Your Ex-Boyfriend Will Hate This (7 page)

So where is the justice for the woman who suffers for years under the unending torrent of psychological and emotional cruelty? Unfortunately, the most we can usually hope for is prevention. We cannot get back all that the emotional abuser takes from us, but we can try to shut his kind out of our lives forever. In the next chapter, we will discuss how to identify him—and to keep him the hell away.

Chapter Eleven

Scorning the Sub-Male

The US Department of Justice compiled a survey of sixteen thousand Americans to discover just how pervasive abuse is. They asked men and women to report whether they had ever been the target of physical abuse by a spouse, a boyfriend or girlfriend, a living partner, or a date. Of the women, 22.1 percent said yes.
[xxvi]

The numbers for emotional abuse are, obviously, more difficult to calculate. As we noted in the last chapter, determining a percentage of something that cannot be measured tangibly is nearly impossible. We can’t recover all the things an abuser takes, and we certainly can’t get back all the time he wastes in women’s lives that might otherwise be happy and productive.

If you think of life as a galaxy of time and space for your exploration, the abusers are the black holes. They don’t operate according to the same laws as the rest of your universe. They absorb anything that passes nearby into themselves. They let no light emerge. And, last but not least, they suck.

If that seems to be a glib turn of phrase, know that my intention is never to make light of abuse. I’d like to take the starch out of the abuser himself: that selfish, weak, pathetic, bullying coward pretending to be a man.

People often refer to the best or most dominant man in any group as the “alpha male” (alpha being the first letter in the Greek alphabet). His opposite is the lowest member of any social hierarchy, “the omega male” (named after the last letter in the Greek alphabet). Framed this way, the abuser isn’t even an “omega male.” He meets not even the basic minimum requirements for manhood. He is “sub-male.” He deserves to be treated with scorn and contempt. To that end, let us take him apart, piece-by-piece, by laying bare who he is and what he does.

1) His charm is temporary.

A common misconception about the abuser (aka the “sub-male”) among those of you with limited experience of him is that he a lumbering Neanderthal with no innate charisma or ability to “relate” to women. On the contrary, he does a pretty good impression of both charm and the ability to “relate” to you. Yet, like a dog that learns to walk on its hind legs, the sub-male can’t keep it up for long, since what he does isn’t natural to him. It’s a trick he learned over time to get what he wants. His “treat” isn’t a dog biscuit, of course. The rewards for mimicking this behavior are, first, your trust and affection, and then later, his control over you.

The sub-male is also reminiscent of the “fun” drunks we’ve all known at one time or another. Remember those guys or girls you knew, the ones who always got intoxicated well before you and the rest of your friends? Initially, their inebriation was amusing. They did or said things they wouldn’t normally do or say, and it was entertaining, at least at first. They were what people normally termed “happy” drunks.

The problem emerged, as it always will, when they kept drinking. Slowly but surely, your happy, entertaining friends became morose, sour, obnoxious, and even belligerent. Alcohol revealed not just people who loved a good time, but people with a real problem whose temporary revelry only masked inner demons. They weren’t “fun” anymore. They seemed sad, a little desperate and, to be honest, more than a little pathetic.

The sub-male is just like the “fun” drunk, except that time reveals him, rather than alcohol. Observe his “charm” long enough and you’ll see that it’s not real. It’s a poorly stitched knockoff of the genuine article that falls apart when any pressure is put on it. This pressure manifests as soon as you deviate from what the sub-male wants, because he values control above all else. Try to take even a little of it for yourself and his “charm” falls apart at the seams.

2) His idea of “commitment” isn’t the same as yours.

In the same way that the sub-male “charm” isn’t real, his dedication to “commitment” isn’t either, at least not in any sense you understand. Healthy people (both male and female) view commitment in a relationship as a shared desire for mutual happiness, fulfillment, and love. This guy doesn’t believe in sharing anything except slavish attention to his own wishes.

His idea of “commitment” is similar to his idea of “respect”: complete and utter bullshit.

In her book, Lundy Bancroft lists several tell-tale signs that a man may be an abuser. One of the primary clues is an unnaturally quick move toward “commitment.” It is no secret that most men in this day and age are reluctant to commit. The Rutgers survey of single men confirms this. So it seems refreshing to meet a man who not only doesn’t run from commitment but practically insists upon it.

But Bancroft says to be wary if it happens really quickly. “Watch out if he jumps too soon into planning your future together without taking enough time to get to know you and grow close. It could easily mean that he’s trying to wrap you up tightly into a package that he can own.”
[xxvii]

This doesn’t mean every person who wants to jump into a relationship with you is an abuser. However, this is good advice that boils down into two simple words: slow down.

There are few things in life which benefit from hastiness. Is your house on fire? Is your car being stolen? Is a hurricane or tornado approaching? Are you and/or a loved one facing an imminent bear attack? If so, then by all means make haste. Most things, especially potential new relationships, don’t profit from this kind of wild urgency. Life isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon. So choose whom you run with carefully, because how well you choose has a direct effect on how well you’ll finish.

The sub-male wants to hurry you into a relationship for a reason. In addition to wanting control, he knows as well as we do that time isn’t his ally. He knows that no woman in her right mind would want the real him. He can only accomplish his selfish goals by diverting your attention from reality as early and often as possible, which leads us neatly to our next point.

3) He’s the world’s worst magician.

The sub-male thrives in the same way as a magician—through constant misdirection. As convincing as Criss Angel or David Copperfield may be in a performance, they aren’t conjuring magic. Like all other magicians, most of what they do is simple bait-and-switch. They lead your attention in one direction, while they transform something in the other. The term for this kind of “magical” dexterity is “sleight-of-hand,” sleight meaning “deception.”

Sleight-of-hand is a type of “magic” generally employed at close quarters. Seen from a distance, it’s not difficult to notice that, when the magician feigns putting the quarter in one hand, he’s dropping it into his pocket with the other. Only up close can you be fooled into thinking he made it disappear.

The abuser operates in the same way. None of his “tricks” are innovative or even terribly complicated. Seen from a distance, everything he does is obvious. But seen from the tight proximity of a relationship, it’s not hard to be fooled. As we discussed, his “charm” is essentially all an elaborate “trick,” a con game he has performed so many times that he’s good enough to give it the illusion of reality. His screwed-up ideas about “respect,” “love,” and “commitment” operate in the same way. You enter with certain sensible, common ideas about the meaning of these words, but after receiving a steady stream of the sub-male’s lies, misdirection, emotional manipulation, and intimidation, his carefully constructed mistruths begin to look real.

4) He wants you to be isolated and dependent.

Maybe you’ve been fortunate to avoid the sub-male thus far in your dating life. If so, congratulations. You’re one of the lucky ones. Surely, however, you know a friend or family member who has dated one. I bet that, over the length of her relationship, you saw your friend less and less. Perhaps you and everyone else you know found the guy to be such an obnoxious creep that you avoided him like a nasty virus.

Though you’re pretty sure that being an asshole isn’t contagious, you didn’t want to risk catching it from him, either.

You shouldn’t feel guilty for growing apart from your friend or loved one because of her terrible boyfriend. If you hadn’t drifted away, the sub-male would’ve gladly pushed you. Isolation is one of his favorite and best-used tools. The last thing he wants while he’s systematically breaking down and then controlling his latest victim is a witness, especially one with the objectivity to see clearly everything that he’s doing.

Once the sub-male has his girl isolated, it’s a cinch to convince her that she can’t live without him. With no pesky friends or family around to interfere, he happily becomes her surrogate for these lost relationships, all the while telling her that he’s the one who actually cares about her.

“It’s your (mother/father/brother/sister/friend) who abandoned you”, says the sub-male. “I’m still here. I’m the one who really loves you.”

The lesson here is to beware the man who hates all your friends. Even if he’s not an abuser, he’s eventually going to force a stand-off, and no one should have to choose between the people she loves. People who truly love you welcome your friends and family (including those who secretly get on their nerves a little). They respect your feelings for these people and the roles they have played in making you who you are.

5) He doesn’t care about your orgasm.

This doesn’t mean the sub-male can’t get you off. On the contrary, for women who like an authority figure in public and/or the bedroom, this guy can be just what they need, albeit temporarily. I mean that your orgasm is incidental to him. Either he uses it as a tool to gain control over you, or he pays no attention to it whatsoever.

The sub-male may seem very attentive to your needs in the beginning, but his intentions are purely selfish. Few people are more narcissistic than the sub-male, so making you climax feeds his inflated sense of self-worth and adds to his deluded feelings of entitlement. While you’re marveling at what a caring and considerate lover he is, the sub-male is quietly filling a ledger of what you “owe” him, a list that also includes your orgasms.

His care in the bedroom is just another trick and, unfortunately for you, he’ll cease to bother performing it once he feels he has you under his thumb. From that point forward, the focus will overtly become what it has secretly always been—him and his pleasure. Not only will he cease to be attentive, but he’ll become more and more demanding. He may even use emotional and physical intimidation to force you into sex, or shame you when you aren’t in the mood.

6) He is an absolute hypocrite.

The sub-male really reveals his rotten core by constantly punishing you for the very behaviors that he unabashedly engages in. You don’t “respect” him around your friends? He mocks and belittles you in front of them, which in the end makes him look as petty as he actually is and causes you great embarrassment. He decides that you “flirted” with some random guy at a business function you attended together? He cheats on you and tells you that you “deserved it.” You don’t keep a clean enough house (the sub-male is often proudly chauvinistic) for him? He smashes a plate of food all over the kitchen floor, and you get the pleasure of cleaning it up—typically after he has walked through the mess.

Do you see a pattern here?

It comes down to this. There is only one set of rules for acceptable behavior in a good relationship. They’re mutually established and agreed upon, and both parties adhere to them equally. None of this “do as I say, not as I do” nonsense. If he doesn’t want to live by those rules, but expects you to follow them without exception, show him the door.

In the next chapter, we will discuss just how and when these “rules” are set and what they should always include.

Chapter Twelve

Their Way and the Highway

Earlier we discussed the comparison of relationships to a “game,” which you often hear in the early stages of courtship in some variation of the following: if you want to land the right guy, you have to play the game.

This oft-heard statement is equal parts dumb and offensive. First off, “landing” a man is a shameless insult to you as a smart, loving, and desirable human being. This idea connotes entrapment (definition: land v. “to catch or capture”), which is apt if you’re dealing with a mouse in your kitchen, but less so when looking for a suitable companion. You aren’t “trapping” anyone into being with you, because you don’t need to resort to cheap tactics to find love. This isn’t a hunt, and (one hopes) at no point will firearms be necessary.

The second problem with this perpetually repeated aphorism is the “game” it refers to. The problem can be stated simply: nothing about the “game” is yours to control.

Two of the most popular books on “dating” (I use the word loosely, as their description more closely resembles a kind of semi-cordial gender war) in the last twenty years present a kind of his-n-hers guide to romantic dysfunction—
The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists
by Neil Strauss and
The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right
by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider. The first, published in September of 2005, is a journalistic exposé of a secret society of “professional seducers” known as the “Seduction Community.” It sounds similar to a secret society of villains in a Sherlock Holmes novel, only less villainous and more comically ridiculous. In addition to exchanging tactics in Internet chat rooms and through newsgroups, the SC (as I’ll refer to them as from here on, since the real name is so goddamned silly) also meets in study clubs all over the world called “lairs.”

To quote Nathan Rabin, “I am so not making this shit up.” In researching the core values of the world’s goofiest modern cabal, I came across a website named
The Attraction Forums
. I won’t mention the address; I don’t want to give it credence, even if I’d love to see you all descend en masse and crush it beneath the weight of your absolutely righteous indignation. The site describes itself as the “free pickup, dating advice, and message board for men!”

The dopily enthusiastic punctuation is theirs, not mine. Should you ever decide to run it down, you’ll find a treasure trove of accidental comedy. Never has so much casual misogyny been expressed with such poor grammar, spelling, and syntax. When I registered for the site (for research purposes only, I assure you), the anti-spam question it asked was, “What is two plus five plus one?”

A gathering of the Algonquin Round Table this isn’t. When I clicked into the forums for the first time, I was met with these charming newsgroup subject headings:

“Y’all think this bitch is playing games?”

“How do I re-friend a girl on Facebook without my girlfriend finding out?”

“What’s the best excuse for cheating?”

“Seduction is like cold calling…”

“How to run a winning text game…”

“The reason all women are game players.”

“Best advice for having sex with strippers.”

And my personal favorite:

“Limp dick leads to relationship!” (Again, the enthusiastic punctuation is theirs, not mine.)

If that’s not enough to bring your blood to a steamy simmer, you should hear the philosophy of these would-be Lotharios. Building on ideas originally postulated by a former comedy writer, Ross Jeffries, in his book
How to Get the Women You Desire into Bed
, these “PUAs” (short for “Pick Up Artists”—like I said, they aren’t the cleverest lot) employ a combination of couched insults, double entendres, and juvenile Jedi-style mind control. In the
New York Times
article that inspired his book, Strauss describes one of the PUAs’ primary tools, the “neg”:
[xxviii]

“Neither a compliment nor an insult, a neg holds two purposes: to momentarily lower a woman’s self-esteem and to suggest an intriguing disinterest.”

In the article, Strauss gives a few examples of the “neg”:

“Nice nails. Are they real? No? Oh, they look nice anyway. Is your hair real?”

Apparently, questioning the authenticity of various parts of your body is a fantastic way to get you into bed, since the PUAs of the world swear by it. They also like to practice a bastardized version of what is called “neurolinguistic programming,” the use of language to encode a particular response. One technique involves using phrases that are homonyms of more suggestive ones—for instance, using the phrase “your mind” sounds like “you’re mine.” Jeffries refers to this as an example of a “weasel phrase,”
[xxix]
one intended to subconsciously create positive associations of the PUA in the listener. This strikes me as a particularly apt use of animal metaphor, as it refers to a species of vermin.

Another method is to ask questions intended to incite a kind of sexual sense memory. One example he cites is, “Have you ever been really attracted to someone?” The idea is that, by describing an occasion when you were extremely attracted to a guy, you’ll unwittingly conjure up the same level of attraction for the PUA who is asking the question.

Starting to notice a pattern here? At their core, these men don’t even consider you to be a human being. To them, you’re no better than Pavlov’s dog, blindly salivating whenever the bell is rung.

As a guy—hell, as a human being—I’d love to say that this contemptible view of women is unpopular. But the sad truth is that Strauss’ book wasn’t only an international bestseller, it’s also the source of an upcoming movie and is being incorporated into modern corporate sales techniques. (An article on SalesHQ.com named it one of the “20 Best Business and Sales Books.”) Strauss even operates his own school for teaching pickup artistry.

Strauss’ school is called the
Stylelife Academy
, presumably because
Pathetic Douchebag Academy
was already taken.

The other aforementioned popular dating book,
The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right
by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, is in its own way just as alarmingly retrograde as Strauss’ book. It refers to “capturing” a man right in the title. Love and relationships are reduced to little more than a game of cat and mouse. You aren’t finding the right guy who shares your interests, values, and passions, and treats you with love and respect. You’re ensnaring an unwilling victim like a bear in trap jaws.

The first of the thirty-five “rules” validates the “animal trap” metaphor immediately:

Be a “Creature” Unlike Any Other.
[xxx]

This is a variation of one of Strauss’ tactics: stand out as much as possible. In the world of the PUAs, it’s called “peacocking” (the animal metaphors just keep piling up), and the tactic is pretty much the same for both genders. Urbandictionary.com defines “peacocking” as follows:

“The action or actions exhibited in the beginning stages of courting. These actions are typically only temporary and exist during ‘the chase’ of a mate, much like a male peacock displaying the fruitful colors of his feathers to capture the attention of a mate.”
[xxxi]

There is that word again, “capture.” It’s repeated in different variations so often in these two books (and countless others on the subject of dating) that it makes courtship sound like the most devious and depressing hunting expedition in the history of humankind. Notice that the word “temporary” is another key component. You don’t acquire a mate through your innate worth in their scenarios; you stage an elaborate and unsustainable scam that some poor sucker falls for. You’ll never learn how to create a healthy and enduring relationship, but you’ll learn how to become a better and more efficient con artist.

Reading through the other “rules” offered by Fein and Schneider, you’ll find absolutely nothing to help you find real compatibility or mature adult love. Instead, you’ll get advice like this:

Don’t talk to a man first (and don’t ask him to dance).
[xxxii]

Don’t stare at men or talk too much.
[xxxiii]

Don’t call him and rarely return his calls.
[xxxiv]

Don’t open up too fast.
[xxxv]

The advice is pretty clear, ladies. Shut up or lose your man forever. In fact, most of the rules tell you what not to do. For a book written by women, it certainly has little faith in your decision-making process. Try some more:

Don’t meet him halfway or go dutch on a date.
[xxxvi]

Don’t accept a Saturday night date after Wednesday.
[xxxvii]

Don’t see him more than once or twice a week.
[xxxviii]

No more than casual kissing on the first date.
[xxxix]

Dating sounds like a barrel of laughs, does it not? This book should come with a Catholic school nun to slap your hand with a ruler every time you fall out of line. But that’s not the most offensive thing about
The Rules
. No, that honor falls to the bald-faced and galling chauvinism the book wholeheartedly endorses. For example:

Don’t tell him what to do.
[xl]

Let him take the lead.
[xli]

Don’t expect a man to change or try to change him.
[xlii]

Be honest but mysterious.
[xliii]

Bind your feet like a geisha, and sit prostate before him as if he were an ancient Sumerian god.

Okay, I made the last one up, but you get the picture. Daddy runs the show, and you’ll do what he says, when he says, if you know what’s good for you. After the first few chapters, there are no surprises, just variations on a theme. Actually, the most surprising thing about the book is the year it was published—1995. Yes, twenty-three years after Roe v. Wade and seventy-five years after women got the vote, a dating book written by women tells you to speak when spoken to, keep your head down, and do what your man wants you to do.

I’ve not yet mentioned another of my favorite “rules.” It occurs near the end of the list, and it accentuates just how rickety a foundation the whole book is built upon.

Don’t discuss the rules with your therapist.
[xliv]

Know why they don’t want you to mention all this malarkey to your therapist? Well, your therapist is a licensed mental health practitioner who would take one look at these codes for female living and declare them to be the ravings of a madman. There isn’t a responsible psychologist or licensed therapist on the North American continent who would endorse such an unequal, unfair, and male-dominated rulebook. If your therapist does endorse this malarkey, demand to see his or her credentials immediately. It’s quite possible that he or she received them in a sleazy alley that more often specializes in animal tranquilizers and murder-for-hire.

One of the final “rules” in the book reads:

Do the rules, and you’ll live happily ever after!
[xlv]

If the authors were being honest, however, it would read:

Do the rules, and you deserve what you get!

Like I said, folks, this and
The Game
are two of the most popular dating books published in your lifetime. Both promote a fervent belief that your place is either on your back or in the kitchen. If that doesn’t convince you that their advice is ridiculous, you might as well put down this book and pick up one of theirs.

But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Let’s all agree that any rules to live by should be set by you. In the next chapter, we’ll discuss how to set them, thereby guaranteeing you the happiness that will be yours to enjoy.