How to Spot a Dangerous Man Before You Get Involved
By: Sandra L. Brown, MA
Author of: How to Spot a Dangerous Man Before You Get Involved
Women erroneously think that a dangerous man in a relationship is only
a violent man. While the violent man is indeed one of the categories
of dangerous men, there are seven others that are often overlooked.
These omitted categories are exactly how women get into dangerous relationships.
These lapses in information leave women without the knowledge to respond
to the face of dangerousness when he is in their life through a relationship.
Since much of the information about ‘what’ makes a man dangerous
has not been taught to women, they do not recognize nor respond to covert
dangerousness.
Most women have learned to ignore their red flags during a relationship—their
biological response system that tells them that something is not quite
right. Our research indicated that 100% of women understand red flags,
have red flags, and many of them go on to ignore the very red flags
that can alert them to unsafe relationships.
Women cited various reasons for ignoring red flags which included societal
training that women should be polite, gender differences that taught
them that women are to be hyper-tolerant to less than appealing male
behavior, and female role modeling in their childhoods where women in
their families tolerated dangerous male behavior in relationships, renamed
the behavior to something less threatening, and then stayed.
Overtly lacking in today’s women’s programs are the outright
names of dangerous diagnosis, the labeling of specific dangerous behaviors,
and the teaching of why dangerousness is not something that can be treated,
more less cured.
Most women cannot cite any elements that make a man ‘incurable.’
They don’t understand that the issue of dangerousness is based
on a person’s inability to grow or change, in or out of the relationship.
And furthermore, they do not know what ‘an inability to grow or
change’ looks like or acts like.
No wonder record amounts of women are or have been in as many as four
to five dangerous man relationships before they changed their patterns.
Often the only reason change came at all was because of extreme violence
and subsequent near death injuries. Others were killed in the relationship.
Sadly, once a woman has dated one dangerous man her chances of being
in a relationship with more dangerous men dramatically increase. This
is because one of the notable side effects of being in a relationship
with pathologically dangerous men is that women begin to normalize abnormal
behavior until dangerous men look normal and are the only types of men
they date.
Even more shocking, women will adapt their own behaviors in the relationship
to the pathologically ill man so that his behaviors are less disturbing
to her. This results in the woman mimicking sick behavior and also learning
to tolerate this type of behavior by increasing her negative coping
skills which allows her to deny, justify, minimize or in any other way
ignore or discount dangerous behavior.
Universal signs of a bad relationship choice can be learned and should
be by all women. But until recently, the categories and types of dangerous
men were known only to the therapists who treated them. The 7th Great
Wonder of the World (psychopathology) was undisclosed, unexplained,
and never taught to the lay public.
Women’s patterns of perilous relationship selections continued
on without the benefit of knowledgeable intervention that included how
to spot dangerousness. Girls, teens, and women are all told not to date
‘bad men’ but no one taught them what bad men were or what
made them bad.
A woman’s capacity to choose differently is only as effective
as the information she has to choose wisely. Women begin to make different
relationship selections when they understand the incurableness of some
men, what makes them untreatable and unsafe, and how he can impact her
long term quality of life by his own destructive dangerousness.
Women can understand and do respond when they have the information
to choose differently in relationships. They also learn to choose differently
when they learn to reconnect to the red flags that their bodies are
faithful to send them. Information and awareness become powerful tools
for healthier relationships and long term change.
Universal signs of a bad relationship choice can be learned and
should be by all women, advocates counselor, Sandra L. Brown, M.A. Get
her free newsletter full of dangerousness signs and symptoms, tips and
advice and get your complimentary
E-booklet on 'How to Find Safe Love.'
