Suzanne Shaw has seen the light. In an email to Peter Cook, her now ex-husband, she writes, “I’m not sure who’s more psychotic, you or me. You for, well, being you, or me for not seeing what you were…You used me, lied, betrayed, deceived. Knifed my understanding heart.”
Suzanne, stop beating yourself over the head, trying to figure out how the hell you didn’t see that Peter Cook was going to turn out to be “The Prince that Becomes the Beast.” You’re not the first woman he deceived, and you won’t be the last. There’s always someone who needs to learn the lessons you’ve learned, and the tale of good people being deceived by bad ones is as old as time.
In general, the Good-to-a-Fault people are often blindsided by the self-serving narcissists of the world, who I call “The Unfixables.” Good-to-a-Fault people have certain “so-called” good traits that make them easy prey, virtual magnets, for louses, lowlifes, lunatics and liars. These good traits include: seeing the good in everyone; giving everyone the benefit of the doubt; believing that everyone thinks just like they do, and that everyone knows right from wrong; forgiving too easily and too often, without going through the true steps of forgiveness; turning the other cheek; not thinking that anger is a valid emotion, so they stuff it down; believing that it’s their job to fix others; and being loyal to a fault.
What’s a good person to do in a bad, bad, bad, bad world? For one thing, take the blinders off and throw out the rose-colored glasses, so that you stop seeing only the good in people. Learn to see the good, bad, and ugly as well. Come to the place of self-love, in which you love yourself, the way you love or would love your own child. If, in any given circumstance, or if, someone did something terrible to your beloved child, what would you advise this child to do – sue the person, leave the situation, divorce this person? Then that’s exactly what you should do.
Stop making excuses for abuse. I don’t care what their mommy or daddy did to them. People need to grow up and take responsibility for their actions today. Having a dysfunctional childhood doesn’t give a person a right to get away with murder.
And please, relinquish the idea that you can fix others. Yes, you can be a messenger and deliver messages to people, but what they do with those messages is ultimately up to them. It’s the Good-to-a-Fault peoples own form of narcissism, as well-meaning as it may be, to think that they can fix others.
Cindi Sansone-Braff, The Romance Whisperer, is the author of Grant Me a Higher Love, and Why Good People Can’t Leave Bad Relationships. Visit her web site at: www.grantmeahigherlove.com