Beware of Dogs

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Preface.............................................................................................viiIntroduction........................................................................................xiiiChapter 1: Why Do Bad Relationships Happen to Good People?..........................................1Chapter 2: Nice Guy or Narcissist?..................................................................11Chapter 3: The Usual Suspects.......................................................................23Chapter 4: The Unusual to the Deeply Disturbed......................................................29Chapter 5: The Internet Jungle......................................................................39Chapter 6: The Younger Man: Heaven Help Us All......................................................51Chapter 7: The Abuser: No Joke, No Excuse...........................................................57Chapter 8: The Married Man: For Masochists Only.....................................................63Chapter 9: The Nearly or Recently Divorced: The Mnage--Trois That's Never Fun.....................67Chapter 10: The Little Prince or Princess: A Cautionary Tale of Stepparenting.......................75Chapter 11: "To Be Single or Not To Be Single," That's the Question.................................83About the Author....................................................................................91

Chapter One

The "New Age" view is that there are no mistakes, just meaningful events whose lessons we need to learn lest we end up repeating these patterns on our own unique journey. This view is a variation on Sigmund Freud's time-tested theory called "repetition compulsion," which predicts that we will repeat the pathological patterns from our families of origin in our adult relationships in order to resolve our resultant internal issues. For example, maybe we were the "pleaser" in our family, taking care of our siblings and even our parents in order to win approval and love. Pleasers "just want everyone to be happy," which sets up them and those around them for failure and misery. Functioning adults need a healthy set of guiding principles and appropriate boundaries if they are to navigate life's difficulties.

We may have been a victim of neglect or abuse in our family. This can lead to chronic depression, anxiety, and/or substance abuse. Or we could have been the "problem" child who acted out the anger in our family that everyone else was suppressing. Whatever our role was, we usually repeat that in our adult relationships. Our relationships are an external means for us to work through our internal conflicts.

Our partner often represents one of our own internal voices that we need to challenge and process in order to resolve the conflicts within ourselves. It may be the parent who largely ignored us and made us feel unworthy of loving attention or perhaps it is the voice of a critical caregiver that we internalized as a child. So, if your partner belittles your looks or intelligence, he will trigger the old reaction of shame and anger that you had as a child. If you believe his criticism and feed the dynamic by reacting negatively, even with a tiny frown or downward glance, you gratify his need to make you feel bad and the dynamic will continue.

On the other hand, if you resolve the internal issue and are secure in your own skin, he will just seem pathetic. You will laugh off or dismiss his comment, which is not the response he wants, so the demeaning behavior will stop or the relationship will quickly die a natural death. It has served its purpose in your life. If the relationship ends before you resolve your internal conflict, you will simply find a similar relationship, establish the same pattern and repeat it until you figure out what lesson you need to learn. These patterns are rarely conscious, so we blame the other person for our own choices.

Of course, there are alternative ways to look at any situation. My therapist, bless her heart, says that I was born to be a healer and so naturally attract the wounded. This is what therapists would call a "reframe," and a rather masterful one. A "reframe" is taking a difficult situation and looking at it from a more positive perspective. (They call it "spin" in politics, although that tends to be more like what we used to call "lying.") So, your spouse didn't leave because you were negligent and abusive; she left because she couldn't appreciate the wonderful person that is you. Or, you didn't get fired because you were arrogant and obnoxious; they liberated you because your sparkling, spontaneous personality didn't fit into their stiff corporate culture. The Chinese symbol for crisis is composed of two symbols: danger and opportunity. A good reframe will emphasize the opportunity hiding behind the danger.

Actually, reframing is a very useful tool both in therapy and in life in general. It's not what happens to you that's important; it's the meaning that you give to it. A palm reader once told me that I have a Persephone-complex pattern in my palm, which supposedly means that I am in touch with my spiritual core and can help those "lost souls" who have lost touch with their spirituality. He said that I could hang out a shingle saying, "Lost Souls 'R' Us."

He also mentioned that I tend to take in "wounded birds" if I'm not careful. Ha! I have always taken in strays. I once had nine cats, most of which had just shown up at my country house, not unlike the men in my life. This kind of complex, the need to constantly nurse and nurture, is quite common among women. Anyway, I am absolutely certain that I've learned my lessons and played out that part of my life script by now. Wounded souls are now only part of my professional life, not my private life.

Most importantly, if you find that you have had more than your fair share of dating or relationship disasters, it is time to look inward. What signs did you ignore and why did you choose to ignore them? Was it a tiny red flag or a big, flashing neon Danger sign? Were you too desperate to be in a relationship? That is never an attitude that bodes well for finding someone wonderful. You need to take the time to do some serious introspection and find out why you can't be happy on your own for a time. As the brilliant Bruce Springsteen sings, "It's a sad man, my friend, who's livin' in his own skin and can't stand the company." Or woman, of course.

Truly, if you can't enjoy being with yourself, how can you expect anyone else to enjoy being with you? You tend to find people who are a lot like you, that is, unhappy with themselves and looking for someone else to help them feel better. Or you end up "settling" for the best thing you can scare up just to avoid being alone, which is highly unsatisfying once the dust settles and you realize that all of those signs were meant to steer you away from the terrible wreck down the wrong road.

People often jump into physical intimacy in a relationship far too quickly, then realize that they feel a strong, and sometimes blind, desire to try to make it work. This is largely due to the warm, fuzzy feelings produced by oxytocin, a hormone released when we have physical intimacy. For women, it stays in their system for weeks afterward, producing longing feelings for the other person. For men, it only lasts a few days, which explains a lot. Once the feelings of attachment are there, it can be a major ordeal to get disentangled from the wreckage. It's a long road back to the main highway where you can hopefully, if you have that kind of emotional resilience, head off in the right direction. We may be dazed and disoriented for ages before we can march on our merry way again.

If you charged ahead in the face of severe warnings, you may need to work on your feelings of self-worth. Did you somehow feel that you deserved to be dealing with this disaster, that being in an unhappy situation was familiar or expected? If you have a history of bad relationships that you feel were either mostly your own fault or else were what you deserved, you need to realize that you can and should have something better. You need to do some deep internal work before you date even one more person. There are innumerable articles, books, and workshops focusing on self-worth and self-destructive habits. Consulting a competent mental health professional or joining a support group may be essential for this process. If you chose to ignore all of these signs, you could end up repeating this painful pattern until you drop dead, which statistically will be earlier than necessary due to the serious stress of these toxic relationships.

Truly, if you can't make yourself happy, then the odds of anyone else doing that for you are approaching zero. If you feel that you need someone else to be fulfilled, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Your life is being run by fear. Even if you find your "perfect" mate, you will still live with the anxiety that he will someday leave you, which is often a self-fulfilling prophesy. As Dolly Parton, the long-and-happily married country music singer, once said when asked the key to her successful relationship, "I don't expect him to make me feel happy; I just expect him to make me feel loved." Those are wise words, indeed. If you are not happy with yourself and your life, if you feel less than whole without a significant other, then you do not have the raw materials to make a happy, healthy adult relationship.

One easy test of a healthy relationship is to ask if you love this person more than you need them. If they do things that you don't understand or that conflict with your own ideas or needs, can you accept that without anger or recrimination? Can you love them with their annoying flaws because they are a good partner in truly important ways? Do they have a wardrobe that looks like the "before" on What Not to Wear, a taste for terrible trivia, or a love of monster-truck rallies? Are you able to let it all go and accept them, "warts" and all? If something about their looks or habits is not your ideal or is in conflict with your values, can you accept that as part of the person you love? Can you grasp that it does not reflect on you, that you are two separate individuals who do not, and should not, mirror each other?

The type of relationship where either party always has to conform to the ideas and needs of the other is not a healthy adult situation. In fact, in the therapy world it is called "undifferentiated" and is considered normal only in adolescent relationships. After your early twenties, it is time to grow up and let your partner be their own person. If political arch-rivals like James Carville and Mary Matalin can manage it, clearly it can be done. You and your partner do not reflect on each other; you are two, unique individuals who happen to find things about each other that you love and enjoy.

If others don't see those qualities, who cares! That's not your problem; they don't live in your house. The exception is if one of you is, say, a violent felon, or even non-felon, who has not been rehabilitated. Then others might rightly ask what you're doing with that person. Aside from such self-destructive situations, if your friends criticize your significant other, you should nicely tell them to butt out because if you love someone, it "ain't nobody's business" what you do. Thank you, Billie Holiday. Or you can just get friends who aren't immature, aren't judgmental, and don't have boundary issues, because telling friends who they should or shouldn't be with is way out of bounds.

Of course, the dominant culture in America has done us a great disservice by feeding us vastly unrealistic, unattainable visions of coupled bliss. From the Doris Day/Rock Hudson confections of the fifties and sixties to the cloying cuteness of Meg Ryan movies where the couple lives ditzily and adorably ever after, American women have been sold a bogus bill of goods. (Men usually see these kinds of movies only under duress.) I have neither seen nor heard of any relationship remotely similar to these frothy bits of fluff in the real world.

Ironically, my observation has been that women often have these felicitous pairings with gay men, as television shows and movies such as Will and Grace or My Best Friend's Wedding faithfully portray. In fact, so many straight women have terrific relationships with gay men that there is a very unpretty name for them. The joke going around the Internet was Why can't I find a man who is handsome, attentive, considerate, and has great taste? Answer: Because he already has a boyfriend. For women who would love some quality male companionship, but are having no luck finding it among the straights, a gay friend (gbf) is a fabulous choice. The males in my life who have been the most caring, thoughtful, and present have often been gay.

Guys like the ones that Tom Hanks plays in the movies, who are sweet, sensitive, emotionally attuned, considerate, clever, and yet still manly(!), do not exist anywhere except in the sanitized silliness of Hollywood screenplays. If there are any men who bear a slight resemblance to those idealized darlings, they were snatched up long ago by the first female who laid eyes on them. Trust me, these women are still breathlessly maintaining a death grip on their rara avis and will loosen it only long enough to scratch out the eyes, or anything else necessary, of anyone who threatens that union.

The rest of us are left to rummage among the lesser mortals, the slightly or severely wounded birds. Sometimes we miraculously catch a golden bird that has recently liberated himself from a wretched captivity. I have heard of females who scan the obituaries and pounce on unsuspecting widowers in need of feminine comforts. There are frighteningly creative women in this world.

Maybe men and women are emotionally living on different planets, as John Gray maintains. If so, then coming together somewhere in the airless cosmos between them is no mean feat. The best we can hope for is some small, sympathetic tolerance of the other's mystifying, maddening manner. Some of this is due to different brain chemistry. But to what extent is that the result of cultural influences, which definitely affect brain functioning, or of predestined biological influences? There are significant cultural variations in the roles males and females play within the family and societal structures, so it doesn't appear that these roles are absolutely fixed by biological imperatives.

Even so, there is generally something more resilient, more centered about the female psyche. We get knocked down at least as often as men, but, like those plastic punching toys, we usually just bounce right back up again. It may have to do with our child-rearing role. We are generally more responsible for rearing the next generation and pulling ourselves together for their sake irrespective of the blows we endure. Rolling over and playing dead or damaged is rarely an option. Men seem to heal more slowly and need to be nursed more. My own father, a staunch believer in the traditional tough-guy/soft-female roles, said a few days after my mother died, "Men have a harder time being alone." Studies of widowed and divorced males and females support this view.

One of the cruelest lies perpetrated is that unconditional love can heal these wounds. No matter how many toads I or my friends have kissed, they stubbornly, sadly remained toads. Prince in disguise, my ass! I can attest that years and years of trying to help a haunted husband heal old wounds have led to nothing but more of the same pointless, thankless effort. Nobody else changes because you want them to; they only change because and when they want to.

Even if your guy is in the hands of a competent, professional therapist, make sure that he has finished his treatment and stabilized for many months before you make any commitments. Although regression to old patterns at the end of therapy is common, it is definitely disheartening to watch, especially when you felt certain that the person had finally pulled himself together. I know one woman who entered a committed relationship with a man in the middle of therapy. He ended his treatment too soon and then gradually spiraled downward into ever more destructive and even violent behaviors. Her relationship with him was far and away the worst nightmare of her life.

It should be self-evident that a man's relationship with his mother is the model for the rest of his relationships with females. Babying their "mama's boy" has been a time-honored tradition among certain mothers seemingly since time immemorial. These boys grow up to be the worst possible candidates for boyfriend, partner, or husband unless you enjoy mothering a full-grown male who hasn't yet mastered many basic human functions, like feeding himself or wiping his derriere. (If you've ever done their laundry, you know what I'm talking about.) Do these mothers think about the kind of man their son will become? They create a man whose expectations are so absurdly high and whose needs are so overwhelming that his perfect mom is the only woman who can possibly fulfill them. This keeps mother and son bonded for life to the exclusion of all others. It's not a pretty story.

On the other hand, if he displays condescension, hostility, anger, or any other strong negative emotion toward his mother, look out! He may start out acting sweet and kind to you, but watch for the tide to change when the going gets a little tough. His underlying negative feelings will manifest themselves when the chips are down or even as soon as the honeymoon is over.

Ideally you want a man who has finished his main business with his mother and now loves and cares for her without excessive, obsessive devotion, though that's often a fuzzy line. I vividly recall reluctantly witnessing with fascination one couple going through a very public breakup in a restaurant. Without bothering to talk sotto voce, the female launched into it, "I'm tired of feeling like I'm your surrogate mother." Her male counterpart was seething with anger, "I don't like the way that rolls off your tongue." Then he abruptly turned meek, "And besides, I don't know what that means." (It took a Herculean effort for me and my friend, whose eyes were popping out of their sockets, to refrain from hysterical laughter. We managed to hold it to broad, frozen grins.)

Even if you find an otherwise normal male, there are a large number whose entire mode of interacting with the opposite sex involves repeatedly flashing their alleged assets: an impressive physique, house, bank roll, professional credentials, or whatever. For them this sort of exercise seems to produce a slow, protracted arousal, a verbal self-gratification. There is none of the give-and-take of normal conversations; it is all one-sided.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Beware of Dogsby Barbara Hayes Copyright © 2010 by Barbara Hayes. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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