How on earth?

How is it that a seemingly mature, intelligent, middle-aged woman, who had been married for 18 years, divorced and then in a relationship for another 12 years, a woman who had brought up two children single-handed from the ages of 12 and 14 subsequently, have got involved with someone like 'him'? A man who had lived a desperate life of deprivation and alienation. An ex-criminal, a sociopath, and now I had discovered, a sexual deviant?

I know I was very lonely, struggling financially, I was unemployed due to depression and anxiety and was desperate to feel valued in some way.

Maybe meeting someone like him allowed me to have some kind of status? I felt wanted again as a woman. I felt desirable and feminine. I was past my physical best and beginning to feel that I would never attract a man again, let alone one who was ten years younger than me. I knew I was better educated than him and I was able to teach him about things he had not experienced. Because of his deprivation I wanted to show him a world that he knew nothing about, I wanted him to know how it felt to be loved and cared about. I wanted him to see how ordinary, balanced, healthy people lived their lives. In this respect he fulfilled my maternal yearnings, he filled my 'empty nest' he boosted my fading self esteem, in fact he validated me as a person in every way. At least in the beginning .......