The Other Woman

This is like a phenomenon it and of itself. Not only have I experienced it, but I have watched countless number of girlfriends also end up with psychos, who had been warned first about him.

For myself, I mentioned in a previous blog post how one evening, a woman the psycho had been "dating" showed up at his door at 2am, on fire pissed-because she had caught him in a lie. He had told her he was having family come down for the weekend and she was not to come by. That in itself had to be hurtful, because if you are dating someone, you'd think you'd want them to meet your family, even if its a casual meeting.

Of course it wasn't family, it was me-and I had no idea that she existed. As she entered the house, crazed, angry and crying, yelling and shouting-she told her story briefly. That he would tell her how beautiful she was, how he wanted to marry her, then would seduce her, then treat her like crap.

He of course threw her out of the house, and cried crocodile tears to me that she was so crazy, she was lying, she had it all wrong, that he "broke up" with her and she just wouldn't accept it, that his whole family thinks she's nuts. Deep down-I knew that she wasn't.

The next day, she left a note on his car that he let me read. She wrote intelligently, thoughtfully and told him "I don't deserve to be the recipient of your ill-will." I began to question him about it-and he became very defensive, and then got upset with me, because I was seeming to "believe" her, and not him. All he could do was repeat the same mantra of "she's crazy, she's nuts, she's unstable" and his defense was, "What kind of a person just shows up unannounced at someone's door at 2'o clock in the morning? C'mon, if you don't think THAT's crazy......

And so, I was confused. She didn't seem crazy, yet-her behavior did. Then, her parents had called HIS parents, and that DID seem crazy to me, so, I dismissed it all. Figured it was some bad relationship and that there were two sides to the story and that maybe she just wasn't accepting that he was moving on. Of course when I asked him why he didn't tell me about her, he claimed there was nothing to tell-it was long over before he and I met, and SHE was the one making it seem that anything had occurred between them recently.

She turned out to be right.

For other women, I believe similar things happen. The psychos swoop into our lives so quickly, are so manipulative and convincing, that we WANT to believe them. We are attracted to them, they tell us that we are somehow special, unique and different from any other woman they've been involved with, and when a broken woman should appear on the scene-well as I mentioned before, she is the one that appears to be "losing" it, un-accepting and "crazy." After all, well-balanced women don't slash tires, key cars, burn their name in a lawn with fertilizer.

After dealing with psycho's though-there is NO such thing as well-balanced, even if you started out that way.

Now that I've experienced these men, NOW i get it. But if it is the first time you've ever encountered a personality disordered mate-then you are living in the same bubble of ignorance and denial-no matter what kind of a warning you get.

Any warnings you may give to another woman will most likely be ignored. In many respects, we as women want to believe with all men that we ARE different, special and loved like no other. The bigger the attraction and involvement, the more likely we are to believe this. Also, if we perceive another woman as a threat-it seems to be an emotional defense mechanism to want to paint her out to be crazy and "psycho", and someone he would not want to be with. It masks our own insecurities because perhaps deep down we know not to trust him, and so we desperately want to believe that this attractive woman in front of us, telling us her story with him, is the fiction of a jilted lover and not the true warning that it is.

Not unlike adolescents who you can warn over and over again the dangers of something, they think it won't happen to them, that they are somehow "smarter" than that, and that they are touched by an immortality and they "know what they are doing."

Even if a man has a history of violence, has a criminal record of sorts-some women believe that this won't happen to them. That it was the fault of the woman he was with, and that with her, he won't be that guy. We just happened to bring out the worst in this guy, SHE won't. She, like us, believes she will be the one to turn the bad boy around, he will be forever in her debt, she is GOOD for him, whereas we were BAD for him.

All you can do, is get that warning out there. She too, can end up being abusive, if in fact you still have to deal with your psycho (i.e, children involved.)

We begin to believe that perhaps it WAS us. After all, she doesn't SEEM to be getting abused by him, and she is BELIEVING HIM, and she is ALSO being an asshole to us. How come she seems to be getting the best of him, and why is she being like that to us?

In that situation, it may be that SHE is personality disordered, and she is abusing him. Many-if not most abusive people, if they are not being the abuser, will end up being the abusee. Personality disordered people often have this pattern. That's not to say that because we've ended up being abused, that we will now enter that pattern-but this is the pattern of many of these men. Its almost as if they choose this, so then after they are "fucked over" by a psychopathic woman, they can then move onto the next relationship with a non-disordered (women like us) and justify their shitty treatment, because the LAST one was so horrible.

All you can do is send up the flare. In the meantime, if at all possible-all the experts suggest and I do too-if you can find an ex wife or girlfriend or lover-talk to her. Tell her what you are experiencing, ask her if this is the man SHE knew. You will often be both shocked and relived, if not a bit horrified to learn that YES-THIS is the man she knew. Because according to a psycho, the last woman was either the personification of Satan himself, or the most angelic woman in the world that he "fucked up" by his behavior.

Either way, you end up modeling yourself based on this. You end up feeling that you either have to compete with the "one that got away", or you have to prove to him that you are not the she-devil like the last one. This is all apart of his manipulations and you can't trust it-especially if the last one was a bit of both. Then you are REALLY confused and jumping through hoops.

You can't trust their versions. They are poor historians. The psycho that this blog is based on mostly, told me that I had no idea how his marriage was, his marriage was GREAT.

After hearing from her, I highly doubted that, because I don't know how GREAT a marriage can be when you are getting Orders of Protection and considering labeling your ex a sex offender for the rest of his life.

We often feel as we are emerging from the ashes that we need to spare even one more woman from the talons of these psychos. We almost feel guilty, like its our responsibility if they move on to abuse another woman. That we are somehow enabling it by staying silent. We want to attach to him a scarlet letter that cries out "danger, Do Not Enter".

Our cries are silenced by his manipulations, charm and ability to twist it all like a braid that he ends up pulling on her head.

Until he does it to her.

My advice, if you are able to connect with his "new" woman-is to NOT tell your story. Simply tell her this: Here is my email address. Put it away somewhere. DO NOT LOSE IT.

She may ask why, and look at you like you are crazy, dismissing you entirely. If she has not been shitty and abusive to you along with him, and especially if she has no idea who you were to him, this will be effective. It will leave an impression.

When she asks why, say "Just add it to your address book. Someday-you may need it. If not, then that's okay too-because I really hope you don't."

And sit back and wait. It may be months, it may be years-but someday, a strange email will appear in your inbox-and then you'll know. Your time has come to be that validation to another hurting soul who really didn't deserve what she got-because she was once like you, too.