Fuckboi’s and failure

Lets talk about my man choices for a minute as I seem to be a little stuck on this right now given my recent bought of nonsense with Mike.

Ive never made good choices. Save one and I even let him go.
Going back to what amounts to the beginning of my dating life my first love was, well, probably the same as every other teen love turns out. I was 18, he was slightly younger. We were both excessively young but he gave me my oldest daughter then promptly dropped off the planet.
It happens. He has since found me, twenty years later, to tell me I was the one that got away.
Meh, whatever.
My next serious relationship is the one big regret I have in my life. He was amazing. Adopted my daughter, fathered my oldest son. All around just an amazing man and human being. I, on the other hand had somehow regressed into this mess of a pre-teen and was back in therapy trying to figure out how to interact like an adult with anyone. Especially him but at the time I would have settled on being able to go to the grocery store like and adult. We were together seven years before my ‘get em before they get me’ kicked in and I bailed for no other reason than it seemed like time.
I promptly hooked up with the first guy who paid the slightest bit of attention to me. The ink on the divorce papers was barely dry and we were living together, a few months later I was pregnant and now stuck in a situation that wasn’t all that great but I was in it now. A couple years later a son followed.  That lasted another nearly seven years and I bailed on him too. No real reason that I can remember other than I was just done.
Both men have since remarried, had more kids and are raising the ones we produced together. They’re both great dads with huge and amazing families for support and their new wives are everything I would never have been.

I tried very hard to be the Betty Crocker wife I was expected to be but it just never seemed to fit. I was restless and felt trapped.
After the last divorce I moved a province away and regressed to the party girl. I revelled in the freedom, drank, partied, dabbled in drugs for the first time in my life and basically was somehow an 18 yr old trapped in a 30 yr olds body.
A string of temporary attachments followed. A few months each. Nothing to write home about or even mention at any length here. It was also during this time that I first encountered Mike who would remain a huge fixture in my life for the next 6 yrs.
In hind sight I should have run. Could I do it all over again I would avoid him like the toxic plague he turned out to be.
I have never been able to figure out exactly what the draw is with Mike. He’s more screwed up than I am and completely in denial whereas I accept that Im a bit of a mess. He’s an alcoholic that alternates between being the sweetest guy Ive ever met to the most hostile and incredibly hurtful and mean. I used to think I was always hoping I would get to hang out with the nice guy and just had to tolerate the asshole until the nice guy showed up again. His other go-to move was is to ghost out of my life without so much as a backward glance then reappear and blame me for the disappearance. Basically repeat my entire childhood on a smaller scale. Now I think Im just a sucker for punishment but for years I struggled to just be good enough for this guy who has never really been good enough for me. Even the nice guy wasn’t much of a catch by anyone’s standards but somehow always managed to make me feel needed.
Who doesn’t want to be needed?
Of course that was tempered with huge doses of self doubt, inadequacy and just general self loathing but hey, he wanted me! Right?
Dr Phil comes to mind, “You couldn’t be any stupider if we cut your head off.”
Oh I know. Believe me I know. Ive mentioned that Im a train wreck in progress right?
Slowly Im extricating myself. It’s like a weaning process. The meaner he is the less his next suck up routine works. Slowly but surely he just doesn’t matter anymore.
My choices outside of him aren’t exactly peachy either. The last guy I hung out with is the one who destroyed my jeep and exploded my whole life. Then laughed about it.
I joke that Im going to give up on the male species altogether. I say it all the time actually but I don’t think it’ll every really be true. Somewhere the little girl in me just wants someone to want me.  I think that’s why I struggle so much. On some level I never really gave up even though I should have. Even though I should.