Most people have heard of “baby-proofing” a home to make it safe for newborns and toddlers. This article will discuss a similar concept: Crazy-proofing.
Face it. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably been involved with a high-conflict, abusive personality-disordered or just plain crazy woman at least once already. This puts you at risk to become involved with this type of woman again. Knowing you’re attracted to Crazy isn’t enough to end your unhealthy relationship pattern. You need to combine what you know with action.
Group psychotherapy pioneer, Dr Irvin D. Yalom, MD, explains that insight alone is not sufficient to create change. Insight only gets you into the “vestibule” of change. In order to break your unhealthy attractions and relationship patterns, you need to combine your new found insight with real life action, gain more self-awareness about your own relationship beliefs, fears and behaviors and start making different choices.
What is Crazy-Proofing?
Crazy-proofing is what every man or woman should do after ending a relationship with an abusive partner. Crazy-proofing involves taking proactive steps to break your pattern of abusive relationships, learning to recognize the warning signs of an abusive personality before you’re in too deep and making the conscious decision to walk away instead of becoming a moth to the flame of Crazy yet again.
10 Steps to Crazy-Proofing your Romantic Life
1. Identify and understand what attracts you to abusive women and what makes you an easy target. Are you a “nice guy?” Are you non-confrontational and eager to please? Were you raised to respect women no matter what? Do you believe it’s your job to cater to a woman’s every need? Do you believe love is supposed to hurt? Do you believe it’s your job to make your partner happy? Do you believe it’s “bad” to put your needs first? Do you believe it’s important to keep the peace at all costs?
If you answered “yes” to these questions, you probably have some thinking errors regarding what constitutes healthy adult relationships. You may not even be aware of what your relationship beliefs are until you take the time to think about them. Identify your faulty relationship beliefs or thinking errors and then replace them with healthy ones like, “I deserve to be treated with the same kindness and respect with which I treat my loved ones.”
2. Learn to spot high-conflict, crazy and abusive personality traits. Sometimes, abusive types will give you red flags that you can spot from outer space and other times the red flags will be more subtle. Nevertheless, most abusers will give you early warning signs of their true nature very early on, but you need to be paying attention.
3. Stop discounting the obvious. When Crazy is staring you in the face, don’t minimize, rationalize or justify her hurtful, irrational and abusive behavior. It doesn’t matter how hot she is, how sweet she can be when she wants something from you or if she claims to have an abuse history. Abuse is abuse and there’s just no excuse.
4. Don’t get involved with women who show abusive traits. Not even just for sex. You’ve got to go cold turkey. No, you can’t even “just be friends” with them. They’re poison and you’re deluding yourself if you think this type of woman is capable of being a friend in the true sense of the word. The impulse to be with these women will seem irresistible at times. If you give into it, you are sowing the seeds of your own emotional, physical and financial ruin. It’s like playing catch with a live grenade. Don’t do it.
5. Set the boundary and make it fast and firm. Taking abusive, crazy nonsense from this kind of individual, even once, is like being sprayed by a cat. If she gets away with it the first time, she’ll assume treating you like garbage is her god-given right. The first time she pushes you; push back (not physically—otherwise you’ll go to jail if you’re a man and Crazy is a woman). Set the boundary. Tell her that her behavior is unacceptable. If she persists, end contact.
When you let this type of woman set a precedent for bad behavior early on in a relationship, she will go ballistic if you dare assert your rights to be treated decently later on. Tolerating one abusive act doesn’t make you a nice guy; it opens the floodgates for more and more abusive behaviors.
6. Challenge your fears that allow you to tolerate abusive behaviors in women. Common fears include the myth that she’s the only fish in the sea, that you won’t do any better, that all women are crazy, that no one else will find you attractive or love you or that you’ve done something to deserve her abuse.
7. Identify non-abusive women you already know or whom you pushed away in the past. You’ve probably already had the opportunity to date a non-abusive, kind, mature and loving woman, but found reasons to discount her as a mate. Try to understand why healthy women, especially the ones who are physically attractive, don’t appeal to you. Odds are it’s because you recognize, on some level, that they won’t abuse you. Seems crazy, right? However, it makes sense once you understand what’s occurring on an unconscious level.
What childhood or adolescent relationship dynamic are you trying to recreate with Crazy? What old childhood wound, trauma or rejection are you trying to heal? Understanding this is essential when trying to break your attraction to unhealthy and abusive women.
8. Recognize that what’s familiar isn’t necessarily good and that anxiety about what’s unfamiliar isn’t necessarily bad. Do you equate the conflict, crisis, chaos, abuse, conditional or transactional love/acceptance, and the tension of trying to please a high-conflict and/or abusive personality disordered woman with chemistry? If so, when you have the opportunity to date a kind and stable woman, the dynamic probably feels “off” to you. A former client described it as “missing that old crazy chemistry;” he had the crazy part right.
If you don’t have a mental roadmap of what a good relationship is, healthy women will seem “strange” in comparison, which you then misattribute as a lack of chemistry. You’re attracted to abusive women because they’re familiar and, therefore, comfortable, but familiarity isn’t a good thing in this case.
Many individuals get stuck here. You want to be in a healthy relationship, but miss the adrenaline rush from the drama and conflict. The rush or chemistry is really about the desire to have an emotionally corrective experience (i.e., being accepted and loved for who you are without being abused). Don’t interpret the anxiety or discomfort caused by the unfamiliarity of emotional health with a lack of romantic potential and don’t confuse that queasy, heady, heart pounding in your ears sensation when thinking about abuser du jour with chemistry. The “crazy chemistry” is just your unconscious recognizing the opportunity to have yet another go on the Crazy scary-go-round.
Part of the healing process does involve having an emotionally corrective experience, but you’re not going to get it with a woman who has the same or similar traits as the last abusive one. The only way to have an emotionally corrective experience is with a kind, healthy and stable woman who is capable of love.
9. Be open to meeting a non-abusive and kind woman. When you meet a woman you find physically attractive and smart and don’t feel an initial flush of excitement, give her a chance. Don’t start looking for excuses why you shouldn’t date her. Instead, ask yourself why you wouldn’t want to date her. If the best you can come up with is, “I’m just not feeling it” or “It’s not a good time for me” or “Work is busy” or “I don’t know—I’m just not interested;” dig a little deeper.
If you can’t come up with concrete reasons, your lack of interest may very well be because she’s not crazy and abusive. It may also be that you are afraid of intimacy and are self-sabotaging yourself by choosing abusive women. On some level, you may recognize that these women are incapable of being in a relationship, therefore, they’re “safe.” Safe in that there’s no chance that a relationship with them will work out and then you can blame her for being crazy and abusive, which, even if it’s true, doesn’t absolve you of the responsibility of willingly entering into a relationship with her.
10. Tolerate the discomfort of not being abused. When you meet a woman you find attractive and who seems stable and kind, don’t reflexively push her away or come up with reasons why she’s not the right one for you. Try to catch yourself in the act, give yourself a reality check and begin an ongoing dialogue with yourself. Remind yourself that you want to be with a nice woman. Remind yourself that healthy women who want to be in relationships don’t play games, jerk you around and create obstacles to being with them nor do they pressure you to let them move in with you after the first date.
Remind yourself you feel uncomfortable because you’re not used to women with healthy boundaries, not because there’s something wrong with her or that she’s not a good match. Be emotionally present on dates with her instead of comparing her to the over-the-top way your exes behaved.
If you don’t feel “it” right away, ask yourself, “What’s the problem?” If the only problem is that she’s stable and kind, get out out of your own way and let the relationship happen until feeling good in a relationship becomes the norm and feeling bad becomes the rare exception.
Shrink4Men Coaching and Consulting Services:
Dr Tara J. Palmatier provides confidential, fee-for-service, consultation/coaching services to help both men and women work through their relationship issues via telephone and/or Skype chat. Her practice combines practical advice, support, reality testing and goal-oriented outcomes. Please visit the Shrink4Men Services page for professional inquiries.
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Excellent article. I read this twice and plan to read it again a few times.
In fact, I might print it and stick it in my wallet and golf bag.
Thanks.
In your golf bag? Love it!
“If I only cared about her on a superficial, non-emotional level, then I likely wouldn’t be in love with her.”
How’s that for a quandary? In other words, I pretty much have two choices: celibacy, or in a dis-functional relationship.
Because of living in a feminist culture, males are borderline schizophrenics, having to swallow a lot of new age philosophy, deconstruction of their history and sense of place, while at the same time having deep-seated instinctual awareness of what it means to be a man (i.e. urge to spread seed, to explore and to be masters of our own destiny).
It seems men who have taken the red pill are waking up from decades of confusion and doubt and are beginning just now to see a bright future (even ones that involve bachelorhood).
Lovekraft, you said
I don’t see that first quote in the post. Where is that from?
More importantly, what I think Dr. T is saying, and the point of the whole post, is that those aren’t necessarily the only two options. However, it will take a lot of hard work and vigilance. Easier said than done, of course, but Dr. T’s identified some of the tools to develop in order to achieve it.
Sorry for the confusion. It was my quote and I put them in quotation marks to indicate that it was a personal expression.
Got it. Thanks for clarifying.
I’m very thankful for this article, and am looking forward to the next installments. As a ‘nice woman’ (so says my past hx w/abusives and numerous psych/emotional health/personality tests, friends, etc),it drives me insane that it seems my only two choices are:
1. Continue on as I am and continue to get rejected / dumped in favor of Ms. Evil over and over again
2. Become ‘like them’ (I wouldn’t even know how)so I can attract a decent, kind, gentle man.
I mean no one any offense, but I find I’m very frustrated that so many good, decent men seem to prefer abusive crazies to someone with less ‘glitter’ but a better heart and intact soul.
Seems to me one of the unintended consquences of the feminist movement is that scores of women have learned what men want, and use that to hook one or more…only, it’s not real…and decent, kind men (who have likely known nothing different?) don’t catch on until it’s too late – they’re married / have children/ engaged/ can’t let the family down / made promises that he can’t break (even though she has broken all of hers)!
Please read, please take the advice, and please stop turning down / dumping women like me in favor of sluts (I’m no prude when treated with respect and kindness!)…That said, easy women = emotionally disturbed women.
When she falls into bed with you…guess what? It’s not you. She does and has been doing that very easily with everyone.
Same for someone who says they love you and /or want to marry you within weeks of meeting = emotionally stunted / disturbed –> likely to be abusive. (I admit it: Experience has been my teacher!)
I wouldn’t say we “prefer abusive crazies,” I’d say we’re drawn to them. We choose them in the sense we pursue, marry and have kids with them but it’s not a choice made consciously.
Shari Schreiber put it this way, “Any man who persistently chooses borderline disordered women, has attachment fears that run as deep as those of the females he’s courting.” http://www.sharischreiber.com/dance.html Believe it.
I can trace my avoidant attachment style back to high school. The exgf was likely the first Cluster B I tangled with. In her I found someone whose problems were as big or bigger than mine. My baggage didn’t go away when the exgf went away, it followed me right into my marriage and I’m still dealing with the effects.
What Mellaril said. It seems more a matter of conditioning than preference. If there are any men out there who sit down and say “What I really want is a Cluster B gal – you know, one that goes off the rails at the slightest perceived offense, yells and screams and acts all crazy – that’s HAWT!” then I haven’t met them.
I agree. I think men and women who are drawn to these types are conditioned into believing this is how love and relationships are supposed to feel—even if they don’t like it on a conscious level. The trick is to find out what the secondary gain is or, in other words, what’s the payoff for staying with Crazy?
Do you get to feel like the hero? The martyr? Saner by comparison? Does it confirm fears you have about yourself that you’re unworthy of love? Does it confirm your beliefs that all women are crazy? Does it give you a convenient excuse for not being happy?
Yes, many men stay because they don’t want to lose children and assets, but I believe there’s also a psychological payoff of some kind.
First off, thanks everyone for responding and not being angry / offended. I was a little worried that I’d gone too far with my above questions / comments.
For me, what Dr. Tara said. Conditioned to believe that abuse is love / vice versa. And yes, I do still struggle with a hero complex (only wish I could look as good as Linda Carter in the Wonder Woman skintight suit!)…I remember having dreams about breaking drug cartels and stuff like that back in college.
For me, I think the pyschological payoff of my past relationships was that old familiar line; trying to overcome how my abusive mother treated me by finding someone just like dear old mom who would love me this time (thus proving my worth as a human being)…only, I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing until of course, too late, and now know that anyone like dear old mom will do nothing more than treat me the same as she did / does. She used to call AXH her soul mate…ewww.
One way I learned how to tune in to my subconscious was to write down any interesting / bizarre / disturbing dreams I had, with as much detail as possible. They usually meant nothing to me at the time, but after a week or two, I would go back and read about it, and ‘lightbulb!’ It started to make sense.
I think that is a key ~ somehow getting your conscious (awake, alert) mind to communicate with the subconscious ‘tapes’ that have been playing in our heads, directing our paths, despite our best efforts to overcome them on a conscious level.
I’m not real in tune with Shari Schrieber, as she seems to be saying that if you’re not a BPD, you’re an NPD. With that, I wholeheartedly disagree. Although she does make some valid points in general.
I kind of view abusers and the abused like two ions, missing some essential proton (sorry, I’m rusty on my physics), that we somehow both see as that ‘missing’ part of ourselves. It’s only when we become stable, that we can attract another stable particle, as it were.
“Do you get to feel like the hero?”
Yeah, for a little while. My relationship with my BPD ex really got under way one evening when she turned up at my door, bags in hand, saying that her father had kicked her out. So of course I took in the little lost puppy. All hail the White Knight! Yeah, I was that guy. Of course, your white-knight status doesn’t last very long.
I didn’t stay in the relationship because it gave me an excuse to be unhappy. I’m not the sort of person who enjoys being unhappy. It did validate my expectations of how I thought relationships with women are. In my mind, all women were like that. It wasn’t a conscious prejudice — it was something that I had internalized over the years, without really realizing I had done so.
Here’s an odd bit. I admit that I pedestalized women — but not because I was raised to do so. Quite the opposite actually. Oh, I learned the ordinary courtesies, holding the door and so forth. But my mom always warned me away from getting involved with women, and when I was a teenager, she kind of set things up so that I would have little contact with girls my own age, such as sending me to an all-boys church school.
See, my mom cheated on my dad, which she later regretted. And I think she was just trying to warn me about what some women will do. I think she also foresaw what feminism was turning into and that a lot of younger girls were going to grow up with an entitlement attitude. But she overdid it. And that made me rebellious, and I was determined to prove her wrong. And in my anxiety to do so, I did exactly what my mom was warning me about.
(BTW, my relationship with my mom is fine now. This was a long time ago and it’s all water under the bridge at this point. My mom freely admits that she did some things wrong, and I was no saint either.)
Some of us suffer with “Gambler’s Conceit”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_conceit
“(the) mistaken belief that one will be able to stop performing a risky action while one continues to succeed or win at it. This belief frequently arises during games of chance, such as casino games. The individual believes they will be a net winner at the game, and able to avoid gambler’s ruin, by exerting the self-control necessary to stop playing while still ahead in winnings. This is frequently expressed as “I’ll stop when I’m ahead.” This is irrational since the action contributing to the winning situation (i.e. playing) is continuing to produce the desired result and further is being rewarded. The fallacy comes about because of the non-zero probability of having losses that outweigh the streak before it happens.”
So, we men continue working on a relationship in hopes that things will change for the better or that the reason the “Crazy” girlfriend is crazy is somehow within one’s span of control. “I leave when the children are grown.” “I’ll leave when I have a stable job.” “I’ll leave my girlfriend after my mom passes away and I’m not trying to be both a good boyfriend and a caretaker to my aging mother.” A man will eventually wise up and realize that “he didn’t Cause his girlfriend to be crazy; he can’t Cure her craziness; and he can’t Control her craziness.” At some point he’ll run out of rationalizations and excuses and see the diminishing marginal returns of his actions. It’s about knowing what “enough” is:
http://www.taoistic.com/taoteching-laotzu/taoteching-33.htm
“33
Those who understand others are clever,
Those who understand themselves are wise.
Those who defeat others are strong,
Those who defeat themselves are mighty.
Those who know when they have enough are rich.
Those who are unswerving have resolve.
Those who stay where they are will endure.
Those who die without being forgotten get longevity.”
Knowing when to hold ’em, fold ’em, walk away, or run is not an exact science, but your crazy-proofing guidelines are a good start.
Very good point, Tom. And related to that, and also a gambler’s fallacy, is the sunk-cost fallacy. This is the one where you believe that you have to stick with the relationship because you’ve already invested so much into it. Of course, the fallacy is that the sunk cost is sunk — the effort you have already put in is expended and you can’t get it back. It’s a particularly strong fallacy with those who have been in an abusive relationship for some period of time.
I relate it to someone who has fallen really badly into debt. After a certain point, the finance charges (i.e., the effort that you have to put into just maintaining the relationship) becomes so overwhelming that you have no hope of ever paying back the principal. At that point, you have to give yourself permission to declare emotional bankruptcy, wipe the slate clean, and start over.
The gambler analogy really makes sense. I’m not a gambler, but I have always seemed to have an attraction to women that are emotionally abusive. Narcissism seems to be my “disorder of choice”. I have chosen a few in my past and it was often subtle, but obvious in hindsight. I am just now realizing that it could have to do with my abandonment insecurities. I believe I have these from my father leaving when i was five years old. I am also now learning that he may have been a narcissist himself. I always wondered how a man could leave his family and never look back (ever). It seems crazy, in itself, for a grown man (me) to want (albeit subconscious) another chance to “fix” the problem that made his dad run out so many years ago. It is a real awakening to start to understand these things and connect the dots. My problem now is that I need to resolve this. I believe the only answer for me now is to “fix” that abandonment fear within myself. Maybe then my attraction to these types of women will diminish. I can hope, can’t I?
I recall reading once that the most difficult people rescued from religious cults to “un-program” were the ones that had done the most in the hazing or whatever you call it to gain entry. I recall reading the “Moonies” had horrendous entry requirements and it seemed counter-intuitive to the rescuers that those cult people had the hardest time letting go of the programming. Whereas less intense entry requirements allowed the person to un-program more quickly.
I sympathize with this. I spent 15.5 years of a 16 year marriage trying to tell myself that it was ok. Stayed for kids. Stayed cuz divorce was expensive. All the while paying a great deal emotionally and physical health wise.
I realize now it was this “Sunk Cost” concept. How could I quit now after having done so much to make this f**ked up dysfunctional relationship persist? But the ONLY way — with hindsight — is to “declare emotional bankruptcy, wipe the slate clean, and start over.” Unfortunately, that is not so easy to do as to say. Beyond emotional bankruptcy there is the financial cost and the physical health cost. Plus wiping the slate clean can — for me at least — take years before you really are ready to “start over” with another woman. Wiping the slate clean is HARD. It is very easy to drop right back to another crazy woman, just a Dr Tara’s article states. I know; I just went through a bout with another woman who has very similar traits to my ex — AND I ENJOYED THE RIDE. It was exciting.
So wiping the slate clean and starting over is obviously what we need to do, but THANK DR. TARA FOR THIS ARTILCE. IT IS VERY POWERFUL. NEED TO KEEP IN MIND UNTIL I’M WITH A WOMAN WHO IS NICE.
Dr. T-
Great article that has challenged me to my core! Even now I am not 100% sure of what my relationship beliefs might be..didn’t know such a thing really existed that’s how clueless I have been. So many times I understood a lot about why I was in the situation I was in, but I didn’t really know what to do with the observations I was making. It is so easy to point at THEM & HER…instead of myself.
How she behaved is only half the equation…why I stayed in spite of how she behaved is a question I still hold. & many of us here do. For years I understood that I had married a woman as violent & aggressive as my father and as critical & demanding as my mother…but I remained as emotionally disabled in my adult life with my wife as I was as a child with my parents!
I remained a minor child in my adult body…or what I should say is this: when my wife created domestic hystrionics not dissimilar to what I witnessed as a child I subconsciously reverted to a helpless, minor child. Not at first maybe…but after hours, days, weeks & months of ‘punishment’, my failed attempts at defending self with my wife converted to an obedient silence in me. The silence was interpreted as acquiescence that satisfied her hissy fit & calmed her down & that satisfied my need to “keep the domestic peace”. -sounds simple..but unless you leave after that first irrational fight where your views cannot be heard or respected as valid..you learn it is easier to cave. Over decades of this patterning I gave up my personal power..my will..my autonomous self.
So you are right when you say there is some psychological payoff. Heroics? Yes..in the beginning I want to prove my love, my ability to satisfy everything she wanted…yes, heroics absolutely…especially if you think you are no good to begin with. And it hurts to make this confession to myself but in section 9 there is a reference about self sabotage that stops me cold in my tracks.
This sentence: “It may also be that you are afraid of intimacy and are self-sabotaging yourself by choosing abusive women.”
It makes me willing to confess that perhaps my 30 years was an exercise not only between her & me…but also demonstrates my soul’s journey to sort through the psychological trauma of living with a violent, aggressive father & a critical & demanding mother and the unattended PTSD I still suffer! Afraid of intimacy? …hell, yeah! My marriage mimicked & kept me in a “domestic energy” I hated, but also knew how to navigate. It is absolute sabotage. A mirror image of sabotage!
As much as I hate to admit this..that I did it to myself & that I let it hurt me..I also know the ability to see this now & draw more useful connections that I can use for myself is a bittersweet transformational gift. & I often feel lost with what to do with everything NOW…what do I do now?
I’ve read this article many times trying to wrap my head around it’s many powerful messages. It’s easy to point at THEM because their behavior is so over the top..& there is always so much at stake..but it is much harder to read these 10 steps and see my confusing footprints all over them.
So, oddly enough I grieve for what I have lost and I grieve for what I am learning & witnessing here now. To know I am not alone in the confusing suffering is completely unexpected. Thank-you. This site & your work has forever changed my life.
Hi mogodia,
Recognizing and admitting this stuff to yourself is hugely significant. Please don’t underestimate the importance of this first step. Now that you have the insight, you can start making different choices. It’ll be a little scarier at first, but think of it this way: Being with an abusive woman is endurance training unlike anything else. If you can cope and survive (albeit unhappily), you can absolutely survive AND thrive as you move forward and leave your old beliefs and patterns behind.
Welcome to the next day of the rest of your life.
Dr T
Hi Dr. Palmatier,
Incredible article; thank you very much for sharing what very few of the self-help books out there about abusive relationships discuss: what to do AFTER the relationship ends.
I personally think that the psychological payoff (at least for me)of being in a long-term relationship with a Cluster B is the amazing ‘idealization’ rush that we get during the times when they “love” us. I was the perfect target for my Cluster B, as having a beautiful smart, undeniably sexy woman suddenly fawn over me and declare me the greatest thing since sliced bread was addictive, heady stuff. So addictive that even when her mental scales tilted and I was shifted to the negative end of the spectrum, I was willing and able to almost completely lose myself trying to reclaim those amazing heights of the ‘honeymoon’ period. I spent two decades with my Cluster B, discovering that the ‘highs’ came less often, and the ‘lows’ (where I took some serious verbal/emotional lumps) came more often and stayed longer.
I’m in individual counseling, and discovering that my background/childhood/life experiences made me the perfect target for my Cluster B. My low self-esteem and inexperience with women (at least in helthy relationships) combined with the Cluster B’s astounding acting ability and manipulation skills left me wide open to falling head over heels for a woman who knew instinctively which buttons to push to make me sit up, beg, roll over, and whatever else she wanted, whenever she wanted. And the most amazing part; she was so good at it, I never realized just how bad it had become until the relationship was over, she had divorced me, left me with a mountain of debt and started her new life with her new boyfriend. What a wake-up call…
Please keep the excellent articles coming; this website is invaluable to those of us who have found it.
I would only add it isn’t so much that you are drawn to them. Abusive types (male or female) seek people (I E “Nice Guys/Girls”) that are easy targets. Lets face it these types are preditors. They look for easy prey. That isn’t a knock on anybody. I would furthermore say NEVER change being a nice guy. I am one myself. More like what Dr T said just be aware of the red flags & our own traits that we look for in a mate in the past. A “Nice Girl/Guy” deserves to be treated with kindness & respect. So we can’t punish the nice ones because of the crazy types. But we do (those who have been with the other side) have to be aware of what to look out for.
Excellent Comment
Ron
Ron, that’s a very good point. I found that, once I learned to project an air of confidence and self-assurance in public, that Cluster B women largely left me alone. This is another one of those social-environment things — if you are always surrounded by Cluster B types, it scares normal people off. Once you learn to come across as self-assured, the Cluster B types will no longer perceive you as prey, and that will make you more attractive to normal people.
Excellent point, CD.
Hey there Cousin Dave,when people come up to you and start whispering to you things like,”you are going to lose all your friends”,”I would watch my back if I were you” and “what kind of medication is she on”…normal people sure get scared off.
Thank you Dr Tara for teaching me what a cluster B is.I never knew anything about this type of behavior in my life.
JPJ, that’s absolutely true. One of my problems was that my social skills, and general feel for the behavior of other people, was so poorly developed that I was unable to figure out that those people whispering in my ear weren’t my friends and weren’t doing me a favor.
As for me, I think I was drawn to them. I was attracted to waifs like a moth to a flame. My exgf was attractive, smart, funny, usually good company, and put out just enough of the waif vibe to grab my attention and keep it. In my youth, I found them to be safe and relatively easy to deal with. My exgf didn’t love bomb me, we neogotiated our way into intimacy. We were both pretty candid about our pasts. That way neither of us could claim we didn’t know what we were signing up for. She told me one of her greatest fears was to grow old and die alone and I told her there was nobody I couldn’t live without. Things were going along pretty well until I fell in love with her about a year into the relationship.
I wasn’t trying to save her, I wanted her to save me.
There is another aspect to this that I think that sometimes happen to us “nice guys/gals” We weren’t given the tools to be able to handle a relationship maturely. I think I fall into that category.
As a high schooler I wasn’t allowed to date. I was one of 8 kids and 5 being girls, my dad’s way of making sure there wasn’t any drama (or pregnancies) was to be strict. In addition, I NEVER saw my parents fight. If they did, it wasn’t in front of me or my siblings. My mother didn’t have a PD but my dad was about keeping his mouth shut and keeping the peace. So off to college I went unprepared for any kind of relationship let alone an initmate one.
As personalities go, I am an extrovert x10 and can work a room at a party. I attracted women but I had ZERO clue what to do. I would be clingy because I was excited to get to know them and be with these women but that wouldn’t work well. Nobody told me that I needed to chill. Like I said, clueless. I only had 2 what I’d call “real relationships.” The longest was 6 months. With my lack of relationship skills, being a nice guy, a people pleaser, chivalrous, the “dependable guy,” funny and worst of all, not very confident in myself, I was ripe for the pickings. It was the perfect bait for a PD. The perfect storm. She found me within DAYS of breaking up with her on-again-off-again bf. She swooped in and she was everything I was looking for. Beautiful, smart, driven and she loved ME! LOVED ME! That’s what I was longing for since I was pre-pubescent…lol. Stick a fork in me, I was done. I even said that after 2 weeks. 20 years later I am divorcing her and happy with my decision to get on with my life without her. Is it May 1st yet? (she moves out then!).
I am excited and scared “bleepless” to start dating again but I know what a good relationship isn’t. I know what my issues are and why it happened from my perspective. What I am scared about is NOT seeing the red flags like I didn’t with STBX. My plan is to go S L O W, and date a lot. Learn. Learn what I like vs what I THINK I like. I am reading “Codependent no more” and “Boundaries.” Its the best plan I can think of moving forward. Any other ideas so I don’t create the perfect storm again?!
Good luck. The dating sites, if you haven’t dipper your feet in them yet, are minefields of disappointment, rejection and mindgames. Don’t over-extend yourself, keep your self-respect and don’t settle for the first thing that comes along.
As for regaining confidence and skills, I definitely recommend you spend several days over at http://roissy.wordpress.com/ (aka Citizen Renegade) to give you a crash course in game and being a man. It will be worth your time.
Roissy has pretty much single-handedly removed the wool from thousands of our eyes, depedestalizing women and remasculinizing ourselves.
LK,
Thanks for the direction. This isn’t directed at you LK. But I just read the “16 commandments of poon.” Is this guy serious? Geez what a bunch of crap. I understand the “idea” of depedistalizing women but to operate in the manner this guy suggests is a recipe for lonliness if I’ve ever seen one. I did have “game” in my early 20’s in the way that I was “perceived” to be a player but I wasn’t. That outward perception did attract women but it also was the reason my STBX was attracted to me. Careful what you wish for…
I will honestly take what may be valuable to me from the site but it looks like it’s anti-feminism on steriods and it’s not how I choose to operate as a man. If being “masculine” is being like this guy depicts in this article I’d rather be gay.
jaydee, I’ve written elsewhere here about my growing-up circumstances, which were similar to yours in that I had no contact with girls my own age when I was a teenager. And because of that, there were a whole lot of social skills that I didn’t learn. I must confess that to this day, teenage/young adult women are a complete mystery to me; I don’t understand them in the slightest.
And yeah, I basically married the first woman who threw herself at me. The idea that someone actually found me desirable, and was willing to express it, so floored me that I just went with the flow. A couple of years from now, I think you will find (as I did) that there were in fact some red flags that you perceived at the time, but you blocked them out of your conscious mind.
Yes, go slow. Get to know some women in social but non-romantic situations. Spend some time “people watching” and pay attention to how the women (and men too) interact with others. You will start seeing patterns and categories. You have a head start in that you are extroverted (I’m not) and you have experience interacting with people in public situations. Next party you go to, try to spend a little less time being the “life of the party” and a little more time watching and listening and interacting. You’ll notice things you didn’t notice before. And it will help a lot.
For a while after my divorce, I went to a divorce class. (It was offered by a local church, but there was no overt religious content; it was more of a group therapy session.) It was interesting because I was one of the few males; the facilitators and most of the participants were women. Most were middle-aged. Some of them had been dumped by their husbands for trophy wives; others had dumped their husbands and families in pursuit of Romance-with-a-capital-R, which of course they failed to find. All had regrets and were up-front about their own failings and mistakes. It helped me a lot to de-pedestalize women and start seeing them as human beings.
I like your advice of doing a little more watching rather than interacting. As a mature person I find it less and less important to me to be the life of the party but your comments resonated. Thank you. Solid advice CD.
What a VERY important post by Dr. T, and what a very fascinating comment thread….I’m not even sure which thread I’m replying to but anyway. Excellent points CD, links by Tom & Mel, and Ron(-that one should NEVER change one’s core’s niceness – I agree -that’s like changing yourself due to some psycho – and that’s giving too much power to an ex- vampire.) Instead stay good, but become super-strong and super-wise.
Sites teaching ‘game’ to men (which if taken lightly, is a hilarious read) are akin to those books teaching ‘the rules’ or ‘why men marry bitches’ to women (which are also hilarious. And dangerous.)But I think in each case, instead of the man/woman developing a strong authentic sense of Self and REAL confidence, they teach a false front. This front – definitely at a primal,carnal, psychological level works for both genders – and I can see how ‘nice guys’ and ‘nice girls’ can benefit a wee bit if they were formerly clueless doormats, but ultimately they end up attracting the wrong kind of people and hurting the good ones. (They work if one is only looking to get laid, but backfire horribly if one is looking for a long-term healthy relation.) It’s like teaching the good to turn into manipulators and have a sense of revenge in it.
Besides early relationship-mapping, the reason nice girls attract Ns and Bs is partly because of the ‘irrational confidence’ and ‘lost-puppy’ that N and B men emit. Similarly, the reason nice guys attract predators is because of the ‘irrational seductiveness’ and ‘rescue-me-waif’ air that N and B women emit. But these are their masks and hooks. The venus fly trap if the predator’s a woman (or the pitcher-plant, if it’s a predator male.)
As a woman, I must confess though that healthy confidence and masculinity in a man IS very attractive, but I’ve learned now to decipher between the predatorial ‘irrational macho confidence’ of a Narcissist man from the authentic, self-assured, laid-back, intrinsic, okay-being-himself masculine Confidence of a good-hearted and healthy man.
In the ‘fascination’ phase of early courtship though, what is a common attractor is ‘the uncertainty principle’. It seems it REALLY is part of our brain chemistry. The best and most scientifically well-researched reason I found why we are curious about certain types,I read here on a neuroscience blog: (the writer also touches on why ‘the thrill of the chase’ draws men/women so much.) A good read:
http://neuropoly.com/2011/03/18/the-uncertainty-principle/
Ron, I agree with you 100%. I was raised in a low-conflict family where my parents genuinely loved and respected each other. Protecting yourself against abuse just wasn’t necessary, as there wasn’t any. I think the Cluster B predators can smell that, and zero in on people like us.
Like you, I don’t want to change. I want a relationship with mutual love, trust and respect. I like myself the way I am, and want to meet someone who also likes the way she is. But like Dr. T says, we have to look out for the predators that know that we are easy targets.
Mellaril-
Thank-you for the Shari Schreiber link above. I desperately want to STOP attracting & perpetuating these subconscious self-sabotaging toxic behaviors & heal my life. It will take me months to work through all of this material & perhaps the rest of my life to consciously heal, but the shrink4men site & now this link you have provided is evidence enough that I have to apply what belongs to me & change.
I feel ‘blown away’ by what I have read & not always capable of facing the truth of my story, but for the first time in my life, I feel like these two sites contain the insights & guidance I need to actually understand the ‘source material’ I have never been able to reach until now.
TGI and Lovekraft: You’re expressing a frustration that I ran into during my own recovery process. I’ve written over at Amy Alkon’s that, for a while after my divorce from my BPD ex, I was the King of Being Stood Up. I can’t tell you how many times a woman would agree to a date with me, not show up, and then call the next day to apologize, only to do it again.
What I realized after a while was that I had locked myself into a social environment where most of the women I met were Cluster B’s, and that I had to do something drastically different to break out of that pattern. What I did was join an expensive dating service, something I would never have thought to do previously. The main thing that that did for me, besides providing some structure to the introductions, was that it exposed me to a variety of women that I would not have met otherwise. One of the women I met through that is now my wife of 18 years.
I don’t know where either of you live. One that that I have observed in my travels is that there are certain areas of the U.S. that are very attractive to Cluster B’s, NPDs in particular. Los Angeles, south Florida, and to a somewhat lesser extent New York are three such areas where there seems to be a high concentration of Cluster B’s among the single population. If you live in one of these areas, you might have to consider relocating in order to get yourself away from that environment.
Thanks for the encouragement. I have only been immersed in the Mens Rights Movement for about a year now, and the relationship side (vis a vis A Shrink 4 Men) has provided me with much insight into the overall dynamic of modern relationships.
Seems there are a lot of men waking up from thirty odd years of baby boomer ‘play nice’ which has unfortunately left our society in shambles.
Wherever my inquiry leads me, I definitely have Dr T to thank for her excellent articles.
This has to be one of your best ones yet and really hits close to home.
I remember when I started dating my wife, there are three things I still remember:
(1) It was the way my wife didn’t make me feel compared to my exgf that told me she was different. One of my friends, now an LCSW, once said, “(wife) is nothing like (exgf).” She also once said, “I never thought that (exgf) relationship was good for you.”
(2) How scary it was to be in a healthy relationship. I was 31 at the time and I was in totally unfamiliar territory. I knew perfectly well how to end a bad relationship, I had no clue how to maintain a good one or what it was supposed to feel like.
(3) The realization that if the new relationship failed, I’d have nobody to blame it on but myself.
Keep up the great work!
Another excellent article, Dr. T!
To other readers, I counseled with Dr. T. on this very topic. It was money well spent, and now the good Dr. is sharing this valuable info on the web.
Keep up the great work. The service you provide is invaluable. You are truly a life/sanity saver!
Thanks, guys. This just scratches the surface. In my work with clients, we delve into these issues much more deeply. There’s only so much you can get down in a blog article.
Yes! Thanks Dr. T! After 18 years with a high-functioning BPD/NPD Cluster B, I have been NC for just over a year, divorced about 6 months and am in a relationship now which is healthy, however I am being very cautious. This article helped me to learn how not to be too cautious, and to understand why I previously allowed 1/3 of my life to be wasted trying to get the relationship back to what it was in the beginning, which was only the entrapment, seduction phase and nothing about it was real!
I appreciate your very informative articles!
Thank you again Dr Tara for hitting another grand slam home run.The timing for this article is perfect.This information is vital so I never get into an abusive relationship like this ever again!!I loved #1 so much,having been labeled a nice guy and always rationalizing the degrading way she has treated me.
I will also be returning to this article every day until it sinks in.What is the best way to review more details of what to look for?
Dr T….you are the best for sure.
Here’s one from “Calvin and Hobbes.” I cut it out of the paper and framed it. It’s hanging in my office. It’s dated 3 years after I broke up with my exgf.
http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1991/03/31/
I used to have this posted on my old office bulletin board. Genius.
Hope you don’t mind that I edited your comment to include the image, Mellaril.
That’s a REALLY good one, Mellaril! Here’s one from xkcd which was very popular amongst ‘nice guys’ – the classic case of ‘nice guys’ and ‘girls who date jerks.’ I find that the ‘nice’ in both genders end up getting turned on by the ‘dark, mysterious, crazies’ of the opposite sex (the ‘mystery’ that Dr. T hilariously solved in her ’22 things…’ post) till ‘nice’ learns to decipher their own code, and the codes of the ‘jerks & bitches.’ http://xkcd.com/513/
Funny stuff closure. It reminds me of a funny comment my beloved made once in jest
“You can’t make somebody love you, you can only stalk them till they give in” ..LOL
Calvin and Hobbes is one of my all time favorite cartoon strips, and this one is pure win.
^^^Calvin and Hobbes – LOVE IT^^^
Good article. I guess I am one of the lucky ones. After breaking it off with a crazy ex & the horrific things she did after the breakup it made me more aware of red flags. I dated a couple of others who showed some traits early on & didn’t continue seeing them. I was latter able to meet & eventually marry a wonderful woman who is now my beloved. I would however highly recommend this post to anybody coming out of such a relationship. I too am one of those “nice guys” that some take advantage of. It really is hard to meet quality people these days. But know that they are out there.
Great article, thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the terrific article, Dr. Tara. Having recently left a year-long relationship with a narcissist, this is very useful and timely information.
I’d like to throw in my two cents’ worth regarding spotting and avoiding abusive personality traits. My ex-girlfriend’s favorite TV shows were Jersey Shore and Sex and the City, and her favorite radio program was Harold Stern. Essentially, she liked to watch women abuse men and listen to someone very arrogant. I suppose it validated her own behavior.
Myself, I like Star Trek: The Next Generation and admire Captain Picard, and admire the values that the show tries to get across. And also CSI:Miami, the constant search for the truth and the compassion displayed by Horatio and Alexx.
Guys, if you come across someone who’s hooked on such trashy TV shows, that says a lot about their personality. No matter how attractive she is, tell her it was nice meeting her and never call her again. I only wish that I had done the same.
On the topic of Harold Stern, she would BLAST the program every morning on the downstairs stereo so that she could hear it in the upstairs bathroom. I’ll never forget the day that a business colleague called and I turned down the stereo to take the call. Well, I got a stern lecture about how disrespectful I had been to her, and to NEVER do that again. Fortunately, by that time I had learned to detach and not to argue with her when she was being clearly insane.
I think that Step 5 (set the boundary and make it fast and firm) is perhaps the most valuable suggestion. There’s just no excuse whatsoever for violating personal and/or cultural boundaries. It’s simply abuse, and if you let her get away with it just once, it opens the floodgates and assures a life of complete misery.
Thank you once again for an insightful and useful article.
Hi there Free at Last…My “abusive friend” does the same thing to me as what happened to you with Howard Stern.It is with TV that the tirade happens.
If I flick to another station during commercials to check a hockey game score,she takes a tantrum.She will scream and yell and blame me for ruining the evening.
While she is putting on this performance,the last bit of the show is playing out nicely.I got the same line about not respecting what she was doing.
By the way,mentioning Howard Stern on Dr Tara`s site is truly interesting.He gets slammed for being abusive to women.How come there is no shortage of women lining up for free breast implants or standing up there and doing anything he says?Robin Quivers did an excellent job of guest hosting Joy Behar the other night.
Dr Tara….there is another article for you someday.
Hello JPJ… I don’t pay much attention to Howard Stern — at that volume level I’ve learned to “tune him out” to avoid going nuts (you can only take 100 watts of “penis, vagina, penis, vagina” for so long). But I have noticed that he preys on really messed up women with poor self-images, often single and flat broke. These pathetic creatures actually *volunteer* to be humiliated on the air with millions of people listening — that’s how badly they want the boob job they can’t afford.
Is Howard Stern abusive to women? In this case, I’d say “no.” One ten-minute round of humiliation for a $7,000 boob job sounds like a good deal to me. Especially compared with the *real* abuse that many of us go through… it’s endless, wears us down, and we get nothing in return.
The one thing I have had to learn was “There’s a difference between being nice and being a doormat.”
A gal at work was commenting to me that I let people get away with making too many requests / demands, without asserting myself strongly enough…I am working on it. I felt like saying, “If you think I’m a doormat now, you should have seen me 5 years ago.”
Always apologizing to everybody for everything, taking responsibility for mistakes or just perceived slights that had nothing to do with me, and saying, “That’s okay,” when it really wasn’t, then later feeling overwhelmed / taken advantage of.
“So many times it happens, that we live our lives in chains
and we never even know we have the key” ~Eagles
TGI,
That hits home big time, as it’s been a longstanding problem for me as well. To go into all the reasons would take an extraordinarily long time. Suffice it to say that assertiveness, setting boundaries, and saying “no” when I really should, are all things sorely lacking in my life. When you talk about feeling overwhelmed and taken advantage of, I know where you’re coming from. Living that way makes you feel used up, tired, drained, resentful and good only for what other people can get out of you, not for who you are – and you feel stuck in a hopeless downward spiral because you don’t get a sense of worth but keep pouring yourself out anyway in the baseless belief that someday, somehow, it will finally work.
That’s a little more depressing-sounding than I’d originally intended. My point is that you certainly aren’t alone, which I’m sure you know already. The self-interested part is it helps me to know I’m not alone in struggling with those things.
I would love to read how you would approach advising a non-confrontational male with a history of allowing women to gain the upper hand. And why he was attracted to women who would seek to gain it (in charge, “my way” types who neglect others). And how that male might forgive himself for permitting it to happen.
Right now, that person is safely involved in golf. But there is a chance for him to play some golf this summer with someone who “seems to be” very nice but lacking the “glitter” of some others. You say good experiences are part of the healing process. How would that person deal with the topic of the past if it came up, if that person did not wish to admit to it – to admitting to being yelled at with threats of being put out of the car into the ditch and other nasty stuff that he did not deserve? I hope some of it comes up in part II.
Wayne, if you have a history of of allowing women to get the upper hand I think you really need to “1. Identify and understand what attracts you to abusive women and what makes you an easy target.” You say you’re non-confrontational, but do you allow women to walk all over you? Being non-confrontational can be a very good thing in a relationship; you can bring up delicate topics in a kind, gentle and non-threatening fashion (with a “normal” woman who doesn’t explode when criticized).
But if you actively *avoid* confrontation, that’s a different story. If women violate your boundaries and you don’t enforce them immediately, they quickly learn that they can get away with it.
Myself, I was fortunate to be raised in a healthy very-low-conflict family by a strong-willed mother and a kind and gentle father who loved and respected each other for over 50 years (not until death did they part). So my style of conflict resolution is gentle and calm, I’m attracted to women of strong character like my mother, and I’m very clear about my boundaries, particularly where they involve fair and equitable treatment and mutual respect.
Yet I still managed to fall into the clutches of an attractive and intelligent suspected-NPD nutcase who succeeded in making my life totally miserable. At first, we were very happy together — in fact, I would describe the early stages of our relationship as nearly perfect — until I moved in with her. This remarkably devious woman knew full well that she wouldn’t be able to just trample me, so her strategy was to slowly, almost imperceptibly squeeze my boundaries, like tightening a vise. As each month passed by, there were more rules and regulations, more work to do around the house, more chastizing about things not done or how they were done, more disrespect, more, more. It’s the slow and constant “squeeze” that got me into hell.
I’ll freely admit that I ignored some important warning signs early in the relationship:
(1) When discussing expense-sharing prior to moving in, I was quite surprised. She wouldn’t tell me how much her monthly expenses were, nor would she show me a mortgage statement or any utility bills. She just wanted to see how much I was willing to pay. In retrospect, this was a major control move on her part, and indicates a lack of trust and respect. And as I found out later on, she had *huge* issues with trust and was highly controlling.
(2) Before becoming self-employed, she had worked at a large number of jobs (at least a dozen in as many years). In retrospect, I’m sure that’s because she can’t have a decent working relationship with a boss, and that’s a big control-freak red flag.
(3) Her relationship with her family and (all two of) her friends were, well, just too weird to concisely describe here. We can’t choose our family, but we *can* choose our friends. So I don’t judge anyone harshly just because their family is dysfunctional, but her choice (and lack) of real friends was indeed an important indicator that I ignored.
I clearly remember these three things giving me an uncomfortable funny feeling that something wasn’t quite right with this picture, but I ignored my intuition. I was too smitten with my amazing, almost-perfect sweetheart. Big mistake.
A couple of relevant things that I also learned along the way are [a] lots of shallow acquaintances and a big Facebook profile are not the same as a few longtime, trusted friends, and [b] you might think that being non-judgmental is a good and noble thing, but in this day and age, when it comes to choosing a partner, you’d better be *highly* judgmental (Dr T wrote that elsewhere). Anything else is sheer ignorance.
In my opinion, this Crazy-Proof article is one of the most useful on this site for people have had a relationship with a nutcase and managed to get out of it. Especially if you really apply yourself and do all ten things honestly and thoroughly.
I consider myself quite fortunate to have extricated myself in only 3 or 4 months after my ex-GF really began to show her true colors and make my life miserable, and this site has been instrumental in helping me regain my sanity. If only I had discovered it six months ago.
Wayne, you asked how to deal with the topic of the past if it came up. Well, since discovering this site only a few days ago, I can tell you that my approach has changed considerably. Any failed relationship is always difficult to talk about, especially when you’re full of shame for allowing yourself to be abused and disrespected and generally humiliated. But all the enormously helpful information in Dr. T’s website has helped me to understand myself better, recognize unhealthy women, how I got into my mess and how to never get into it again. I no longer feel ashamed to talk about what happened, I know I’m not the only one who’s been roped in by a nutcase, and I’m proud to have developed some tools to protect myself in the future.
I’m certainly not “fully healed” yet (we’ll see the next time I encounter a nutcase), but I no longer feel miserable and ashamed of myself. I hope you get to that point also.
A big thank-you to Dr T and *everyone* that has shared their experiences here over the last couple of years. The amount and quality of wisdom and collective experience here is truly astounding and has been very, very helpful to me.
Hi Free at Last,
The abusive behaviors coming out over time reminds me of the expression “slowly boiling a frog in water.” The environment changes so slowly that the frog doesn’t realize until it’s too late that he’s being boiled alive.
Thanks, Dr. T… a very fitting analogy. The dangerous thing about this is that it actually WORKS! I have a very, very low tolerance for disrespect, and I still have trouble believing how much she eventually managed to get away with!
I’ve found a fourth red flag that I overlooked…
Until now, I had no idea that this was a red flag, but I distinctly remember that my ex got very uncomfortable and always avoided answering when I asked about values and beliefs and what kind of things made her feel happy and peaceful. I found that very weird and got that same “what’s wrong here?” feeling in my gut.
I think I really need to follow my intuition more often.
BTW, if you follow the link above and keep reading, one of the commenters (Christine) accurately describes the initial “love-bombing” followed by the “dance of destruction” (slowly boiling the frog) that happened to me.
Even the epilogue Christine describes rings true… once my ex sensed that I was preparing to leave, she sent me a scathing email while I was away on a trip, recounting all my evil past behaviour, selfish desires and sexual dysfunction (which I now know was mostly projection) and announced that she wanted me out of her house as soon as possible. Instead of crawling back to her and asking forgiveness (which is what I think she expected), when I returned I calmly told her that she should read back the email to herself, because that’s exactly how I felt about her, and couldn’t have worded it better myself.
What ensued still surprises me. Instead of a fit of rage and another attack on me, her face went stunned and then blank. Kind of like the Blue Screen of Death on your PC, but she couldn’t figure out how to reboot her brain.
[footnote: in retrospect, I think what I inadvertently did was to mirror her projections back to herself, and she just couldn’t handle that.]
She was still silent, so I began to pack my belongings into the car. She was still pretty quiet and subdued two hours later when I said goodbye and drove away.
Upon reading back, it’s occurred to me that perhaps the above post was a little too positive. Just to balance it out, you should know that I’ve lost a LOT of weight in the last few months of the relationship and its aftermath (I’m now actually underweight for my height and body style). My stomach has been in knots for a long, long time, and I didn’t have much of an appetite — but it’s slowly returning. And I think I’m suffering from chronic exhaustion due to all the crap my ex piled upon me. Giving my love and trust to someone and being abused in return has definitely left scars, and I still have some more healing to do. I spent the entire weekend a few days ago obsessively digesting EVERYTHING on this site, and I’m very grateful to Dr. T and all the contributors. Please donate to help keep it alive and free from further cyber-bullying.
Speaking as a tweenty-year ‘boiled frog’ who only escaped the pot due to the ex divorcing me for her newest boyfriend, all of you are right on the money. My ‘little voice’ (intuition) tried to tell me for years that my ex was not only emotionally abusing and distancing me, but that she was taking her emotions and intimacy elsewhere; boy was the voice ever right, and boy was I ever in denial. Thanks to some people who cared enough to clue me in after the divorce went final, I now understand what was going on. The warning flags were there all along; I even walked in on the end of a mid-day tryst between my ex and a co-worker and was so gaslighted by the ex that I never realized what I had really seen, and bought her seriously wacky cover story and “distractive anger” towards me hook, line, and sinker. I believe that many of us non’s stay in these relationships so long due to the amazing love bombing at the start, hoping and praying for more of that seriously addictive idealization that takes place; I know I did, but hopefully never again!
Hey Mr. Clueless… sounds like you’ve developed a LOT of clues! Kudos to you. And you raise a really good point… one of the most important reasons for idiots like us staying in such a shitty relationship is the treasured memory of the “love-bombing” from ages ago. Now that I’ve been there and done that, I can assure you that if the next woman in my life doesn’t treat me like she did when we first met, I’ll be out of there in a matter of nanoseconds.
Hi Free,
I grinned ear to ear at the idea of being “out of there” that quickly. The only thing I can imagine as better than that is to have good enough “crazy radar” to detect and avoid the cluster B’s before getting sucked into a relationship in the first place. I definitely felt like an idiot after discovering just how badly I’d been lied to, screwed around on, and hosed financially, emotionally and verbally. I have to admit that I’ve tried to begin to lighten up on myself a bit and accept that my denial wasn’t a sign of idiocy, but of following bad habits ingrained into my subconscious a long time ago. I’m discovering that “unlearning” those bad habits is an absolute booger. Now if I could only make the “crazy radar” work, then I’d be a very happy guy, and not nearly so clueless. I also have to admit to looking at relationships in a totally different light than I did before; now I have to take the next step and ensure that my next relationship is healthy and reciprocal. I have noticed that when confronted with a female that’s using that old familiar dominating attitude towards me, I’m gone so fast that the sound dopplers past the bystanders. The folks on this site have taught me a priceless lesson: Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries!
I just came across a book titled, “Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay.” It’s written by a woman, so is slanted towards female readers, but I like it (so far) because it mentions things like disrespect, selfishness, etc. but doesn’t ever use the word abuse. The reason I like it is because while we’re in the situation (and maybe more so for men??), it’s really difficult to admit to being abused, especially of the emotional kind. Everybody knows that if someone slams their fist into your face, that is abuse. But it’s far more difficult to distinguish when a noise, a look, a grunt, or a sneer, or comment, for example go from kidding around to being abusive.
I only learned of emotional abuse after researching it on the internet…for a female friend…who spoke of a very controlling male friend of hers…and it took me a few times of reading, before I could admit that was happening in my situation. We become so used to defending their behaviors, and dismissing them as ‘no big deal’. This is with an undergrad degere in sociology and a minor in psych.
******
BTW: Wow, you guys are right (not that I doubted you)…when I was looking for books, I typed in “Women who abuse men” in the search bar. The first two titles that showed up: “Men Who Abuse” and “Men who hate Women and the Women who love them” – wow!!
I ‘looked inside’ a few…the advice for women all seems to be “Dump the jerk! You deserve better, girlfriend!” but the ones for men? “Suck it up and be a man! Be more Christian-y and she’ll come around…work on it, wuss.”
Yikes….Dr. Tara – any book deals in your future?
I just came across this article because I am one of those attracted to Crazy women. My tastes tend to run towards the more subtly crazy vs. the outright certifiable ones. But I definitely seem like a moth to the flame of the Borderline/Narcissistic/Histrionic, dysfunctional drama queens who consciously refuse to emotionally, meanwhile using their poor me, “victim” tactics to manipulate and passive-aggressively torture those of us who are dysfunctional enough in our own right (and everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, has their U-Haul of dysfunction). Trouble is, I really am that aware of it all and yet, make the bad choices, just the same. It’s almost like sticking your hamd through a candle flame very quickly and trying to avoid being burnt. Do it enough times, and you know how that goes.
And I am a woman who dates these kind of women, so there you go. What most resonated with me in this article was, “Do you think love is supposed to hurt?” The initial response is no, but the occasional angst-ridden feeling that goes with dating Crazy has that pleasure/pain aspect…kind of like, emotional masochism, so I guess that’s a soft yes. It’s emotional “cutting,” in a wy.
I worry I will continue with these conscious choices, because otherwise I get bored with the normal. And I’ve tried it, long-term, and it led to boredom. Now THAT is the real crazy! How does one crazy-proof oneself against ourselves? Sometimes, I think we just fdn’t want to…even if it hurts us. It’s its own kind of addiction, I believe. Drama addiction.