If you’ve experienced abuse in one relationship, you’re more likely to find yourself in subsequent abusive relationships. You 100% don’t deserve abuse, but there are emotional habits that people learn in childhood that set us up to be especial targets for predatory partners.

I grew up witnessing my narcissist father cyclically abusing and neglecting my mother. With that baggage, in my late teens I was groomed into a manipulative relationship with a slightly older partner. I broke free after a few years, but this was all pre-Internet, so it was only much later that I learned the vocabulary to name narcissistic abuse flags and connected the dots. It was cyclical, and would almost certainly have turned physically abusive.

I think it’s an oversimplification to say we tend to gravitate and feel special chemistry with people who recreate familiar (abusive) relationship patterns. There’s a lot more complexity to romantic attraction and sexual attraction than just comfort/familiarity. I think there’s usually more subtle, coded things going on that predators use to probe and groom targets - how we respond to a bigoted “joke”, or two-faced cattyness, glorifying drugs and alcohol, etc.