By Sandra L. Brown, MA
The holidays are stressful under the best of situations. Add to it a dangerous and pathological relationships and you can have a prescription for **guaranteed** unhappiness.
The pathological relationship never lies dormant during the holidays. It’s an opportunity to reconnect with you–of course “just to wish you a Merry Christmas.” He has a million hooks he will use to get you back in…and here’s a big one! Christmas!
A text message of Happy Holidays is not good cheer. It’s a hook. A Christmas card is not a mass card to everyone–it is a targeted approach for you. A gift left on your doorstep isn’t a thoughtful gift–it’s a manipulation because being the good-mannered girl you are, you’ll call and thank him and then he’ll have you on the phone….and it all goes downhill from there.
Then there’s the mistletoe, and the date for New Years Eve, and the gift he left for your child or your parents….The holidays are one BIG OP-POR-TUN-ITY for Mr. Opportunistic.
He’ll be testing your boundaries to see if your no contact rule applies during the holidays. If it DOESN’T apply and you respond to him or send him a text/card/call, you have just taught him where your loophole is. You have also said something very LOUD to him. You just screamed in his ear “I’m Lonely! Come snuggle with me.” And you know what he’s thinking, “You don’t have to ask TWICE!”
Ladies, Christmas is ONE day of the year that is laced with a lot of triggering memories. Maybe from childhood where you believe “miracles happen on Christmas” or “everyone should be together then” or the sights, smells, and memories of past Christmases with him are rehashing in your mind.
Don’t stay stuck in that ‘air brushed Christmas memory’ — how about you pull out your memory list from the other 363 days of the year and how he behaved then? Not just one night with the twinkle of Christmas tree lights and a ribbon on a gift…that doesn’t make a pathological man stable!
Get out of the fantasy. Christmas has a way of hypnotizing women into the fantasy of his positive behavior and his lack of pathology. Nothing changed because we hit Christmas season. It’s just a BIGGER opportunity for him to hook you.
If you’re still with the pathological person, they can be very sabotaging at this time of year wanting to strip every little piece of joy you can get from the season away. They get drunk, pick fights, say mean things to your family, yell at the kids, and don’t participate in the festivities.
Don’t react. Have a great Christmas while he wallows around in that puddle of pathology.
You know one of the things we found out in our research? You ladies tested unbelievably high in ‘sentimentality’. What are the holidays all about? SENTIMENT! If your sentiment is on caffeine, what do you think it will do? Be restrained or have a knee jerk reaction because all that sentiment is coursing thru your veins?
One slip up now could cost you a year of trying to get rid of him again. Call a support person and tell them you VOW to them not to have contact this season. Then make plans to fill up your time so it’s not even a possibility.
I have ‘lectured’ our readers about loneliness because this 4-inch stack on research sitting on my desk that you ladies completed tells me that you lapse and lapse and lapse again when you feel lonely. Holidays induce loneliness. Plan ahead and safeguard. “I was lonely” is not an excuse for starting something that will once again destroy your life!”
Instead, do something wonderful with your kids. Get outside, take a walk, go to a movie with friends, do some scrapbooking, get some of our books to read, go to a nursing home and visit someone! Sit in a chapel alone and count your blessings, walk your dog more, go to the gym!
Do anything except have a knee jerk reaction to your excessive sentimentality gene!!
Wishing you peace and joy this Holiday Season!
(**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.)
