I think the most revealing thing you've said is that your wife cites her abusive ex as the man she found most attractive, in a non-brotherly sort of way. There is a world of difference between being confidently assertive and being a true bully. Women tend to be attracted to men who are genuinely funny because that trait reveals self-confidence. When mentally healthy women say a guy is boring, they usually are talking about a man who can't make them laugh. To be really bullied by a man, though, is usually considered by women to be an unpardonable betrayal of trust. It's not attractive to most of us.

There are some women, though, who are plenty attractive enough to get any kind of a man that they want, yet they will tend to gravitate toward the most aggressive man around them, and they will do it over and over again. I heard one young woman I knew, who was living with an regular thug, say, "I like it that other men are afraid of my boyfriend. It makes me feel safe." Meanwhile she was getting smacked in the head every second week by this guy. And she was beautiful.

Some of these women associate angry aggression with being an "alpha" male. It's not politically correct to say this, but some women are drawn to that. Nowadays, we are not supposed to blame women who get abused for being a party to their own abuse. I don't know how else to analyze it. There are women who get trapped in a situation that they don't have any good way out of. But there are women who put themselves in situations that they don't have to be in. For your wife to be thinking fondly about how cool this ex of her's was makes me think she's in that second group. She is still very young at age 24. She was even younger when she was with him. Maybe she didn't get hurt badly enough for this "drama" to lose it's appeal. It sounds like she has no good idea what the heck she wants, and I don't know what you do with someone like that.