From bad to pathological, the incredulous stuff

Certain human emotions lead to dangerous pathological behaviour. Rejection sensitive, insecure, overly dependent, immature, angry, jealous and possessive people are damaged. Damaged people are dangerous. Remember, one cannot expect rational behaviour from an irrational mind. I repeat: Damaged people are dangerous. You cannot fix them. A chemical imbalance in the brain cannot be loved away. They need professional help.

Abusive men

Some men are born with a remote control in their hands instead of a rattle. They honestly still believe that due to their anatomical gender they are ordained to lord it over their women. I met a man who told me he was upset that his girlfriend dared to talk to other people at a dance, without his permission. No girl had ever done that to him before, he assured me. She had to keep eye contact with him when they went out for dinner and if her eyes strayed, he would call her a whore. His inferiority complex actually marched into a room ahead of him and announced him. She asked me if I thought there was something wrong with him. Run, baby, run. Some women tend to think if she loves him enough, he may change. If he does not love himself enough to be a true hero, then your love is not enough, sweetheart.

Some men tend to think that if they are right, everybody else is wrong. Again, recall my example if the world was filled with billions of clones of YOU, it would be a very boring place. These men insist on arguing and raising their voices, until everybody else in the company finally keeps quiet. They are not keeping quiet because they agree with you, they are keeping quiet because they realise the absolute futility of talking to you. Go home.

Even other men regard these men as obnoxious jerks. The jerks then fall victim to the “betrayal” syndrome. His friends did not betray him, they left because they had enough of an arrogant know-it-all twit. This is often also the same guy whose girlfriend left him “in his darkest hour” which should read “his foulest mood.”

The above are usually also the men who feel they can only solve a disagreement, or get people to do what they want them to do, by threats and violence. Men are aggressive by nature, but if they cannot control their tempers, they are in the same league as those emotionally out of control women who cut their wrists every time they don’t get what they want. These men are usually cowards among true heroes. Violence, cruelty and bullying are not characteristic of a true hero. Men do not have to be macho tough to be heroes.

Feisty vixens

Some women have the notion that to throw objects at men, break things, scratch cars, break windows, damage his clothes, burn his books, etc is feisty behaviour. It is not feisty, it is not cute and it is not sexy. It is tacky behaviour and it is unlawful.

Just for the record so is breaking and entering, climbing over walls and fences and forcing doors open, even if she did share the house before. So is opening someone’s mail, hacking into their emails, downloading secret tracker devices on phones and cars without the owner’s permission, diverting their calls and messages, and publishing defamatory comments on Facebook. Demanding someone’s attention and actually using violence or force or a weapon such as a tazer gun to enforce it, is unlawful. Pointing a firearm, firing a firearm in a built-up area, and keeping an unlicensed firearm is unlawful. Biting, scratching, hitting, slapping and pushing someone around is assault and unlawful. Chasing someone with a car is unlawful.

Restricting a person’s movements and holding them hostage or locking them up in a place against their will is unlawful. Stealing a car or taking property that does not belong to you, is unlawful. “Donating” his clothes to charity without his permission, is unlawful. Lying under oath and making false accusations is unlawful. Contravening a protection order is unlawful. Now you know. Just in case anyone thought it was acceptable to do this, or that they could get away with it forever. I wish more people would actually prosecute.

Anything one posts on Facebook and Twitter and other social media is considered published and one can be sued for libel, racism, hate speech, etc, which are all unlawful. Even if you just like or repost someone else’s defamatory remark, you can be prosecuted. People do have a right to privacy. Do not publish or tag their photo’s without their permission.

Literally sending hundreds of SMSes’, missed calls, messages and whats-apps is obsessive compulsive behaviour. It is a mental disorder. Calling a current or ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend, his friends, parents, family members, boss and colleagues and spreading defamatory libel is unlawful. Turning up uninvited or “coincidentally” at places he frequents, following him and sitting in a parked car outside his residence or turning up and causing havoc at his place of work or home can constitute harassment and stalking behaviour. Stalking and harassing someone is unlawful. This means there are laws against it. One can be sentenced to jail for several years for it.

Checking his phone, emails and rifling through his cupboards is sneaky. If he wants her to know something he will tell her. Or she can just ask him. If he trusts her and opens his life to her, he will voluntarily share his Facebook profile with her, probably tell her where he goes and whom he meets. Even happily married couples have a right to freedom of movement and privacy. They voluntarily share information, they are not obliged to. Respecting privacy does not necessarily imply keeping secrets from each other.

The above examples are all behaviour I have observed and encountered, executed by women – supposedly normal girls whom men date. This is what one man refers to as his girlfriend “going mental”.

I have also encountered similar behaviour from men, but then I need to add the one incident where the man set the woman’s house on fire. That is unlawful too.

I do not deny that anger, pain and anguish are very real emotions, but no matter what the intensity of those emotions, is does not justify acting-out unlawful behaviour. You are not above the law. Get therapy please, or you may just get a sentence.

The Rescuer (continued)

Subconsciously some men are attracted to such a narcissistic woman, because it provides a welcome alternative to the women who usually make hím the nucleus of their existence. If it is all about her, then he can be the Hero, fulfilling her needs. That makes him feel good, and wow, the sex is good. However, that narcissism needs to be constantly fed, and she feeds on him. The narcissism actually camouflages a deep seated dependency and desperate neediness.

There is another neuro-psychological theory explaining the seemingly narcissistic behaviour of the damsel in distress / victim, who is solely focussed on having all her needs gratified and shows no empathy for the suffering Rescuer. The anterior cingulate cortex of our brains integrates cognitive and emotional information. It assists us with interpreting emotional signals from other people – it is the emotional intelligence part – and it activates our fear of rejection. When it is damaged, it reduces our expression of empathy.

Another part of the brain involved in directing the behaviour of the damsel in distress is the amygdala. Emotional instability and cognitive impulsiveness are behavioural manifestations of the amygdala, which reacts severely to negative stimuli. The amygdala attaches severe negative emotions to memory. A lack of serotonin in the frontal cortex inhibits the amygdala and impairs the ability to evaluate, integrate and act on cues from the environment. It also prevents both the Rescuer and the damsel in distress from ceasing responding to unhealthy stimuli and returning to healthy stimuli.

There is a psychological phenomena called disorganised attachment style, characterised by ambivalent behaviour. As children, these women were probably emotionally impoverished, which can literally cause an increase in the size of the amygdala. When the dopamine levels in the amygdala fluctuate, it causes the extreme fear of rejection, which leads to totally irrational behaviour. “I will love her more and promise never to leave her,” he reasons, but no amount of love can cure a chemical imbalance in the brain.

I ask these men their opinions about women who return to abusive men who hit them. “They are crazy to go back, it is ridiculous and makes no sense for them to go back,” is the general consensus. “Then how come you return to the woman who emotionally abuses you?” I ask. “Somehow, the moment I am with her again and I hold her in my arms, I immediately forget all the hurtful things she has done to me,” states one Rescuer. Oxytocin, the powerful cuddle hormone, inhibits some memory consolidation and increases positive social memory. This may be the reason why we forget and forgive the hurtful things done to us by people we love. Oxytocin overrides the rational neo-cortex warning us. The trick is in not going back at all and to avoid that situation where the oxytocin is released.

In an experiment involving rats, every time the rat presses a lever, he gets a food pellet. However if the dispenser completely stops giving the rat a pellet, he becomes despondent and gives up completely. When he is randomly rewarded with a pellet, he becomes almost addicted to pressing that lever. When the damsel in distress rewards the Rescuer now and again with a smile or approval, he becomes addicted to her and keeps on trying harder and harder to please her, despite not getting a “pellet” most of the time.

These women have serious abandonment issues. Sooner rather than later, he realises he is trapped and his life energy is being sapped and he wants to get out. Instinctively she recognises the alarm signals, and she grows more tentacles. Often she falls pregnant to trap him or she already has a child or two to string along. I know of one woman who has four different children with four different fathers and still the men do not catch on. Such a woman falls pregnant deliberately in an attempt to tie him to her. The moment he makes it quite clear that he has no intention of marrying her, or when he insists on a paternity test, she aborts the foetus. Some of these women have the baby, purely to have a lifelong hold and connection with the man. They will callously use the child to play on his guilt complex and to bleed him dry with maintenance. FOR EVER.

The men are just too scared to tell her outright to leave, because then the women “go mental.” The men feel like anti-heroes for “hurting her feelings”. These Rescuers then try to justify their situations by convincing themselves that the women truly need them and that it’s not that bad. It is that bad. As a matter of fact, it is worse. Then they try the bad behaviour tactic, hoping she would break up with him. Forget it. She won’t. She will just make your life more miserable. In the meantime he is still getting the incredible sex, and she gets all cuddly and cute afterwards (when the oxytocin is flowing).

Then he wakes up in the middle of the night to find her downloading all the info on his phone and transferring his computer data to hers and she sends rude and nasty messages to his ex-girlfriends and his female buddy under his name. When he confronts her she cuts her wrists, because she “loves him so much and she can’t stand the thought of living without him.” She makes him promise he will not leave her and then banks on the knowledge that he would despise himself if he breaks his word, for the sad thing is, the Rescuers are often honourable men. Terribly misguided, but honourable.

When she cuts her wrists, or “freaks out”, please take her to hospital and since she is out of your house, pack her stuff, change the locks and leave her stuff with the friend she stayed with originally. Go to hospital and tell her. She cannot commit suicide in a hospital. Inform her therapist.

Also tell her you are going on vacation, you will not be at home and you are not going to take her calls. Go to a safe place, alert a security company to look after your house, alert your friends, and DON’T TAKE HER CALLS or respond to the messages. When such people are rejected, their egos react by turning up the volume. If you can resist this turned up volume and just sit it out, they will eventually tire and turn their attentions to someone else.

Advice regarding that stray cat: Put the cat out. She will meow and growl and scratch at your door and try to sneak in when you leave a window open, but eventually she will leave and don’t worry, some other sucker will take her home.

They are locked in a deadly dance, until he breaks away. Breaking an addiction implies a period of extreme withdrawal symptoms, but eventually he will form new neuropaths and alternative behaviour, develop a sense of self worth, and attract a woman with self worth.

I agree that these women need help. Professional help. Some of them, however, visit psychologists not for the purpose of healing and coming to terms with their hurt, but only as an added bonus to elicit sympathy. Men would be advised not to get involved with these women, but to wait until she completes therapy. A professional therapist may guide her to reach a point of forgiveness, healing and maturity, where she has gained insight into her manipulative behaviour, learnt that she cannot control another human being with her own disturbed emotions, learnt to love herself, and where she is prepared to give and receive freely, without scorn.

We all encounter emotional obstacles in life, in one way or another. No one is exempt from pain, loneliness, heartbreak, betrayal, loss, rejection, abandonment, ridicule or trauma in various forms and intensities. To the women who recognise themselves in the above scenarios, please get professional help.

Find a therapist who will attend to your pain, who will walk the road with you, who will guide you to find your own true north and help you to liberate yourself from unrealistic expectations, who will develop your insight into your own manipulative behaviour. Manipulative behaviour holds no true benefit for you. A good therapist will assist you in finding the core and becoming the stable, mature woman you were meant to be. Would you not rather one day want a man who stays with you willingly, because you are adorable?

And to the Rescuers out there, please don’t waste your valuable heroism in a bottomless pit.

The Rescuer

I have referred to the Rescuer, earlier. Some men confuse being a Hero with the archetype of the Rescuer. They always walk into the trap and feel the need to rescue dependent, oversensitive, emotionally unstable women. These are often the women who slice at their arms when the men walk out. These women need to be treated “sensitively” because they have emotional troubles. Eventually their emotional oversensitivity consumes the man, who ends up counting his words and walking on egg shells, lest he upsets her. These are often the men who are motivated by those deep seated guilt complexes.

The oversensitive, “damsel in distress” adopts a victim mode and gets secondary gain from the man’s “handle her with gloves” behaviour. The man reinforces the victim mode. If he does not pay attention to her, dance to her fiddle and compensate for her “sensitivity”, she pouts, sulks, scolds, bites, withdraws and punishes him relentlessly in several ways.

In such a manner she skilfully manipulates him into becoming her puppet, catering to her every emotional whim. She alienates and isolates him from his friends and family. The moment he indicates he needs a breather and time-out with his friends, she creates some drama he has to attend to. She has absolutely no tolerance for his female buddy and often issues an ultimatum to him in this regard.

Sometimes insecure men prefer to rescue these “broken wing” women, because these men find normal, stable, mature women a threat to their own fragile egos. Some men I interviewed immediately recognise this female behaviour as pathetic manipulation tactics.

“No matter if you turn left or right, it would always be the wrong choice,” said a recovered ex-Rescuer, “I always felt as if I was in trouble, no matter what.” Another man described this relationship as a Big Black Hole. “She remains the centre of this hole and you just get sucked into the nothingness, losing yourself completely.”

The Greek hero Thesseus entered the labyrinth at Knossos to find and slay the Minotaur, but his love, the princess Ariadne, gave him a ball of string to guide his way out. Unlike Thesseus, the Rescuer eventually becomes a mouse in a maze who can never find his way out. Unlike Ariadne, who aided her lover, this victim-woman finds pleasure in placing obstacles in his path. Where there was a path yesterday, and he ventures there today, she has moved a thorny bush in his way. He may buy her roses because he knows they are her favourite flowers, but when he buys them again, he gets berated for spending too much money.

There is no order, no pattern, no route, but he desperately tries to figure it out, against the odds. “You need to fight for me,” she calls, but at some stage a tournament is won and the victor is rewarded with the lady’s scarf. Not the poor Rescuer lost in the labyrinth. He will never reach the epicentre of the labyrinth and be rewarded the peace and tranquillity one is supposed to find in a mature relationship. Eventually he sinks down and covers his face for he can no longer face the futility of the madness of trying to please her. Hopefully he has friends who can rescue him, or a good therapist. Remember the sayings: If you want to feel good, then you have to let go of bad feelings,” and “you cannot start a new chapter if you keep on reading the last chapter.” To save himself, a Rescuer HAS TO LET GO. Don’t just walk away… run like hell.

There is a neuro-psychological theory explaining the Rescuer-Victim duet. The hypothalamus in the brain produces chemicals (peptides) which match our emotions such as anger, sadness, victimization, lust etc. and our bodies respond in a pre-programmed manner to these chemicals. When we become addicted to these emotions, or states of being, we will subconsciously attract someone or something to the brain cell which gratifies the bio-chemical craving of the cell.

A woman with victim-mode peptides will always attract a situation that would gratify their sense of being the victim. The Rescuer will always be drawn to the “damsel in distress” for it fulfils his brain’s biological craving to rescue. If one cannot change one’s emotional state, one is addicted to it. Breaking an addiction requires effort, and you cannot expect your life to change, if you are not prepared and willing to make the change.

Our parents warned us: Don’t pick up stray cats. They have fleas, they stay in our homes and fall pregnant and it is very difficult to get rid of them.

Victim-women have more staying power than super glue. They are master manipulators. At first she rewards him with great sex for rescuing her. Then she starts becoming extremely pathologically possessive and jealous and he has to report his every move to her. It is a major catastrophe when she can’t get hold of him immediately and then like an AK47 rifle set on automatic rapid fire, she blasts him with hundreds of SMS messages per minute.

She scowls every time he responds to someone else’s sms and she scrutinises his phone to check who called. She checks his whats-app sign-on times and compares them to sign-on and sign-off times of perceived female rivals. She tries her very best to get hold of his cell phone and deciphers his passwords. She keeps tabs on his car’s mileage and intercepts his bank statements and cell phone records. She consumes him and drains him, but he becomes addicted to the crazy sex. “These women f*** as if it is the last time in their lives. It is wild, but also desperate and there are no deeper feelings involved,” said one recovering Rescuer. In some sad, sad cases, there is not even any sex at all.

Anybody wanting to read about serial killers, stalkers, rapists, child molestors, paedophiles, and women who kill can refer to my other books. In this section I would like to discuss the despicable antics men and women get up to in everyday relationships, often breaking the law, but getting away with it.

Rogues

Let’s discuss the annoying bad behaviour first before we get to the serious stuff. Most wives more or less have the same standard complaints about husbands:

Major complaint: When a woman asks a man to do something for her, he forgets, postpones, does it grudgingly or just does not do it. Did she ask nicely? Most women say they do ask nicely the first time. Not so nicely the third time. Men are always busy with something more important. Filing the taxes, calculating the family budget or preparing litigation due for court the following day, is important.

Completing a computer game is not. She is your wife. You committed to doing things you don’t want to do. Man-up. You would expect her to interrupt her television programme if you needed her attention. So please, when she asks nicely, just get up and do it for her. I am asking nicely.

Serious complaint: Men talk to their wives as if they are stupid. They are impatient and grumpy and condescending. They seem to justify the reasoning that because they are tired, they are entitled to be grumpy, patronising or just plain rude. Is there then the understanding that she can refuse sex because she is too tired? Or because she dislikes making love to a grumpy old wretch.

He considered her to have a brain when he asked her to marry him, so why would he insult her intelligence now? This is especially bad when men belittle or patronise their wives in company. Nobody thinks he is the hero for talking to her like that, quite the contrary. “You are the anti-hero. Did you learn to be bitchy from your mother?”

Men don’t help in the home. If both work, both help. Get up, man-up.

Many men use women just for sex. True. Many women use sex as a weapon. Also true.

Men cheat – so do women. Men lie – so do women. Men drink – so do women. Men yell – so do women. Men abuse drugs – so do women.

Husbands’ general complaints about wives’ bad behaviour is that they nag, sulk, flirt with other men, check up on their men unnecessarily, become needy, bitchy, bossy, talk in THAT TONE OF VOICE, tell them what to do and they withhold sex.