How Often Does This Happen?

I was with a friend, much older than me, who was telling me "I always went for guys who were bad, and not for the nice guys I actually liked." I told her "I read that sometimes people from divorced families have this feeling of impending loss. And they sometimes pick people they don't like that much because it won't hurt so much to lose that person as to lose someone they really care about."
My friend said her parent's weren't divorced, rather, her mother had died when she was four. My friend wondered if she had done what I had described; rejected those she liked and could love, for fear of loss.
I wonder how often this happens and how many people do this.