People raised by family in opposite quadra.

[Adam Strange]

I know a well-educated, intelligent woman who left her smooth running, no-conflict, upper-middle class family (husband and kids) for an exact copy of her father, who was an uneducated bully. I could never understand her need to be in such a similar relationship especially when she spent years saying how much she was afraid of her father and hated his behaviour; perhaps she's habituated to an edgy atmosphere where there's potential for violence. However, she does seem to be in the driver's seat because she pays all the bills........
a.k.a. I/O

@Rebelondeck, you are describing a clear case of unresolved childhood trauma. By paying all the bills, she can finally get control of her "father's" anger and violence. She can dominate him and no longer needs to be afraid of his anger. The psychological term for this is "Identification with the Victor", where kids who were bullied by those in authority tend to grow up to bully those who are smaller than they are, when you might expect them to hate bullying altogether. Which way a person goes probably depends on the health level of the individual and the support that they might or might not get.

I think my ex and I were fortunate in the sense that we were both merely looking to resolve the fact that one of our parents didn't like us that much. Neither one of us was trying to overcome the problem of violence.
Well, my mother was violent. But my chances of marrying an LSE like her are zero. I don't want to fix that problem by getting approval from or dominating an improved version of her. I want to erase her from my world.