How to Crazy-Proof Yourself After Breaking Up with or Divorcing an Abusive Girlfriend or Wife, Part 1
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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68 Responses to “How to Crazy-Proof Yourself After Breaking Up with or Divorcing an Abusive Girlfriend or Wife, Part 1”
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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^^^