Never before in my 25 plus-year
career have I seen more relapsing back into Pathological Love Relationships
than I have lately.
“What’s wrong with me? Why do
I do this?” they ask. My answer is—I don’t know... why DO you do it?
“I didn’t know what I was
doing...” Yes you did. Contact is a choice.
“I just thought he changed
this time.” No, you didn’t—you know pathology is permanent.
“I was lonely.” Ok,
loneliness is not fatal—but these relationships often are. Your loneliness and
need does not change his permanent disorder.
Nothing has changed except
your thoughts about him and the relationship. That’s the only change. Since
pathology is marked by an inability to change and sustain positive change, your thoughts are the only change that
there is in the relationship. And maybe your desire or need.
Relapsing begins FIRST in the
mind long before it becomes a behavior-seeking missile that is fired off to
destroy yourself and your recovery. This is why being in a Pathological Love
Relationship support group is so important—whether it’s in a chat forum, an
in-person support group you attend, social media group, or an online teleconferencing
group. You need support that keeps your THINKING outside of the fantasy zone.
Without support, you are likely to sink right back into the old fantasy
hopefulness that keeps you glued to a go-nowhere and dangerous relationship.
Relapse thinking goes like
this:
You take all the material
you’ve learned from books or online back to the pathological and try to
convince him he is pathological and needs help.
You tell him what your
counselor has said about him, you, or the relationship—hoping the impact from a
professional will change his mind about his condition.
You say, “Now that I think I know what might be wrong with him, I’ll wait and watch for him to do these
behaviors.”
“Then I’ll have evidence for
why I’m leaving.”
When he, in fact does one of the behaviors, you either
point it out to him as proof you were right, or, you find reasons why the behavior
isn’t exactly what you read and
therefore, he may not be pathological after all.
You read the materials and
literature looking to find all the traits he doesn’t have. You reread the
literature on good days so you can cross off behaviors he isn’t doing today.
You find reasons to
disbelieve the literature about the disorder.
You avoid your counselor, the
Institute’s website, or anywhere there are others who know about the disorder.
You become ‘spiritually
hopeful’ so you can stay in the relationship because God is going to heal him.
You begin reading Positive
Psychology materials so you can hope he can change even though pathology is all
about the inability to change.
You call his girlfriends or
exes to get them to confirm or deny he’s pathological.
You hire a private
investigator to follow him, ask friends to report back on his social media
activity, break into his phone or computer, for ‘just a little more info’ on
why you should leave him (but then you don’t leave).
You feel sorry for him more
than you feel anger for your own pain.
You focus on the few good
times and stuff your own feelings about the deceitful behavior.
You encourage him to
carrot-dangle some future hope or potential to you, so you can say, “We’ll try
it ONE MORE time.”
You think you are confronting
him because you stand up to him, and so you are not being victimized by him if
you are voicing your thoughts.
You minimize his previous
deceitful, manipulative, dangerous, exploitative or lethal behavior by saying,
“I was probably over-exaggerating it.”
You label yourself, “just as
sick as he is” so you might as well stay with him. No one healthy would want
you.
You envy his lack of conscience
and remorse and see it as a ‘good life’ feature, and wish you were like that and
cared less about what happened to you. Everything seems to go his way when he
lacks conscience.
You hyper-focus on his
behavior and avoid taking care of yourself. The relationship/he becomes the
reason for your unhappiness, health, financial, and/or other problems.
You study to death all the
traits of every kind of disorder you think he might have and don’t leave
because you “want to totally understand it before you leave” and need just a
little bit more understanding or validation from others—his family, his
therapist, your therapist, your friends, etc.
You start softening, missing him,
minimizing his behavior, focusing on your own loneliness, panic about who or
what he is doing, make excuses to have contact with him. And ~VOILÀ~ you’re
back in.
The ‘emergency therapy session’
call that everyone wants to have is AFTER they have done one of these behaviors
and feel awful about relapsing. The emergency session needs to be WHILE you are
having these thoughts and BEFORE you act on them. Every time you go through one
of these cycles of relapses, it just numbs you more to why you should be out.
It makes it easier and easier to relapse. And easier for the thinking to start
back up in your head and be totally unrecognized by you.
Damage is done to YOU each time
you are in and out of the Pathological Love Relationship, damaging your sense
of reality even further—training yourself
how to hypnotize your belief system with one of the thinking phrases listed above.
You are also teaching the pathological how to get you back in the relationship.
They aren’t stupid! They are master behavior analysts that study what works
with you. Stop teaching them!
There is so much that the Pathological
Love Relationship has legitimately done and damaged in you. But there is so
much you DO TO YOURSELF in your relapsing. Relapse prevention requires work. It
doesn’t just ‘happen’ that you declare you are ‘done’ and you stay gone. If “it
takes a whole village to raise a child,” it takes a whole
community to help you get out and stay out until MUCH TIME down the road and
you are strong enough on your own. I said, MUCH TIME.
Day one of healing does not
happen until you are out, and have been out and have been emotionally
disconnected, for several months. I don’t consider people who say they are
recovering but are in and out and having constant relapse contact, to have even
day one under their belt. For those of you who are truly ready to start a new
life, we are here to help you. Unwedge yourself!
(**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.)
No comments:
Post a Comment