Have you ever found yourself saying the following;
“Dangerous men usually have professions that would seem obviously “dangerous” to an outsider, such as bodyguard or a dealer. It is fairly easy to detect a dangerous man by his career.”
“Dangerous men aren’t firemen, social workers, teachers, or pastors.”
“Dangerous men must come from dangerous families. You should be able to look at his family and tell if he is dangerous.”
“Dangerous men look dangerous. They do not look clean cut, handsome, conservative, or classy.”
“A dangerous man will only come into my life once. If I’ve already dated one, I probably won’t date another.”
“Dangerous men won’t spend a lot of time getting to know me. If I have talked to a man for weeks by phone or in person but haven’t yet dated him, he isn’t a dangerous man.”
“Dangerous men don’t go to church, volunteer, help their mothers, or give to charities. If he is involved in community or religious activities, he isn’t a dangerous man.”
“Dangerous men don’t disclose anything about themselves. This man has told me all about himself, so he couldn’t be hiding anything.”
All the above statements are false. Dangerous men do all the above and more! Let's talk about what I learnt in my light bulb moment.
Dangerous men come in all sorts of packages, from all types of backgrounds and families, from all lines of work. It's important for women to understand this because we remain unsafe if we categorize dangerous men simply as people we “would not be attracted to.” The reality is that at some time in our lives, most women have dated a type of man that would categorize as dangerous.
I define a dangerous man as any man who hurts a woman emotionally, physically, sexually, spiritually, or financially. Dangerous men have wreaked havoc and caused pain in many women’s lives. For many of us, it took significant time to heal from the experiences. We may or may not have learned from them. We may have failed to gain enough information and lessons from our experiences with dangerous men to keep us from repeating the pattern with yet another dangerous man. It is not uncommon for women to date as many as four or five dangerous men before they figure out their own personal patterns and respond by choosing differently the next time. But in the meantime, each painful experience with a dangerous man leaves its emotional mark on a woman’s life. And perhaps worse, each painful experience with a dangerous man unfortunately sets a woman up to date more dangerous men if she fails to recognize her specific patterns and stop the cycle of choosing dangerously. An encounter with a dangerous man may sometimes lead to the death, like we have witnessed in the recent femicide in Kenya.
This post isn't about taking away accountability from dangerous men. It's about inspecting your past and present relationships so that you can learn every possible insight from them. I hope this post will help you examine the type of men you have chosen and why you have chosen them. Let it guide you in developing a personalized “do-not-date” list, compiled from an analysis of your past mistakes.
You may have experienced the same dangerous relationship patterns which makes it harder for you to be feminine, open and trusting. As a part of healing from your past dangerous relationships and making new choices for the future, let's identify the types of dangerous men so you can spot them before you get involved.
THE PERMANENT CLINGER
He is a needy, victim-based man who will give a woman a lot of attention in return for all his needs being met all the time. He fears rejection above all else, so he is jealous of other people in your life. He will ask you to give up your outside life and make your world revolve around him. He will try to convince you that he has been wounded and that you can “heal him with your love” if you will focus only on him. He may threaten to be “wounded forever” if you don’t do as he asks, or he may use guilt to try to keep you in a relationship you no longer want to be in.
THE PARENTAL SEEKER
He wants a parent, not a partner. He needs you “so much.” In fact, he needs you to run his life for him. He has a difficult time doing adult things like working, completing chores, making decisions, being consistent, or paying his bills. He may give you lots of attention, but he will function very poorly in the real world.
THE MENTALLY ILL MAN
He can look normal on the outside, but after you’ve dated him for a while it becomes obvious that “something is amiss.” Most women lack the training to know exactly what is wrong, but depending on his diagnosis he may be able to convince you to stay and “love him into wellness.” He may hold you emotionally hostage by telling you that “everyone” leaves him, or by threatening self-harm if you leave.
THE MAN WITH THE HIDDEN LIFE
He has undisclosed other lives that might include women, same-sex partners, children, jobs, wives, life-threatening addictions, criminal behavior, disease, or other histories that remain unrevealed to you for the long term or until you have been in the relationship a while and discover them yourself.
THE EMOTIONALLY UNAVAILABLE MAN
He is married, separated, engaged, dating someone else, or “just breaking up” with someone. He usually presents himself as “currently unhappy with” or “not quite out of” a relationship, but he is willing to have you on the side. Another type is the man who is preoccupied with his career, educational goals, hobbies, or other interests, to the exclusion of ever having a true interest in a long-term relationship. With the emotionally unavailable man, there is always a reason why he can’t fully commit to you, but he’s usually happy to keep stringing you along. After all, the situation is still convenient for him as long as you’re willing to keep seeing him or sleeping with him on a “casual” basis despite the fact that he can’t or won’t get involved in a serious relationship with you.
THE ADDICT
Many women do not recognize up front that he has an addiction, or they mistake it for his being a “fun-loving guy” who just wants to “party.” Addictions can include sex, pornography, drugs, alcohol, thrill-seeking behaviors, gambling, food, relationships, work, perfection, outside approval, and achievements.
THE ABUSIVE OR VIOLENT MAN
He starts out as very attentive and giving. But then he controlling, blaming, shaming, harming, perhaps hitting. Women who think abuse comes only in the form of a physical assault may miss warning signs of other kinds of abuse. Abuse can be verbal, emotional, spiritual, financial, physical, or sexual, or it can be abuse of the system to get his way.
THE EMOTIONAL PREDATOR
He has a sixth sense about how women operate. He knows how to play to a woman’s woundedness. Although his motives might be to prey on a woman’s financial or sexual vulnerabilities (to name just a couple), he’s called the “emotional” predator because he hunts for his victims by targeting their emotional vulnerabilities. He can sense women who have recently been dumped, or who are hurt, lonely, or sexually needy. He is a chameleon and can be whatever any woman needs him to be. He is very tuned in to a woman’s body and eye language as well as to the subtle messages behind her words. He can pick up on hints about her life and turn himself into what she wants in the moment.
Have you had any experience with any of these categories of dangerous men?
Many dangerous men fall into more than one category. For instance, some addicts are also violent. Clingers and seekers almost always have interwoven mental-illness issues. Addicts are typically emotionally unavailable. Emotional predators usually have hidden lives, because hiding what they do is half the fun. Many combinations are possible, and some are fairly predictable. Familiarize yourself with all eight categories even if you have not dated men from every category. You will want to have this knowledge for the future.
And here are some red flags to be on the look out for as well;
You feel uncomfortable about something they have said or done, and the feeling remains.
You often feel mad or scared, or they remind you of someone else you know with a serious problem.
You wish they would go away, you want to cry, you want to run away from them.
You dread their phone calls.
You are often bored with them.
You think no one else in their life understands them.
You think no one else in their life has ever really loved them/helped them.
You think you are the only one who can help/love/understand them.
You have the urge to “love them into emotional wellness,” if that were possible.
You think or wish you could help them “change” or “fix” their life.
You feel bad about yourself when you are around them.
You only feel good about yourself when you are with them.
You find your identity in your relationship with them.
You feel they want too much from you.
You are emotionally tired from them; you feel that they “sucks the life out of you.”
Your value system and their are very different, and it is problematic.
Your past and their are very different, and the two of you have conflicts over it.
You tell friends you are “unsure about the relationship.”
You feel isolated from other relationships with friends and family.
You think they are too charming or a little “too good to be true.”
You feel in the wrong because they are always right and go to great lengths to show you they are right.
You are uncomfortable because they continually say the know what is best for you.
You notice they need you too frequently, too much, or too intensely.
You wonder if they really understand you or just claim to.
You are uncomfortable because they have touched you inappropriately or too soon.
You make excuses and don’t allow others to be around them because of what they may think of them.
They push you early on in the relationship to disclose information about your past.
Although you don’t believe it, they claim to feel an immediate connection with you (a sign of false intimacy).
You see them pushing too quickly to get sexually involved with you, and you find yourself willing to abandon your boundaries with them.
You see them as a chameleon; you notice they can change to please whoever is in their presence.
You notice they mostly talk about themself, their plans, their future.
You have heard them confess to a current or previous drug addiction.
You have information about major relationship problems that he handled poorly. For example, they have confessed that they have been violent in their past relationship or uses drugs or alcohol when stressed. You know they have multiple children by multiple partners, are inconsistent in paying child support, or rarely sees their children.
You find yourself accepting them “for now,” even though you have plenty of red flags that would help you terminate the relationship if you paid attention to them.
You make excuses for why you are dating him.
You make excuses for his character and minimize his behavior.
Your friends or family don’t want to be around him.
How many red flags did you mentally check in relation with your current relationship?
The information in this post is an extract from the Femininity Journal, a workbook I thoughtfully designed to inspire growth and healing in women. In it you will get thought provoking prompts that invite women to personalized healing, meditations and introspection. It's a safe space to address topics like love, female friendships, dangerous men, self-care, unhealthy and poisonous conditioning of women, your relationship with your mother, body, and other women.
This workbook is designed to help you study and learn from your patterns of self-care, giving and receiving love, dating, and relating with friends, family and yourself. It will also help you heal, stop suppressing the divine feminine, and release limiting beliefs, deepen their self-awareness and reclaim their authentic self, as well as rediscover the joy of divine femininity. To order, message me through WhatsApp on +254708 649 088
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