Whether a woman is sixteen years old or sixty, dating is a lot like navigating a mine field. When a relationship is good, it feels like we are soaring on top of the world. But more often than we would like to admit, things can go wrong; only after the smoke clears do we realize we never noticed the warning signs. Beware of Dogs: How to Avoid Dating Disasters helps women learn the important lessons gained from bad relationships while providing expert guidance leading them down a path to becoming happier, more self-fulfilled human beings. Barbara Hayes is a relationship therapist who relies on both her professional and personal experiences to help women discern whether their guy is nice or narcissistic, quirky or disturbed, intrigued or obsessed. Along with personal anecdotes and case studies, she includes fun quizzes and checklists that make it easy to sort out the dirty dogs from the dream guys and learn whether a partner's habits are merely annoying or red flags signaling that the relationship is headed for disaster. Beware of Dogs: How to Avoid Dating Disasters provides the practical tools and suggestions that will teach any woman how to make wise relationship choices.

Beware of Dogs

By Barbara Hayes

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Barbara Hayes
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-4895-2

Contents

Preface.............................................................................................viiIntroduction........................................................................................xiiiChapter 1: Why Do Bad Relationships Happen to Good People?..........................................1Chapter 2: Nice Guy or Narcissist?..................................................................11Chapter 3: The Usual Suspects.......................................................................23Chapter 4: The Unusual to the Deeply Disturbed......................................................29Chapter 5: The Internet Jungle......................................................................39Chapter 6: The Younger Man: Heaven Help Us All......................................................51Chapter 7: The Abuser: No Joke, No Excuse...........................................................57Chapter 8: The Married Man: For Masochists Only.....................................................63Chapter 9: The Nearly or Recently Divorced: The Mnage--Trois That's Never Fun.....................67Chapter 10: The Little Prince or Princess: A Cautionary Tale of Stepparenting.......................75Chapter 11: "To Be Single or Not To Be Single," That's the Question.................................83About the Author....................................................................................91

Chapter One

Why Do Bad Relationships Happen to Good People?

The "New Age" view is that there are no mistakes, just meaningful events whose lessons we need to learn lest we end up repeating these patterns on our own unique journey. This view is a variation on Sigmund Freud's time-tested theory called "repetition compulsion," which predicts that we will repeat the pathological patterns from our families of origin in our adult relationships in order to resolve our resultant internal issues. For example, maybe we were the "pleaser" in our family, taking care of our siblings and even our parents in order to win approval and love. Pleasers "just want everyone to be happy," which sets up them and those around them for failure and misery. Functioning adults need a healthy set of guiding principles and appropriate boundaries if they are to navigate life's difficulties.

We may have been a victim of neglect or abuse in our family. This can lead to chronic depression, anxiety, and/or substance abuse. Or we could have been the "problem" child who acted out the anger in our family that everyone else was suppressing. Whatever our role was, we usually repeat that in our adult relationships. Our relationships are an external means for us to work through our internal conflicts.

Our partner often represents one of our own internal voices that we need to challenge and process in order to resolve the conflicts within ourselves. It may be the parent who largely ignored us and made us feel unworthy of loving attention or perhaps it is the voice of a critical caregiver that we internalized as a child. So, if your partner belittles your looks or intelligence, he will trigger the old reaction of shame and anger that you had as a child. If you believe his criticism and feed the dynamic by reacting negatively, even with a tiny frown or downward glance, you gratify his need to make you feel bad and the dynamic will continue.

On the other hand, if you resolve the internal issue and are secure in your own skin, he will just seem pathetic. You will laugh off or dismiss his comment, which is not the response he wants, so the demeaning behavior will stop or the relationship will quickly die a natural death. It has served its purpose in your life. If the relationship ends before you resolve your internal conflict, you will simply find a similar relationship, establish the same pattern and repeat it until you figure out what lesson you need to learn. These patterns are rarely conscious, so we blame the other person for our own choices.

Of course, there are alternative ways to look at any situation. My therapist, bless her heart, says that I was born to be a healer and so naturally attract the wounded. This is what therapists would call a "reframe," and a rather masterful one. A "reframe" is taking a difficult situation and looking at it from a more positive perspective. (They call it "spin" in politics, although that tends to be more like what we used to call "lying.") So, your spouse didn't leave because you were negligent and abusive; she left because she couldn't appreciate the wonderful person that is you. Or, you didn't get fired because you were arrogant and obnoxious; they liberated you because your sparkling, spontaneous personality didn't fit into their stiff corporate culture. The Chinese symbol for crisis is composed of two symbols: danger and opportunity. A good reframe will emphasize the opportunity hiding behind the danger.

Actually, reframing is a very useful tool both in therapy and in life in general. It's not what happens to you that's important; it's the meaning that you give to it. A palm reader once told me that I have a Persephone-complex pattern in my palm, which supposedly means that I am in touch with my spiritual core and can help those "lost souls" who have lost touch with their spirituality. He said that I could hang out a shingle saying, "Lost Souls 'R' Us."

He also mentioned that I tend to take in "wounded birds" if I'm not careful. Ha! I have always taken in strays. I once had nine cats, most of which had just shown up at my country house, not unlike the men in my life. This kind of complex, the need to constantly nurse and nurture, is quite common among women. Anyway, I am absolutely certain that I've learned my lessons and played out that part of my life script by now. Wounded souls are now only part of my professional life, not my private life.

Most importantly, if you find that you have had more than your fair share of dating or relationship disasters, it is time to look inward. What signs did you ignore and why did you choose to ignore them? Was it a tiny red flag or a big, flashing neon Danger sign? Were you too desperate to be in a relationship? That is never an attitude that bodes well for finding someone wonderful. You need to take the time to do some serious introspection and find out why you can't be happy on your own for a time. As the brilliant Bruce Springsteen sings, "It's a sad man, my friend, who's livin' in his own skin and can't stand the company." Or woman, of course.

Truly, if you can't enjoy being with yourself, how can you expect anyone else to enjoy being with you? You tend to find people who are a lot like you, that is, unhappy with themselves and looking for someone else to help them feel better. Or you end up "settling" for the best thing you can scare up just to avoid being alone, which is highly unsatisfying once the dust settles and you realize that all of those signs were meant to steer you away from the terrible wreck down the wrong road.

People often jump into physical intimacy in a relationship far too quickly, then realize that they feel a strong, and sometimes blind, desire to try to make it work. This is largely due to the warm, fuzzy feelings produced by oxytocin, a hormone released when we have physical intimacy. For women, it stays in their system for weeks afterward, producing longing feelings for the other person. For men, it only lasts a few days, which explains a lot. Once the feelings of attachment...