Diving in from where I left off in Part 1:
Four: Be Careful About Overanalyzing
Being aware will help you, but hypervigilance won’t. The warning flags (which I’ll discuss in my next post) are fairly clear if you’re watching for them. So you don’t need to be on extreme alert for little subtle signals. I’ve had women ask me things like, “He mostly talked about himself on our date last night; do you think he’s a narcissist?” Or, “He was grumpy and impatient the other day; do you think he’s abusive?”
If you’re watching too closely for little hidden things, you’ll miss the big loud waving red flags. And you’ll also drive yourself crazy, because everyone will have grumpy days or times when they talk too much about themselves and forget to do their share of the listening. So you’ll be constantly anxious.
At the same time, I don’t mean that you should discount things that happen over and over again. Recurring patterns of self-involvement, selfishness, or crankiness have to be taken seriously. But with these kinds of subtler behaviors that aren’t automatically abusive, don’t get all worried because they happened once.
I don’t hear many women saying that they overlooked too many subtle signs. Usually what they’re regretting is having let big things go by.
So:
Five: Don’t Let Warning Flags Go By, Regardless of the Excuse
The first point I want to make in this category goes back to the beginning of Part 1 of this post: Don’t start dating until your desperation level has come down. Abuse tends to leave a person feeling desperate; that’s one of the common effects of being repeatedly treated so badly. If you jump into dating without having given this desperation a chance to heal, you’re going to be sorely tempted to overlook red flags with the next guy — because you’re going to want so very badly for this new relationship to work out.
Second, don’t excuse red flags. It’s risky to tell yourself, “Well, his feelings were really hurt,” or “He was under tremendous stress,” or “I had made him really angry.” It’s what people do under stress that reveals what their issues are. In other words, the times when he doesn’t get his way, or you inconvenienced him, or he was sleep deprived, are exactly the time to take any bad behaviors on his part really seriously. It’s those moments that are going to tip you off to his attitudes, especially his entitlements. And men’s abuse of women is rooted in their entitled attitudes, not in their emotional world.
This kind of situation sometimes leads a woman to ask me, “Are you saying I should break up with him because of one time he yelled at me and said I was being a b****? Wouldn’t that be an overreaction?”
Ending a relationship over that wouldn’t be an overreaction in my opinion, but here’s the more important point: You don’t have to choose between ending the relationship and doing nothing. There’s a third option, which is to take clear steps to let the man know that behavior of that kind is not going to fly with you and that you will protect yourself. Clear steps involve such things as:
* Going a week or two with no contact with him
* Putting a hold on your sexual relationship and saying that you’re just going to date platonically for a few weeks
* Taking a few weeks of also going out with other people
“Having a really serious talk with him about what he did,” unfortunately, doesn’t count as a clear step, even though it may feel like it is. I’ve seen this one tried many times. Abusive men often apologize during these “serious talks,” but the behavior will just come back around later.
The goal of these clear steps isn’t to change an abusive man; you’re not going to change one. The goal is to see how he reacts when you impose significant consequences of this kind. A non-abusive man will respect your desire for space, will allow you whatever time off you need, and won’t retaliate against you (even verbally) for your decision to stop having sex for a while or to date other people. Whereas the abuser may pretend to accept what you’re saying, but then he’ll be calling or texting during a period when you asked for no contact — saying, of course, that it’s just because he misses you so badly, and trying to slough off the fact that he’s not respecting the limit you set. He’ll make little sarcastic or self-pitying comments about your decision to pause the sexual relationship. He’ll “poke fun” in ways that are actually intended to hurt your feelings about your decision to go back to dating other people, and then when you act hurt, he’ll tell you he was just kidding and send the message that you should have more of a sense of humor.
In short, the abuser will find it hard to hide his true colors when you set these kinds of limits with him.
You have to do this kind of limit setting right at the beginning. The reason for this has nothing to do with the man; as I said, if he’s abusive, you’re not going to change him no matter how early on you set limits. The reason you have to do this right away is for you! If you wait, you’ll gradually start to get attached to the relationship. Plus you’ll also start to get more and more triggered about things from the abusive relationship you just had, which can get you confused and self-blaming. Between these two dynamics, it will rapidly get harder for you to set limits over time. And if you don’t set limits, you won’t find out whether he’s abusive or not until it’s too late.
Six: Consider Having a Relationship That Isn’t Serious
As you can see above, I try to steer people away from all-or-nothing thinking, and here I go again. Women I’ve talked with often feel that they have to get into a new serious relationship because they’re feeling starved for male companionship, affection, or sex. But you don’t have to choose between a serious relationship and celibacy. You might well find that having a casual relationship (or two, or three) is fun, helps to soothe some of your wounded places, and keeps you from jumping too soon into something intense.
Part 3 of this of the post is going to be about 1) How to know whom to trust in building friendships with women or men, and 2) How to know whom to trust in dating, especially when moving towards a relationship that potentially serious. Stay tuned.
Photo by Gift Habeshaw on Unsplash (couple holding pinkies)
Photo by Richard R on Unsplash (stop sign)
Photo by Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash (holding hands in their robes)
Lundy Bancroft is mostly retired from domestic violence prevention work after thirty years in the field, though he still accepts occasional speaking engagements and posts occasional blogs. His “second career” is devoted to teaching and writing about co-counseling, a powerful peer-based approach to healing emotionally and overcoming trauma.
If you would like to learn more about Lundy’s upcoming weekend co-counseling training April 4th-6th (for which Lundy is donating his time), or learn about co-counseling in general, you can click here.
