When many of us have a negative experience with another, rather than turning away from further contact, we tend to go back for more. If this seems to make no rational sense, you're right~ but let's take a closer look at this issue and why it happens.
This phenomenon ONLY occurs, when we hold ourselves accountable for the friction between us, or the routinely disappointing experiences we have with others. I've always said in reference to this oddity, you MUST consider the source!
A person may not be bad, but if they feel bad for You, or you just can’t seem to make a positive impression on them, it could simply be a matter of the chemistry between you being off, or your inability to enjoy a harmonious bond, is a leftover from a past-life connection that’s meant to finally end during THIS one.
Many keep trying to get back into the good graces of someone they not only don't respect, admire or trust. Why would someone's opinion of you matter so much, when you can step back a bit, and recognize this about yourself and them??
Poor self-worth, is the core of why this happens. People with low self-esteem (from having been parented poorly) have a deep need for validation from virtually EVERYONE. If they can't be mirrored positively by someone (even a bum on street or a rapist), they assume they're regarded by that person as "not good enough."
This unfortunately, is the driving force behind millions of women and men settling for a lover who can't or won't meet their emotional needs. They bend over backwards to please their partner, to no avail~ and think that if they just try a little harder, they'll be successful in getting the kind of responsiveness and love they crave.
No such thing EVER happens. You can't get blood out of a stone, and you can’t get someone to love you, who's incapable of loving. Children of parents who had little or no capacity to love a child presume it's their own fault, that their affection and adoration for a parent is never reciprocated~thus, their pattern of painful longing and yearning for love, remains intact for a lifetime.
Painful longing and yearning has NOTHING whatsoever to do with genuine love, but millions live with this distorted definition of it. This childhood programming is very difficult to unhinge in someone who has never known their true worth, due to defective parenting.
This is NOT to say it's impossible to resolve this issue, but it takes some focused core trauma and emotional development work with a skilled professional, and the elimination of a client's unrelenting mental tape that basically keeps asserting, "I'm not good enough or lovable."
This type of intervention involves reprogramming neuro-pathways in the brain to accept and integrate a new and wholesome inner script, while banishing the old one that keeps one looking for "love" in all the wrong places. It also requires self-worth exercises that help one LEARN to regard themselves in an accurate way, rather than through a distorted lens of negative bias left over from childhood.