Nothing cranks a woman up
more than going through the drama-filled ending of a dysfunctional,
pathological, abusive, addicted and/or sick relationship, ONLY to find that he has
rapidly moved on and now seems ‘so happy.’ A women will tend to conclude it
must have been her, and if he can be
happy with someone else and not her, well then... it was some shortcoming in
her and she needs to study up to figure out just what ‘went wrong.’
Ladies, ladies ladies...by now you have been
reading enough of these newsletters to be able to chant the ABCs of Pathology I
have been teaching you—
Pathology is the inability to:
·
consistently
sustain positive change
·
grow to
any emotional/spiritual depth
·
develop
meaningful insight about how his behavior negatively affects others
When it comes to a
pathological, THE BEST PREDICTOR OF FUTURE BEHAVIOR IS PAST BEHAVIOR.
So, what you have to ask
yourself is: How were his previous relationships? I don’t mean what he TOLD you
they were (all her fault, she was a psycho, sleaze, or whacked), but what really happened in them.
If you developed a
relationship timeline and wrote out all his relationships from his teen years
forward AND the quality of them and why they ended, what would you conclude?
How successful IS this man in maintaining healthy relationships? Yep… that’s
what I thought.
How was his relationship with
you? No, I’m not talking about the honeymoon cycle when you were living off of
endorphins. I’m talking about the guts of the thing... the meat and bones of
it.
So, he has a history of his
own ‘Trail of Tears’—a path littered with wounded women and children? Your
relationship has left you as one more statistic of his pathological heartbreaks.
Now, there’s HER—appearing
all happy, snuggly and ‘in love’! You see her as getting all the good parts of
him you always loved and none of the bad parts! After all, the reason you left
him was all that bad stuff!
Doesn’t it make you want to
call her up, text her, email her, message her on social media, and tell her
what’s just around the corner in the relationship?
Doesn’t it make you want to
curl up in a fetal position and cry that he has “found happiness in the arms of
another?”
Doesn’t it make you sick in
the pit of your stomach or consume you with intrusive and obsessive thoughts
about how wonderfully ‘in love’ he is? STOP THE DRAMA!
Repeat after me... “Pathology
is the inability to sustain positive change” … “the best predictor of HIS future
behavior is his past behavior”—so just what does that mean?
There are honeymoon phases of
every relationship. Lovers live on the high of the ‘falling in love stage.’ We already
know that pathologicals don’t ‘technically’ fall in love, but they do hang
around and experience some level of attachment. But YOU experienced the whole
endorphin falling in love sensation. Well, now SHE is.
How long did yours last? A
few weeks, months or maybe a year or two of okayness? What happened next? Oh
yeah, you found out his lies or noticed his inconsistencies, or asked him to work,
or caught him cheating... once you confronted him, you got the narcissistic
rage, then maybe the aloofness, or maybe he even packed up and left.
Guess what’s gonna happen
AGAIN? There will be the honeymoon for her, then she will notice his lies,
inconsistencies, ask him to work or catch him cheating, then she’ll eventually
confront him (or live forever with the miserableness of knowing what he’s doing
and not have the nerve to confront him) and then he’ll rage, punish her, reject
her, ignore her or leave.
Et VOILÀ— she is now on his
“Stepford Wives List of Rejects.” She’s one more tear on his ‘Trail of
Tears.’ You haven’t seen behind their
closed doors to know what SHE’s dealing with... he hasn’t changed—he’s hardwired, so she’s going to be dealing with
the same things you did. It’s just a matter of WHEN.
If I were a gambling girl, I’d
put my money every stinking time on the consistency of pathology and his
inability to ever change in ANY relationship—the previous one, yours, or future
ones. She’s not getting the best of ANYTHING. She’s you. And in a short time,
she’ll be another statistic. Pathology doesn’t change and this relationship is also
wired for destruction.
There are NO happy endings in
relationships with pathologicals. There are no pumpkin-drawn carriages, no
sweet little house with three children... scratch that record! Stop attributing
normal characteristics to a profoundly abnormal person.
Women spend all their
precious emotional energy on obsessing about the quality of his relationship
with the next victim instead of working on themselves—using that energy for
their own healing. They live in a fantasy world where they are deprived of this
wonderful relationship and he is off living the life of a normal person. This
fantasy does not end with, “And they lived happily ever after.”
(**If we can support you in your recovery process, please let us
know. The Institute is the largest provider of recovery-based
services for survivors of pathological love relationships. Information
about pathological love relationships is in our award-winning book, Women Who Love Psychopaths, and is also
available in our retreats, 1:1s, or phone sessions. See the website for
more information.)
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