It isn't unusual at all for people with difficult childhoods to seek out others who feel familiar - which is to say they evoke feelings of familiarity and mostly because they re-create trauma from our childhood. I, myself, have found that I tend to pick partners who are emotionally abusive and yet needy at the same time a a way to relive and possibly fix the stuff my childhood presented.

I thought it would get better after I identified what it was that I was doing. It didn't. I am not sure what the answers are here but I do know that I want better for myself...