You know. I felt the same way. In my work life, people would laugh at the notion. I thought that I was so miserable in the last few years of my first marriage (of 14 years) that when I left I said I will never make that mistake again. He was not alcoholic.
I then spent the next 12 years alone. I had thought all those years that I had learned to be alone and that I had learned to love myself and I would be successful in my next relationship because I was secure in myself.
Turns out all I learned was how to be alone. HA! I later asked myself how can you ever learn to be in a relationship if you don't have one?
As I began to date and have an occasional boyfriend I began to notice how I picked "bad" men. I noticed how I struggled to leave those men, but I did not know why. I certainly did not know there was a name for it or steps to take to fix it.
I read self-help after self-help about low self esteem, neediness, you name it..I probably have read it.
Yet I was clueless what the real problem was or how to help myself until I married an AAH and ran for support to stay away. This one was not just miserable but possibly deadly.
So I wound up here, even though I, in the beginning, thought the whole idea was ludicrous.
Turns out....It was not so impossible!!