Nothing cranks a woman up more than going through a drama-filled ending of her dysfunctional, pathological, abusive, addicted and/or sick relationship ONLY to find he rapidly moved on and now seems ‘so happy.’ Women 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 ABC’s of Pathology I have been teaching you—pathology is:
The inability to:
– consistently sustain positive change
– grow to any emotional/spiritual depth
and
– develop meaningful insight about how his behavior negatively effects others
THE BEST PREDICTOR OF FUTURE BEHAVIOR IS PAST BEHAVIOR when it comes to a pathological.
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 Time Line 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? Yup…that’s what I thought.
How was his relationship with you? No, I’m not talking about the honeymoon cycle when both of you are 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 the lives of wounded women and children? Your relationship has left you as one more statistic of his pathological heart breaks.
Now, there’s ‘HER’ — appearing all happy, snuggley 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 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, so is SHE.
How long did yours last? A few weeks, months or maybe a year or two of ok-ness? What happened next? Oh yeah, you found out his lies or noticed his inconsistency, or asked him to work, or caught him cheating….once you confronted him then 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, inconsistency, 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 having the ovaries to confront him) and then he’ll rage, punish her, reject her, ignore her or leave.
~OUILA~ 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 thing 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 the future ones. She’s not getting the best of ANYTHING. She’s you. And in a short time, she’ll be another statistic. If pathology doesn’t change, this relationship is 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.”
Your positive fantasy thoughts of him being happy with someone are the memories that are
pulling all of your focus while you totally forget how this horror flick is going to end. If you need a reminder, read all of our archived Sandra Says columns.
Take a deep breath and come back…she hasn’t got anything you haven’t already gotten from him–MISERY. If she doesn’t have it right now, she will have it shortly. Once you really ‘get it’ about the permanence of pathology you’ll understand that his ability to be different in the relationship doesn’t exist. If he was capable, he would have done the changing with you. But he didn’t–and he won’t. Whatever exists right now is that short honeymoon cycle until she realizes what he is and ISN’T–and what he can NEVER be. Don’t bother picking up the phone and telling her what he is and isn’t. Just worry about your own recovery….from this
moment on, it’s all about you!
(**Information on pathology and how to recover is in the award winning Women Who Love Psychopaths, also taught during retreats in the months of Feb and August, in 1:1 sessions during January, March, May and September or in phone sessions.)
