In our culture, “dating
skills” are often defined as learning to be more appealing or accommodating’
the emphasis is placed on ‘attracting’ men. However, successfully attracting a
man is not good news if he’s unsafe, and many women need to learn how to
distinguish the merely deadbeat from the truly dangerous. Ignoring their own
internal warning signs—their personal red flags—during the early phases of
dating, they leave themselves exposed to harmful men.
According to the Bureau of
Justice Statistics, in the U.S.
the risk of being victimized by an intimate is 10 times greater for a woman
than it is for a man. For every Scott Peterson grabbing the headlines, there
are hundreds of men who harm women more subtly, with wounds invisible to the
eye, yet with devastating consequences to the women. To make matters worse,
vital information on the many ‘different kinds’ of dangerous men has been
available only to people who study and treat them, such as criminology and
mental health professionals—but not to women in the dating pool.
With the need to date fast
and find quick relationships, the internet has taken on the role of a hook-up
location. Unfortunately, it is also a potential stalking ground for
relationship seeking gone awry.
There are some inherent
problems with internet relationship seeking. It is difficult to read body
language, eye lingo, and verbal pacing of sentences via email. One of the ways
people can keep themselves safe in dating relationships is to feel and respond
to their red flags. Red flags are greatly reduced by the inability to see first
hand someone’s immediate response to statements or questions. Email, which is
usually how people first talk when met on the internet, impairs the ability to
get early insight into potential relationship problems.
People have created false
senses of intimacy via internet relationships. I know of one woman who met a
man from Iran
on the internet and went there to marry him without ever having met him in
person. It was a disaster and hard for her to get back to the states. He was
nothing that he had represented himself as.
A false sense of
relationship intimacy increases rapid personal disclosure. The relationship
connection with someone online (that you have no idea if he is safe or not or
who he says he is) becomes privy to a bulimic-like purge of personal problems
and information. This is very common for women to rapidly disclose and over
disclose personal and historical information. Dangerous and predatory men have
stated that “women who rapidly and overly disclose make my approach easy.” Men
who are not highly verbal in person may be very verbal online and the woman
perceives this as ‘relationship,’ ‘connection,’ ‘knowledge about the person,’
and ‘intimacy.’
The internet increases
relationship fantasy—you can be whoever you want to be with someone you aren’t
sure you will ever meet. The increase in non-credible information about someone
is significantly higher. People can lie about where they live, their marriage
status, previous relationship history, career, appearance, or criminal history.
People who are unhappy in
their marriage find internet relationships to be the perceived escape out of
misery they have been seeking. Many are disappointed (or even horrified) to
find the relationship online is all fantasy and not much reality. Women have
left husbands for online men who never materialize. When it comes to who the
person is or what the relationship is, they find it’s more about what the
person has projected and fantasized the relationship to be—not what it will
become in the future.
While it is unlikely that
internet relationship seeking will ever disappear, women need to understand the
risks of internet hook-ups and the ways it puts a woman at a distinct
disadvantage in reading body language and red flags.
| Signs of a Bad
Relationship Choice Tip Sheet
By: Sandra L.
Brown, M.A.
Author of: How
to Spot a Dangerous Man Before You Get Involved
Women are
encouraged to learn the categories of dangerousness and to explore their own
histories for clues to their personal relationship selection choices. Signs of
a Bad Relationship Choice are taken right from our research from women who were
interviewed for the book. Women who have been in relationships with 4-5
dangerous men report these are potential SIGNS for a bad relationship choice…
~ Does not
respect your need for alone time
~ Pushes to
see you even when you don’t want to
~ Discourages
your outside interests, family, friends, and career relationships
~ Tries to
isolate you from other relationships
~ Asks you to
do things you are uncomfortable doing (ie, lying, loaning
him money, sex, etc.)
~ Uses drugs
or uses alcohol too frequently or abundantly
~ Frequent
unemployment which he claims is never his fault
~ Frequent job
changes due to being fired or dismissed that he explains
away
~ Wants to
control your hair, dress, behavior, friends, or job
~ Wants you to
quit or change jobs/friends/relationships for him because HE is uncomfortable
with them
~ Has had
multiple unsuccessful relationships
~ Known by
others that he lies
~ You find out
information you should have known about him
~ Physically,
emotionally, verbally, or sexually ‘rough’ or ‘weird’
~ Too
charming—has all the right lines and appears excessively smooth
~ History or
previous diagnosis of mental illness especially:
* Untreated depression * Un-medicated
bipolar (previously manic
depression) * Conduct Disorder or
Anti-Social Personality Disorder
* Schizophrenia * Narcissistic or Borderline
Personality Disorder
* Unsuccessful treatment of substance abuse
or PTSD
~ Has a
criminal record of which these should be noteworthy:
* Recurrent speeding violations * DUI *
Assault on a female * Battery
of any kind * Other assaults * Any sexual
offense * Forgery/bad
checks * Dead-beat dad issues
~ He is
inflexible and cannot change to meet a spontaneous request
~ The rules
are for everyone else except him
~ Has problems
with authority figures
Extremely
Dangerous Behaviors include:
~ Threatening
to kill anyone or anything, even in passing
~ Assault on a
pregnant woman
~ Forced sex
in any capacity even with a known partner
~ Assault in
front of other people
~ Violation of
Court Orders or Restraining Orders
~ Stalking
anyone for any reason
~ Repeat
offenses of this list
Understanding
and responding to your red flags and being able to detect your own patterns of
relationship selection with your dangerous man types will aid in changing your
life and your future relationships.
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