In a similar situation I was once in with an ex gf, I had this weird moment where I sort of stepped outside myself and looked back into the room where I was standing listening to this crazy ranting about made-up issues. My first thought was, “Why is he staying there?”. I call it a moment of clarity. In less than a second or two, I had stepped back into myself. I felt an enormous calm. I turned to her, looked her straight in the eye and quietly said something to the effect of, “you are less than 30 seconds from the end of this relationship… how do you want to proceed?”.
She was not expecting that. It wasn’t what I’d said so much as the certainty and the calm that came with it. It took her about another two seconds to sort of scan my face to see how true that statement had been. I didn’t flinch as she did this. I let her look. It was true, and it showed.
She hesitated, surprised, and her voice and demeanor changed in about 2 more seconds. I can’t remember what she said next. It was more nonverbal communication we were exchanging at the time. But what she communicated next was, “Oh s~~~… I just f~~~ed up and crossed that line…what’s about to happen next…?”. She was suddenly completely calm and civil. She was like a kid who finally got the ass-paddle for ongoing crappy behavior.
The bitching had gone on for most of that morning. But that whole exchange happened in less than 5 seconds.
I learned a few things from that experience. The first was that when you say it and you mean it, they know. You only have to say it once. It’s true in relationships, and in business. Anytime you deal with someone who is saying things that seem outside the lines: disrespectful, irrational, abusive, whatever… and you want to know if they mean what they say, all you have to do is respond with something that you do mean. They’ll know it. Do not bluff in this situation. Say it and mean it and they will know. Your body language will show when you mean it. Then watch what happens.
The second thing I learned from that exchange is that someone can be all emotional and irrational, and out of control of their emotions… and they can turn that crap off in a single second when they realize it is working against their own interests, then they were never out of control to begin with. They were in control the entire time, and that behavior was a carefully calculated choice the whole time. It was a strategized decision to test you, gain some advantage over you by putting you on the defensive, get something from you by making you feel that you had to ‘make up’ for whatever they accused you of doing.
That particular crazy ex would do this when there was something she was trying to get from me but didn’t want to be mature enough, and respectful enough to just ask for it directly. Asking directly risked being told “no”. But playing these attack-shame-and-guilt games would increase the chances of her getting what she wanted if she could make me feel that I owed it to her to make up for some offense I had committed.
Beer nailed it in another post when he pointed out that once you give them financial ownership over you, or the ability to ruin you financially, you can’t really say “no” anymore. You can’t walk away. You can’t escape.
Once you sign a marriage contract, they can always hurt you worse than you can hurt them. Make that mistake and a woman can screw with you like this just for her own entertainment…to alleviate her own boredom. Give a woman this ownership over you and you should expect that she’ll behave accordingly.
Look, it's not my fault that tornado dropped a house on your sister. Now get back on your broom and get your ass out of here... and take your monkeys with you
FunInTheSun 4 years, 4 months ago.
