Respectfully, Skip, what I've found in my experience is that sweetness attracts jerks (or, sometimes, just living your life and being noticed by them), whereas it's an over-willingness to be forgiving and patient with them that inspires them to stay. My first 7 years of relationship history were with abusive guys, unfortunately, and they clung to me fiercely because they knew me to be so kind, gentle, quiet, empathic, patient, understanding, and forgiving to a fault. As I got older, I lost patience for behaviors like theirs; I stayed kind, but I stopped being a doormat, and I started being more outspoken about equality.... and now, the quality of the men in my life is much much better! Point being: having a backbone and letting yourself get angry about things that are worth getting angry over can attract even better people/connections. ;)

To make this less about me, though, I'll say this: in the field of mental health, it's fairly common knowledge that many people with abusive habits are actually quite emotionally fragile, often due to emotional trauma in their upbringing. It makes sense that they seek a person who feels like a "safe place" rather than a person who seems wise to the ways of "jerks" and strong enough to assert herself against them. Fragile people are quite often intimidated by people who seem strong.

Long story short... I don't think Rivka's attracting unworthy men on account of the fact that she is rightfully upset about, well, mistreatment by unworthy men. ;)