I was with my ex for almost 5 years.  We broke up about 4 months ago.  I am finding it really hard to move and on, and I keep churning over in my mind everything about our relationship.

I actually think we had a great first year together.  He had some commitment issues, but I think he worked thorugh them a bit. After 2 years together, he steadily became violent and very angry and unpredictable at times. The relationship wasn’t seriously violent, but every 2-3 months there might be grabbing, pushing, squeezing me around my neck, and throwing things at me. This kind of thing was always followed by apologies and I kept forgiving and trying to move on.

My ex is always a great person to his friends, who all see him as carefree and usually the life and soul of the party.  But I experienced the brunt of his anger, usually after a night out, but just about anytime. He was verbally abusive, too and it was horrible to endure his torments at the time but then it would pass.

We tried couples counseling for a year and a half.  He discovered he had some issues, especially because he always blamed me for things.  He worked on his commitment issues and then gave me a ring about 2 years ago. But he found it hard to follow through on any of the agreements we made in counseling.  And when I would bring things to his attention, he would accuse me of being too critical and blame me for everything.

Eventually, we broke up. I didn’t want to, but I knew the violence wasn’t improving, even with counseling, and he also stopped apologizing for it. So, I accepted that we couldn’t be together.

Since the breakup, I have had a terrible and heart broken few months. But he immediately started a new sexual relationship with a friend that lasted for a couple months and a week after that ditched her and started dating yet another woman.

I now wonder if all the violence was my fault.  He kept telling me it was.  I wonder if he is likely to be violent in other relationships or if it was just something about me that cause the problem. I can’t believe how fast he moved on a has is into another sexual relationship only a month after breaking up with me.  I Just don’t understand any of it.

I think there were real strengths in our relationship and once he said he loved me for most of it. I really think the relationship was okay except when he was angry and violent.

I don’t understand.  Did he really love me?  Why would he not be as heartbroken as me when things ended and how could he show such disrespect for our long relationship (we even owned a home together) by moving on to others so quickly?

When I wrote my first book, In Sheep’s Clothing, I was careful to revise it twice to emphasize the prime reason people of decent character or who may be “neurotic” to some degree simply “don’t get it” with respect to individuals who have marked deficiencies of character.  And in my new book, Character Disturbance, I go to great lengths to highlight the many and significant differences between most folks and people of disturbed character.  The main reason neurotics not only enter but also become trapped in abusive relationships is because they fail to recognize that disturbed characters are fundamentally different from most folks on multiple, significant dimensions of interpersonal functioning.  People get trapped because traditional psychology frameworks have reinforced their own notions that everyone - especially down deep - must be fundamentally alike.  Unfortunately, such thinking is often a recipe for disaster and unhappiness.

I responded to the person who inquired in the following fashion:

You already seem to have a good deal of insight about some things, but something appears in the way of you accepting the most important things about your former situation.  You seem to know that this man had “commitment” issues, that he blamed others (especially you) for his bad behavior, and that he even failed to honor pledges he made in therapy.  What you don’t seem to want to accept is that not all people share the same values, see things the same way, or have the same willingness to discipline themselves and conform their behavior to accepted standards.  Unlike your average “neurotic” individual who tries to do right and always seeks to “understand,” disturbed characters do as they please, hurt others, and adamantly refuse to blame themselves for their unprincipled or unruly conduct.

Rather than wonder some of the things you ask, the much bigger questions for you to answer are twofold: what keeps you from recognizing that some people are very different from you and have deeply flawed characters; and what is it about yourself that so willingly questions yourself and has a hard time letting go even when someone has proven themselves to lack the character to be a worthy partner in a relationship?

The questions above are the kinds of things a “neurotic” person might work with a counselor or therapist to answer.  But it’s also important that the counselor or therapist understands character disturbance and knows how to assist a person to become less neurotic and more empowered in their interpersonal relations.

Folks often ask me if Covert-Aggressive personalities (manipulators) and other disturbed characters really understand themselves or know what they’re doing.  I always reply that most of the time, such personalities know exactly who they are and what they’re up to.  This is something others find very hard to believe.  But to illustrate the point, I thought I’d reproduce a portion of an article I wrote about a year ago on a popular international blog:

Covert-Aggressive Personalities are the archetypal wolves in sheep’s clothing that I introduced in my first book, In Sheep’s Clothing . These individuals are not openly aggressive in manner in which they relate to others.  In fact, they do their best to keep their aggressive intentions and behaviors carefully masked. They can often appear quite charming and amiable, but underneath their civil facade they are just as ruthless as any other aggressive personality. They are devious, underhanded, and subtle in the ways they abuse and exploit others. They have generally cultivated an arsenal of interpersonal maneuvers and tactics that enable them to effectively manipulate and control those in relationships with them. The tactics they use are effective because they simultaneously accomplish two objectives very effectively:

• The tactics conceal obvious aggressive intent. When the covert-aggressive is using the tactics, the other person has little objective reason to suspect that he is simply attempting to gain advantage over them.
• The tactics covert-aggressive personalities use effectively play on the sensitivity, conscientiousness, and other vulnerabilities of most persons — especially neurotic individuals — and therefore effectively quash any resistance another person might have to giving-in to the demands of the aggressor.

So, it’s this one-two punch of the tactics: never really seeing what’s coming, and being vulnerable to succumbing to them, that’s at the heart of why most people get manipulated by them.

About a week after I posted the article referenced above, the blog site received one of the most interesting comments to date:

It’s very disturbing, but true… I am one of these personality types.  It is quite an issue for me since I only started really looking at this pattern and why I do it over the last few weeks. (I am 35).  You make the point that this personality type has an underdeveloped conscience and that some of these individuals have more conscience impairment than others.  This may be a harsh assessment, but I know this is true, also.  I actually have some degree of conscience.  I would never think of actually hurting another person physically for personal gain, ever.  Still, I do seem to “attack” when I perceive my own interests or safety to be under assault in any way, be it physical, emotional, spiritual, and I justify my behavior by telling myself it’s necessary.

I have tried to limit my covert-aggressive actions to those situations when I feel it’s absolutely necessary for survival and the last resort.  However, it’s very difficult for me not to “act-out” (I know you say this is an incorrect use of the term) whenever I see a chance to gain a victory over others.

I dont know where this all got started.  I just know that my behavior has a name, and that I really need to try harder (it seems to become a bit easier all the time) to be less manipulative and more straightforward. To face this issue is not an easy one, because it means I have to adapt my way of thinking and acting to more “normal” trains.

My wife knows all this about me and still loves me.

“Jacob”

The above comment validates points that I’ve made in prior posts about this personality type.  Some of these folks are more neurotic than they are character-disordered.  Some have more of a conscience than others.  But in the end, such personalities have impairments in conscience and character that allow them to exploit the vulnerabilities of others and to justify their actions by claiming their behavior was necessary.  And, as the testimonial above attests to, these folks know what they’re doing.

Perhaps the most hopeful aspects of Jacob’s testimonial is that people can and do change, but they have to be the ones to decide it’s in their best interest.  And over the years, I have dealt with literally hundreds of folks just like Jacob who acquired enough integrity of character and motivation to put an end to their covert-aggressive ways.

The main character, Dexter, is an intriguing study. He is no doubt a psychopath, and he is also a ritual serial killer who has managed to elude detection for his heinous acts. Because I’ve dealt with so many psychopaths in the past, I’m not of a mind to become invested in this series. But the writers certainly have captured many of the essential features of psychopathy in Dexter.

While so many things are chillingly accurate, there is one thing that bothers me about the portrayal of Dexter’s character. Psychopaths do lack normal human empathy and a sense of “connection” to others. They can feign emotion and fake normal human empathy-based interaction patterns. And they have an uncanny ability to read others, to know what makes them “tick” as it were. But they’re not really bonded to the rest of us. That fact makes them potentially so very dangerous. The depictions of Dexter as a person who has to feign almost every aspect of normal human relating are so accurate, it can and should make your skin crawl. But it’s the way the writers seem to explain how such people get to be the way they are that bothers me more than a little.

People have long assumed that persons who are so heartless and do heinous things to others must have come from backgrounds that were filled with abuse and neglect. And in the case of “Dexter,” his childhood trauma is remarkable. He witnessed his mother murdered by drug dealers and was tutored by his police officer adoptive father to bring justice to evil-doers who escaped sanction by killing them in a ritual manner. “Is it any wonder Dexter is the way he is?,” a person must ask him or herself. This portrayal is great for the series because it makes the main character endearing in a way, which is one likely reason the series is so successful. But the reality about psychopathy is even more chilling. That is the fact that many psychopathsdon’t have horrendous histories in their past that “made” them the dangerous folks they are. So as chilling as it is to watch the character Dexter, knowing the realities about psychopathy is even more chilling. We know how different they are, but we’re only beginning to learn why they are so different. And what puts most people at such risk to be victimized are two assumptions we’ve long made: that most of us are essentially the same, and that people who do cruel things to others must have been severely mistreated in their formative years. Psychopaths know very well how most people think and respond, so it’s easy for them to manipulate others into making false assumptions about them and into a false of sympathy for them when they exhibit their heartless behavior.

Those seeking to understand psychopathy and sociopathy will not be disappointed for a lot of reasons by the character portrayals in Dexter. But those really seeking to understand the origins of this strange condition will not be done any real service by continuing to assume that childhood trauma explains what’s so different and so dangerous about these predators among us. As chilling as that thought is, the whole truth, once finally uncovered, is likely to be even more chilling than that.

I present a framework for understanding psychopathy in both my first book, In Sheep’s Clothing and my soon to be released book Character Disturbance.

Around 16 years ago, I published my first book, In Sheep’s Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People. I did so because I was working with many people who had been victimized in some way by a manipulator.  Knowing how many people had been subjected to various control tactics, back-stabbing, underhanded maneuvers, subtle abuse, etc., and the host of problems (e.g., depression, internal turmoil, relationship confusion, etc.) was eye-opening.  I also came to appreciate that several of the notions about human behavior the victims held - many promoted by traditional psychological paradigms - were actually making it harder for them to understand and deal with the behavior of their manipulators.  After working closely with manipulators, various other disturbed characters, and relatively healthy individuals victimized by the responsibility-challenged people in their lives, I decided a radical new approach could help people protect themselves from the harmful things disturbed characters are prone to do.  In Sheep’s Clothing was the result of utilizing this new approach to help people understand and deal with the disturbed characters in their lives, especially manipulators.  For the first time, it allowed people to understand what was really going on with their abuser, how they managed to get hoodwinked, blindsided, and manipulated, and what they could do to keep such things from happening again.

In Sheep’s Clothing started out as a small, independent publication, targeted toward a relatively small market.  Yet it was received by the public in a manner I could barely have imagined.  After several revisions, numerous online reviews and testimonials, and unprecedented word-of-mouth, it became a bestseller and has been translated into several foreign languages.  It has been revised a few times, but its basic content has remained as stable and as timely as its subject matter.

Just a few weeks ago (March 31, 2010) a brand new edition of In Sheep’s Clothing was released by Parkhurst Brothers Publishers.  This edition contains some new content and provides a suitable introduction to my new book, Character Disturbance, which takes an in-depth look at the disturbing phenomenon of our age.  Character Disturbance is also published by Parkhurst Brothers and is scheduled for wide release on July 31, 2010.  It is my sincere hope that both of these works cast a needed new light on a societal problem that appears to be becoming ever more prevalent in our age of permissiveness, entitlement, and irresponsibility.

Dear Dr. Simon,

I just finished reading your book, In Sheep’s Clothing. No words can express the gratitude that I have for this obvious manifestation of your love and hard work.  From your introduction onward, I sensed that you were, not only enlightened about this subject, but that you had a sound, moral and ethical motive for writing the book.  That’s what drew me to you.

I’ll spare you the details of my life, but as you have probably heard thousands of times, I am a victim of a covert-aggressive, manipulating person.  And to make matters worse, I now realize that I am a very neurotic individual.  I didn’t know that before seeing myself in your book.  And I’m not ashamed of it, but I see how it made me vulnerable all my life.  Now, I think I am on the way to reclaiming my life, and finding self-respect and confidence.  Your book has equipped me to do that and to take on the challenges that still lie ahead.

The person who manipulated me for years was incarcerated last year for a serious crime that came to light 2 years ago.  At first, I played my typical role of the sympathizer/empathizer, and offered to get this person “help” him and to support him.  But I finally realized that I’d been enabling him to be irresponsible all his life and to get away with all the things he’d done to cause me pain throughout my life!  When I finally drew the line, he used all the tactics you explained in your book.  In the past these tactics have left me completely depressed and my family and business suffered.   But now I am aware of the tactics and also aware of myself enough to know that I need to be more assertive and rid myself of the burden of his irresponsibility.

To the point:  Your book helped me understand why I am such an “approval junkie,” how I got manipulated, why I always hated confrontation, and why I had so little confidence and self-respect - even though I have done so many good things in my life and achieved a measure of success in my pursuits.  I intend to spend many days meditating on the new perspectives your book offers and connecting them to my life experiences with people of all different characters.  And I will strive to no longer sabotage myself by allowing the disturbed characters I encounter to manipulate me.

You may not ever fully know the overwhelming feelings your work is helping people like me to experience.  But I wanted to let you know how much your work has meant.  I wish you the best, and thank you again.

M.K.  Virginia

I have only recently realized that my elderly father is a covert-aggressive personality.  I spent so many years hating myself and feeling that others didn’t like me, including family members.  Knowing how I’d been duped has been a really hard realization to come to.  I always thought I had the “Leave it to Beaver life” yet I was never happy.  But I thought it was me, or my mother, or anyone but my Dad who was the problem.  Somehow, he always came out “smelling like a rose”.  I almost divorced my husband because of him and his manipulations.   When my Mom died, my Dad wanted me and wanted my husband gone from his life.  I spent many sleepless nights trying to figure all this out and I’m not sure I understand it completely even now.  I have to read and re-read Dr. Simon’s book to remind me what has happened to me and how it happened.  I know the truth about him now, yet I find it easy to blame myself.  My question is, if I confront a my Dad, covert aggressive personality that he is, with the facts as outlined in Dr. Simon’s book, would he see himself?  Would he know that I’ve “got it” with respect to what he’s really like or would he look at me like I’m crazy?

Perhaps this woman did not read or possibly didn’t understand some points I made in my book In Sheep’s Clothing about covert-aggressive personalities generally being much more character-disturbed than neurotic and how different disturbed characters are from neurotics with respect to the level of insight they have about themselves.  So, in part I replied this way:

If your dad is the kind of personality I describe in my book, the likelihood is that he already sees himself just fine.  And, if he looks at you like you’re crazy when you confront him, it’s more than likely a tactic to keep you under control.  So, it’s far more important that resist trying to get him to see things and simply take charge of your own life by setting firm limits with respect to his involvement in your affairs.

On March 31st, Parkhurst Brothers will release a brand new edition of In Sheep’s Clothing, already a 15-year international bestseller.  On June 30th, Parkhurst will also release Character Disturbance, my new book on all of the problem characters that can make your life difficult.  Both books point out that when it comes to covert-aggressive personalities or any other disturbed character, “they already see, they just disagree.”  That is, they know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it and they know how other people want them to behave. They simply refuse to do things differently and use various tactics to manipulate others into backing down or backing off.  My new book goes into much greater depth about this and explains how not to get caught up in the trap of trying to get them “to see.”

Dear Dr.Simon,

Thank you for your blog articles on Disturbed Characters. I just got out of a relationship with someone who I believe to have a character disorder. Often he would play the victim in everything that had happened to him (even when something that happened was clearly his fault). He was very manipulative, and aggressive at times as well. When we first started dating, I misinterpreted everything he did, thinking that he was really the victim of many unfortunate events, I would almost pity him, and the things that happened to him. My family noticed a change in me, and only put up with him because they knew I loved him, and we were engaged to be married next year. I would often be blamed for the things he did, whether it meant he got too aggressive and hurt me (he would blame it on the fact that I might take a stance that “looked like” I was about to attack him).  Inevitably it would end up being my fault for all of his short comings and problems. Although I can not completely understand some of this, I can relate to it, finding certain things in his behavior which lead for me to look up these series of articles. A lot of the things mentioned in these articles fits him very well. I am just glad to know that it wasn’t me causing all of his problems, and it wasn’t entirely my fault for the downfall of our relationship.

Again, thanks for the blog posts.  I’m looking forward to the release of your new book.

Dorothy’s comments are typical of emails and notes I receive every week.  It heartens me to know that the material I’ve been posting is helpful to people trying to understand the disturbed characters in their lives.

I’ll continue to post articles addressing various issues related to character disturbance.  I’m also pleased to announce that after many unavoidable delays, Parkhurst Brothers Publishers will be putting my new book Character Disturbance into wide release in July of this year.  This book is the culmination of many years of dealing with the many different personalities whose character defects are so pronounced that they bring misery, pain, and hardship into the lives of many.  Naturally, I will continue to post articles on all my blogs.  These blog posts will complement my new book Character Disturbance and help you deal with the disturbed characters in your lives.

I am a 21-year-old female, and I have a 19-year-old boyfriend. We have been together a little over 7 months. We are also in a long-distance relationship at the moment until he can get his financial situation sorted out and come to be with me. I love my boyfriend, but I have noticed some things about him and the way he acts that are little red flags to me about possible problems. These are things that I want to help him overcome, but I’m not sure how to do that. The biggest problem I see in our relationship is my boyfriend’s extreme jealousy and insecurity. When we first began dating, he wasn’t showing these signs as strongly, but he would tell other guys who tried talking to me that I was his girl, and he felt jealous if they spoke to me.  My boyfriend has told me the reason why he is so protective is because he’s afraid that if other guys talk to me or if I even speak to them just to say “Hello” that he will lose me to the other guy because he thinks they are better than he is. I’ve told him numerous times that I’m not interested in other guys and I only want him, but the same issue repeatedly comes up. I have a close guy friend that I have been the best of friends with for over 6 years, and he and I have absolutely no sexual past or relationship. Yet whenever my friend and I hang out, my boyfriend gets extremely jealous, argumentative, insecure, and picks a fight with me. I don’t think it’s fair that I can’t hang out with one of my close friends without my boyfriend getting as wound up as he does. He hangs out with a lot of his own friends, some of whom are girls, and I have no problem with it because I’m not a jealous or insecure person. When he gets angry and argumentative, I feel he doesn’t necessarily trust me when I want to hang out with my friends. I wish there was something I could do to help him, but I feel like no matter how many times I reassure him that I want him and only him, it will never fully sink in. I love him, but I cannot continue our relationship the way it is because we constantly fight, and there appears no solution to this issue. When I try and speak to him about it, he only shrugs it off and is only worried about apologizing and making things better, rather than figuring out why we were fighting in the first place and how to fix it. I am hoping that I can find something to help with his insecurities and jealousy because with all the fighting I am beginning to be lose my attraction towards him.

My answer:

You say that you have no problem with your boyfriend hanging out with others because you are “not a jealous or insecure person.” So, you would naturally buy into the idea (as expressed by your boyfriend) that insecurity and jealousy must be the underlying reason for his possessiveness. But this does not have to be the case at all, and your gut is telling you there is a “red flag” for something else potentially more destructive in this relationship.  Most of the time, it’s best not to rationalize but to heed your gut instincts. There are many, many reasons for the possessiveness your boyfriend displays, not all of which are rooted in insecurity and low self-esteem. I have posted other articles on this and written about it extensively both in my book In Sheep’s Clothing [Amazon-US] and my soon to be released book Character Disturbance. And even if that were the issue, it’s your boyfriend’s responsibility — not yours — to resolve it.  You want to understand and help. That’s honorable, but such a willingness also makes you vulnerable to someone who wants to play on your sympathies in order to manipulate and control you. You should set some firm limits with your boyfriend before getting any deeper in this relationship.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be posting more articles like this one, featuring questions from people all over the world who have sought out my expertise and some of whom have found new hope and understanding after reading my book and other writings.

This article is part of a series of articles the thinking patterns common to individuals with disturbed or disordered characters (see “What Were They Thinking?” and “What Were They Thinking - Pt. 2″).  We’ve already discussed Egocentric Thinking.  The next distorted thinking pattern we’ll be talking about is possessive thinking. Disordered characters tend to view those that they have any kind of relationship with as possessions that they have rightful claim over and with whom they should be able to do as they please. This type of thinking most often accompanies a tendency to “objectify” others (i.e., view them as mere objects or pawns to manipulate, as opposed to individuals of dignity with whom one has to form a mutually respectful relationship). Possessive thinking also frequently accompanies “heartless thinking” in which no empathy is felt for the need or concerns of others.

Habitual possessive thinking promotes a dehumanizing attitude toward others. When the disturbed character views others as primarily an object of pleasure, a vehicle to get something he wants, or a potential obstacle in the way of something he desires, it becomes almost impossible for him to consider them as persons with rights, needs, boundaries, or desires of their own. Viewing others as objects or possessions also makes it virtually impossible to acknowledge them as individuals of independent worth.

I’ve counseled many disturbed characters over the years. All too frequently, they reacted with extreme malice when the person with whom they had a possessive relationship tried to declare emotional independence. Sometimes, there were disastrous consequences when they decided that if they couldn’t possess their partner, then no one else could. As I mentioned in earlier posts, the way we think is a big factor in how we act. One of the biggest reasons why disturbed characters form relationships frequently characterized by various forms of abuse and exploitation is because they think of others as objects to possess.

As I described in my last post (see “What Were They Thinking? - Part 2”), persons with disturbed characters don’t act the way we do largely because they don’t think the way we do.  

Stanton Samenow was among the early researchers to catalog the distorted thinking patterns or “errors in thinking” which some of the most severely disturbed characters (those with criminal records) display. Over the years, I’ve adapted and modified several of the erroneous thinking patterns he and other researchers brought to light and added several of my own that I came to realize played a crucial role in the problems created by the disordered characters I have treated. The first erroneous thinking pattern I’ll be discussing is one I label “Egocentric Thinking”.  

The disordered character thinks so much about himself that it’s second nature. His concerns are almost always with himself and for himself. Whatever the situation or issue initially is, somehow it ends up about him. Disordered characters so frequently think about things that they want because that’s what’s important to them. They hardly ever think about what someone else might want or need, because they attach such little importance to that. Because he thinks the entire world revolves around him, he often thinks that others should care primarily about what he desires and what interests him.

When the disturbed character wants something, he doesn’t think about whether it’s right, good, legal, or whether his pursuit of it might adversely affect anyone — he only cares that he wants it. His incessant concern for himself and the things that he desires creates a pattern of thinking which embodies an attitude of indifference to the rights, needs, wants, and expectations of others. This attitude of indifference fosters a complete disregard for social obligation, and in some cases, as Samenow notes, an ardent disdain for and refusal to accept social obligation. As self-centered as he is, the disturbed character believes the world owes him everything and that he owes the world nothing. He has extremely high expectations for everyone else, but feels no concomitant sense that he should subjugate himself to the expectations of others or society in general. His thinking patterns, attitudes, and their resultant behaviors prompt him to lead an extremely self-centered lifestyle.