is a hurtful and abusive creature, someone not to be trusted, then how could I possibly trust God and believe what He says to be true. Not only that, how can I accept God’s love when the only love I was shown by a man, when I was a child, was of a sexual nature. God isn’t a sexual being in the sense of physical sensuality, so how does one resolve this. Additionally, if love means sex, then how can I love some male person, God or otherwise, who I can’t have sex with? Really, this is how my mind was working.

It has taken much prayer and many long talks with my husband, and several failed attempts at counseling, to learn to separate the behavior of man from the truth and will of God. And yet, some problems linger. For example: If this abuser taught me by his actions that love meant sex, how do I handle it when I find TRUE love. Does it mean that I shouldn’t have sex with my life mate? If true love doesn’t mean sex….we shouldn’t HAVE to have sex. Right?

Wrong.

This has been my latest problem. It isn’t that sex is wrong, or that I don’t find my husband attractive. It isn’t even that we don’t, you know, have a sexual relationship. It is that in the back of my mind is the thought that if my husband really loved me then he shouldn’t want or need sex….after all, God really loves me and He doesn’t. Can you see how the thinking and logic becomes twisted?

Look, I am being completely honest with you. I am telling you my most personal thoughts. I know there are other women who feel the same way. Either they have come to the same conclusion or they have become promiscuous or gay, or, some other dysfunction that is not God’s plan for us.

22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.
23 For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body.
24 Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it,
26 that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,
27 that He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish.
28 So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself.
29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church.
30 For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.
31 "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.''
32 This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
33 Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

What God’s word says this about husbands and wives:

I am not going to go into the wives submitting to your husbands’ part right now. I want to look at the part about husbands and what it means when the husband (and father) does not follow God’s word in his life.

The husband is the head of the wife, as also Christ is the head of the church….

If Christ loves the church, which he does, since He gave His life for us and we are the church….then the husband should love the wife as Christ does the church, giving his life for her. Empowering her as Christ empowers us by the Holy Sprit. Not using or abusing his power to cause “submission” or harm. Submission is mutual….it means to give in to one another. Not to bow down to the one in control. So, in that light, husbands are to submit to their wives, too, in the sense that they consider her preferences in all things….for a wife is a helpmeet, not a slave.This is where many men have gone wrong.

And those abusive fathers? How does this relate to them? Besides the obvious sexual sin, there is the lack of caring, lack of love, lack of submission on the part of the abusive father. He has not viewed his wife as Christ would view the church. So, he has committed adultery against his wife and marriage by sexually abusing his son or daughter. Verse 28 says the husband “...out to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself.” Yet how many of these abusive fathers injure themselves by drinking or other means. Not to mention the sins and not looking forward to eternity with God.

Now, the first scripture I put into this piece was about the sins of the fathers “.. visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me..” When the father rejects God, when he refuses to accept the laws of God, and when he makes for himself the idol of sexual pleasure, then God allows the curse to come upon the family. The curse can only be broken by salvation through Jesus Christ. Either the father must be saved, which will eventually release the family from the curse. Or one of the children must be saved, which releases them and future generations from the curse.

That is why so many of us suffer so much from the sins our parents committed against us and just in their lives in general. When they hurt us, especially in an abusive way, we take upon us the curse of that iniquity, until our own salvation. Now, salvation does not usually wipe away every problem we have. Sometimes the healing takes years. Why? Because we hold on to the past. If we are able to give it up to God at the time of our redemption, then ALL things are made new. Unfortunately, we, being the humans we are, want to keep some of that stuff for ourselves. That is why you see a person on occasion saved in a miraculous and completely life changing way. They have been able to give up much of their past hurts and behaviors to the Lord.
Another thing I do it to just say, “Lord, I give this (person, situation, problem) to You, and ask that You deal with it in any way You see fit. For I want Your will, oh Lord, not mine. And I know Your will is the best for all concerned.”
Then, there is the box and shelf. I put the problem in an imaginary box. I close the box and put it on a shelf. This shelf is God’s shelf, and it is the place I put all the things I can’t or shouldn’t handle myself. I tell God, “Here is another box of problems for You.” Then I walk away from it, leaving it in His hands. Sometimes I take a box off the shelf and open it up. I do that when I want control, or when it is time to deal with the problem myself for a while. God usually lets me know it is time. If it is because I want control, then I try to deal with the problem for a while. Soon I will be frustrated or give up or make it worse, and then I must give it back to God. He really doesn’t seem to mind so much, because He knows our weaknesses and He knows we are human. He doesn’t expect perfection from us, just that we love Him and want His will. God isn’t like your earthly father at all. He is better than any perfect father you could imagine. He loves us and protects us, heals us and comforts us. There is no other like Him. There is no answer but Him. Remember, though, no one comes to the Father except by Jesus.

OK, let’s move on to another in our list of types of negative fathers.

Part 2 - Absent Father >>

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