If you use a computer you are probably aware of the ‘default settings’ that come on your computer or in various software programs on your machine. A default setting is “The controls of a computer hardware, software, device, equipment or machine which was preset by its manufacturer.”
Items on your computer that are preset are often the country you are in, the time zone, etc. There are also types of ‘presets’ you can choose yourself such as what company ISP is your home page, which printer you assign to your computer, and so on. These selections become ‘default’ settings once you have selected them. Your machine is now set to automatically defer to those choices every time the machine needs to.
But our computers are not the only things that are set on default. Just like computer ‘hardware’ or ‘software’ can come ‘preset’ by its manufacturer, so can our own internal computer—our body and psyche. Our hardware is our genetics that come hardwired into the development of our brain (and body, for that matter). This can include propensities and proclivities to certain traits such as high or low serotonin in our brains, high or low empathy, and other genetic DNA that ‘presets’ our internalized computer.
Just as we have seen the impact of the pathologicals own hardwired symptoms, we too come hardwired with our defaults that want to ‘lean’ us to these preset settings. Our default settings could be set to attraction to stocky dark haired men, or blonde and blue eyed, or black men or maybe your physical default is not all that particular about the physicality of your partners. Maybe your default is set to other parameters such as humor, charisma, or spirituality.
While we don’t ask why we have blue eyes or why we are attracted to tall dark and handsome, we often ask ‘why’ we have too much empathy or too much relationship investment, not understanding that these settings come hardwired within us when we are born. A fact not often understood is that some emotional traits are as hardwired as other genetic DNA.
Our software is the programs that have been added into and onto our machine that tell the machine what to do. These software programs also impact our default settings but in a different way. Software are the messages you learned growing up as a child. These messages about relationships, men and women’s roles in relationships, what power you do or do not have, the impact of choices, violence in the home, addictions in parents are all data and information that is stored on your computer in the software ‘programs’ that run your computer. From your software, the machine (your body, your external life) is run from the programs of that software. So messages about how ‘all relationships are’ or about what you ‘can and cannot succeed in’, tell your machine what choices to make from the software you have.
Software programs other than childhood messages can also come from religious impact, education, and your own experience within relationships—each compounding the existing software message or conflicting with existing software messages. These messages are also loaded onto your software as programs that affect choices which impact your life.
Hardware (hardwiring) preset defaults such as hyper empathy combined with software loaded defaults such as super trust or high tolerance messages (‘don’t get divorced no matter what’) combine in unique yet entrapping ways that cause some people to be more ‘at risk’ of Pathological Love Relationships than others.
We have had heard the arguments of ‘nature versus nurture’ especially regarding pathology. We know some of the Cluster Bs are born that way, some are made that way from their social environments and some are both—born that way and then bent that way further. The same is true for you, the Super-Traited partner of Cluster Bs.
You come into the world with a proclivity towards certain hardwired traits within your temperament that are so strong as to make your ‘bent’ towards attraction to, and tolerance of, pathology extremely high. Into your world with your ‘bent’ you are exposed to lifelong messages that either encourage your bent or try to bend you away from your existing proclivities.
Families with healthy boundaries and healthy relationships model the exact programming that sets a child’s default on a different setting for partner selection. But families who themselves have selected pathological partners, who have the same hardwiring propensity for tolerating pathology, flip the child’s software default switch to tolerance, minimizing, renaming, and accepting pathological behavior. This is largely done through role modeling these behaviors or what we call learned conditioning.
A genetic hard-wired proclivity with a software default program that supports pathological partner selection starts the process of the continued pattern of having pathological partners well into adulthood.
In computers, default settings serve the purpose of ‘minimal user interaction required’ which puts the setting defaults to the most commonly selected options. This is exactly what it does for you as well. “Why do I keep picking these kinds of guys over and over again?” Your default was set early in life and has not been changed. When left to your own programming, your default will automatically select the most pathological partner. Your hard-wiring is already ‘bent’ in that direction and is supported by your software programs to do so. It is so automatic, so autonomic, that just like a computer, ‘minimal user interaction is required.’
By the time women contact The Institute, they are so exhausted by the lifetime of the pathological energy-sucking relationships that they are ready to do what it takes to stop this. Simply stating “I am NEVER going to do this again. I am going to pick differently in the future” doesn’t register with your software program. It’s still set on the default pattern of selection it has been set on for years. If you could look at the software settings internally it would look like this:
- Narcissistic
- Cheater
- Pathological Lying
- Charming and deceitful
- Helps me ignore my red flags
- Induces fantasy thinking of how my future MIGHT be
- Honeymoon cycle followed by D&D (Devalue & Discard)
- Intense, intensely pursued
- Hypnotic, I can’t think or choose differently while with them
These might be some of the traits you are repeatedly selecting through your software default program.
In software programs, it’s noted that ‘Using defaults will tend to increase errors, as users may leave incorrect default settings selected.’ Hmmmmm… yeah. Can we agree that’s true?
The difficulty in Pathological Love Relationship recovery is that women read a book or go to a counselor and talk about the pain of the relationship but never get down to the reprogramming of the software. Hardware comes as it is and will always be there and you will always be ‘bent’ in a direction or proclivity for these relationships. BUT you can put in different software programming that will let you pick from a NEW SET of default choices and not automatically ‘defaulting back’ to what you have always chosen. You have to choose differently in order to get a different outcome.
Controls of a computer hardware or software (or of a device, equipment, or machine) are preset by its manufacturer. Some types of default settings may be altered or customized by the user.
(**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, on-on-ones, or phone sessions. See the website for more information).
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