The Other Woman/Man... By Sandra L. Brown, MA 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 dont 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... thats what I thought. How was his relationship with you? No, Im not talking about the honeymoon cycle when you were living off of endorphins. Im 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, theres 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! Doesnt it make you want to call her up, text her, email her, message her on social media, and tell her whats just around the corner in the relationship? Doesnt it make you want to curl up in a fetal position and cry that he has found happiness in the arms of another? Doesnt 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 dont 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 whats 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 shell eventually confront him (or live forever with the miserableness of knowing what hes doing and not have the nerve to confront him) and then hell rage, punish her, reject her, ignore her or leave. Et VOILÀ-- she is now on his Stepford Wives List of Rejects. Shes one more tear on his Trail of Tears. You havent seen behind their closed doors to know what SHEs dealing with... he hasnt changed--hes hardwired, so shes going to be dealing with the same things you did. Its just a matter of WHEN. If I were a gambling girl, Id 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. Shes not getting the best of ANYTHING. Shes you. And in a short time, shell be another statistic. Pathology doesnt 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. Your positive fantasy thoughts of him being happy with someone else 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 newsletters. Take a deep breath and come back to center. She hasnt got anything you havent already gotten from him--MISERY. If she doesnt have it right now, she will have it shortly. Once you really get it about the permanence of pathology youll understand that his ability to be different in any other relationship doesnt exist. If he was capable, he would have done the changing with you, but he didnt--and he wont. Whatever exists right now is that short honeymoon cycle, until she realizes what he is and ISNT--and what he can NEVER be. Dont bother picking up the phone, messaging her, texting her, to tell her what he is and isnt. Just worry about your own recovery... from this moment on, its all about you!
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 16:47:08 +0000
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