When bad things happen – like an abusive man tearing apart the fragile fabric of your life –it’s a huge thing to deal with. So, you really don’t want to feel in any way responsible for what happened to you.

A lot of women tell me they couldn’t possibly have seen it coming.  Nobody saw it coming.  Their family didn’t.  And therefore they are without blame – and without protection in a hostile world.

I totally agree with the blame piece.  It can never be stressed enough that you are never to blame for a partner’s bad behavior.  Even if you go back time and time again to a man who’s tried to kill you, you’re not to blame… But you are showing a worrying blindness, and a noticeable failure to own accountability for your own physical and emotional safety.

Usually the women who couldn’t have seen It coming – because he was a Narcissist, say – don’t want to engage too much with me.  They have the Narcissist label to fall back on, which – allegedly – explains everything.  And they have their Innocent Victim Status.

The only problem is this: holding on to your Innocent Victim Status has a price, and that price is that for as long as you hold on to your Innocent Victim status, your wounds CANNOT heal.  (Boy, was I  peeved when I had to face up to that one.  There was a great deal of metaphorical foaming at the mouth, and chewing on the carpet with fury (yuk!), and even head banging against a very hard brick wall.  And then I finally got it: you swallow the pill – which is actually a lot less bitter than constantly rehashing the pain of the relationship – and you have the first glimmerings of emotional freedom, and enlightenment.)

In reality, you can spot an abuser, and/or Narcissist coming, provided you know what to look for.  (And if you’re saying to yourself: “But I shouldn’t have to be on the lookout for a bad man”, I say to you: “Even when you go on a wonderful day out, you will take the trouble to look before you cross the road, won’t you?” In exactly the same way, looking for car crash men should be part of you inbuilt safety programming.)

So, what are you looking for?

The list of things is too long to go into, in depth, here.  (It’s just one of the things I go into in tremendous detail in The 7 Secrets of Successful Relationships Program.)  The short answer is, you’ll see everything you need to know when you look through the eyes of intuition.  (One insane belief I had about my abusive wasband, for years and years, was that he was absolutely guileless, and utterly incapable of lying…  And yet, sometimes when I listened to him talking to other people, what would flash through my mind was: “That sounds pretty credible, for a liar.”  That was my intuition talking.  And it was spot on!!)

Intuition will give you a load of useful information.  And Intuition is very high-handed.  It refuses point blank to explain itself.  It’s a Take-it-Or-Leave-It sort of character.

Because you spend so much of your life justifying yourself to other people, you expect Intuition to do the same thing.  DON’T.

Instead, why don’t you watch and learn?

Intuition can do that Take-it-Or-Leave-It routine, because Intuition is not afraid.

Intuition knows that if you don’t listen, it’s still done its job.  If you don’t listen, that’s about you, where you are in your life, and the beliefs you have.  Did you know your beliefs are, actually, the filters through which you see – or miss – things? 

Unlike Intuition, you make everything about you, and you are absolutely terrified of rejection.  In your world, the only possible reason why people don’t see things through your eyes is because you aren’t good enough.

The fact is: they are not you.  That’s why they don’t listen.

That’s why they don’t feel your feelings.

That’s why you matter less to them even than you do to yourself.

That’s why you are expendable… to them.

That’s why it’s SO important to get a clear sense of who you’re dealing with when you first meet a man.

And that’s more than enough information for one newsletter.  Part 2 follow next week.