Toxic Traits: Why Nobody Loves You, or at Least Not for Long.

It's probably not for the reasons you think. 

Since I'm not trying to write a "Number 1 Bestseller!" for the grocery store check-out line, or trying to be published in Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle, nor yet even Oprah's Magazine, I can afford to be honest, whereas the writers of advice columns and so forth really can't.   And unlike those advisers and comforters, I haven't got any foolproof advice to give you on how to make yourself more physically appealing to whichever sex you wish to attract, on your sexual techniques, or on increasing your confidence in yourself. 

In fact, I think that most of the advice that's out there focuses entirely too much on increasing your self-confidence and your self-esteem at the expense of other, more important resources, such as your self-respect and character. 

The thing is, it's entirely possible that the reason you always end up alone is because---in the current parlance---you  suck.   Or, to paraphrase my favorite character from one of my all-time favorite films, The  Full Monty,  the real obstacle to your success in relationships may be the fact that you're basically a bastard.

If that's the case, I'm afraid I don't know how to fix the problem. The only thing that seems to help people with these particular traits is some sort of external jolt that wakes them up to themselves. Perhaps this note will provide a jolt, or a bit of one. 

I speak as one who at an earlier phase in my career was heir to at least two of them (self-centeredness and vanity).   In other words, I'm not judging, I'm just offering up my own hard-won wisdom. 

IS IT POSSIBLE?  It's possible.  I've been married three times, but it took the wreck of my first marriage and the fairly long-term relationship that followed for me to realize that till I fixed the mess inside my head or my soul (take your pick), I would always, always, always end up alone.

Don't let the fashion industry convince you that it's the extra ten (or twenty) pounds you're carrying, your poor dress sense, or your lack of aplomb in the bedroom.  I'm not saying that those things aren't obstacles to finding someone in the first instance---in the initial stages of our search for a partner, we are all geared by biology to be shallow----but once you find someone who is willing to love you, they aren't the reason that the person stops.   

If you want advice on how to attract someone, by all means turn to the people who have products and programs to sell you to help you overcome whatever hurdles you've put in your own path.  Just know that none of it will do any good at all if you can't back up your shiny window display with some actual goodies.  In other words, read on. 

Here are some fundamental character flaws that will prevent you from ever living a good or happy life or in keeping the love of anyone worth being loved by.  They're not in any particular order, and I wouldn't know how to prioritize them if I tried.  They're all bad and they are all guaranteed to ruin any chance you might have for the sort of contentment that is the primary ingredient of any sort of lasting happiness.

1.  SELF-CENTEREDNESS.   I'm not talking about ordinary selfishness here;  I'll get to that. 

I'm talking about a particular dysfunctional habit of mind that consistently and without question puts you and your wants and needs at the center of things.   It's a description of someone who only looks at the world through a single window:  one that shows what he or she expects, believes, thinks, wants, or feels. 

People who are self-centered may or may not think highly of themselves;  self-centeredness isn't the same thing as vanity (number 2 in this list), though vain people are often self-centered.  Whether or not they think highly of themselves or their own importance, they think of nothing and no one but themselves.  Everything is assessed in terms of how it affects them and their feelings or in what they think or feel about it.   

Genuinely self-centered people often find people who are willing for the sake of money or attention to love them.   People with a "social worker" mentality (meaning people whose goal in life is to make someone else happy so they can feel good about themselves) or with religious inclinations not fulfilled through actual religion (meaning people who need an object of worship) are frequently drawn to self-centered people.

Unfortunately, no amount of "support" or "affirmation" can make a truly self-centered person satisfied by long.   Life has a tendency to batter us and to go on past the moments of fulfillment and peace.  People who can only see the world through the filter of their own preoccupations always end up emotionally isolated and proportionately anxious.  For those people, being loved never fills the void that you create by collapsing on yourself so that you become a black hole of self.  The people you pull into your orbit end up crushed if they don't manage to recognize the peril so they can get away in time; the ones you crush become worthless to you because they can't see any better than you can out of any window but the one that is you looking at you.

I'm sorry for the metaphors;  it's something I saw over and over working for years at a local crisis center:  miserable, isolated, frightened people who were completely incapable of thinking about anything except themselves or about any person or event except as to its affect on them.  Most of them weren't even aware that they were self-centered.  They saw themselves as tiny, insignicant specks in a hostile universe because they couldn't see anything in the universe except themselves.  And it's a big universe.

The more fortunate ones have the resources to fill in the vast reaches of space and time that aren't them with reflections and facsimiles.  You can see them on the television or at the local branch of your favorite organization telling you that they're the top this and the top that;  that they only accept the best;  that they are the king, queen, and jack of everything that matters;  that all the people everywhere who matter are their personal friends; and more of the same.  Instead of listening, look into the blankness behind their eyes.  At some level, and at some stage, even the worst of them eventually realizes that none of this matters.

Sadly, the very fact that they are for themselves the center of the universe usually ensures that they can't see what's wrong with them or their lives.  They don't know that other people don't see the world in this way and they don't know of any other way to look at it. 

I had more than a little of this in myself when I was very young and the only thing that saved me was a series of horrible jolts that forced me to notice---and take an interest in--- the many other things in the universe that weren't about me.

In other words, it usually takes a rude awakening.  And even that doesn't always do it.  One of the most self-centered and for this reason tragically isolated people I ever knew was a woman I knew who died very slowly (over a period of 10 years) of a very slow-progressing illness.  Once she started to die, she abdicated from a life of responsibility and connectedness to others and waited for the people she knew to gather round her bed to support her. 

But 10 years is a very long time and other people have their own responsibilities and connections to attend to.  As time progressed, the slowly dying woman became increasingly bitter and resentful, so she soon ended up really and truly alone, because even her family were afraid to get sucked into her emotional and spiritual collapse.  It was very sad, but if you create a toxic gravitational field around you, it's what happens if you are not in a position to offer people any inducements at all to come into your orbit. 

Even the dying need (for as long as they can) to look outside the window at the world that isn't them  and to be able to see things from the standpoint of people who are not them.  That's a sine qua non for "quality of life."

And that goes double for the woman or man who wants to sustain a relationship with a person who has an actual identity of his or her own. 

2.  VANITY.   By "vanity," I mean the overvaluation of your own qualities and accomplishments at the expense of your ability to regard any qualities and accomplishments that are not your own.  It isn't the same as self-centeredness;  many self-centered people aren't particularly vain---in fact, they may secretly or overtly hate themselves---but all truly vain people are almost by definition self-centered.

There's a lot of this about these days, partly (according to me) because of the insane emphasis during the last 30 or 40 years on the importance of self-esteem and on "confidence." 

Self-esteem ought to mean that you have enough feeling for yourself and how you present yourself to the world to care about doing things well and doing the right thing; but nowadays, it seems to mean "thinking highly of yourself" whether or not this high opinion is backed up by...well, anything at all.   For example, self-esteem should follow from your perception that you routinely behave toward other people with tolerance, kindness, and respect, even if they don't deserve it, and from the certain knowledge that you are truly doing the best you can with respect to everything you undertake.  In other words, it's one of the rewards you win for doing the best you can to be a good person all the hours there are. 

It ought to drop sharply, like your blood sugar, when you fail to behave in a way that justifies it.  The drop in self-esteem then becomes a prompt to try to redeem yourself, to make things right, to fix things you fuck up, and to bravely accept the consequences for the things you can't.  That's how you know that you're a good person.  It's also, by the way, how you win the genuine esteem of other people.

From genuine self-esteem comes genuine self-respect.  From the sort that your well-meaning teachers and parents "built" by praising you repeatedly for "efforts" which you and they know weren't really genuine efforts at all and overpraising you for qualities which aren't fundamental to your happiness (such as your looks, charm, success in school, and so forth) comes an exaggerated sense of your own merits, which leads you to the deadly sin of vanity, which will make you miserable every time you see someone with more of those qualities than you and obsessive about competition.

Vain people make terrible lovers for people who aren't equally vain (and often for people who are) because they can't see past their own wonderfulness to the wonderfulness of their companion.   They expect to have their own merits constantly affirmed and become sulky and demanding when the other doesn't pay ongoing tribute to it.

More nastily, vain people are inclined to be jealous of, and threatened by, any accomplishments or achievements that aren't their own.   If, for example, the person is vain about his or her looks and financial or professional success, he or she will sneer at qualities that aren't those or at people who have those qualities who aren't them. 

If you're vain, it will get in the way big-time when the other person gets fed up admiring you every minute or when he or she wants to be admired for qualities that don't in any way reflect on you or that might even compete with you.   E.g., the "trophy wife" who decides she wants to get an MBA and go into business for herself.   Vain people, being invariably self-centered, are quite incapable of permitting their satellites to move out of their orbit and become independent planets in their own right, even if the satellite's ambition is to be a comparatively small and modest planet.

You may be excessively demanding or inclined to fish constantly for reassurance that you're still the best, the strongest, the sexiest, the smartest, the most beautiful, and on and on.  This is sooner or later extremely irritating to your companion, who might have other interests in life besides you (or wish to have other interests) or who might like to be the recipient of  a little praise and reassurance for a change.

You will also be touchy and easily threatened with respect to those qualities that you value most in yourself, and as a result will inclined to be jealous and competitive and unattractively inclined to sneer at other people your loved one may be inclined to admire.   A woman I knew went off into a panicky fury when her husband remarked that he admired a colleague at work for her charitable endeavors, denouncing the woman's looks, age, professional accomplishments, and motives (both for her charitable endeavors and for having dared to approach the woman's husband for a donation).  Another woman I knew (a lawyer) went batshit crazy when her (lawyer) husband made the mistake of reading her colleague's publication in a prestigious professional publication and saying he thought she'd made some compelling arguments against the validity of  a position both he and his wife had taken in a recent case.

Sooner or later, the other person will either become sick of feeding your vanity and decide he or she would rather have a hamster; or decide that other qualities in which you're notably lacking actually matter more than the ones for which you wish to be prized.  Or he or she may stumble across someone who really does have more of the same than you do. 

The potential for long-range happiness of someone who is vain is therefore very low indeed. 

3.  SELFISHNESS.  Self-centeredness, vanity, and selfishness are a constellation of traits that you often find in the same person, but they don't always go together.   For example, one form of vanity may be overvaluation of one's own unselfish, self-abnegating character or one's heroism in the face of danger.  Such people are not selfish, but their vanity may be extremely irritating regardless.  (On the other hand, we tend to cut people who are vain about their goodness and can back it up with evidence  just a little more slack just because they are so good, however irritatingly conscious of it).

Selfishness means that whenever you have the chance to choose between someone else's interests and your own, you choose you without even stopping to get good and ashamed for doing so.  You feel that you're entitled to whatever it is you're getting by making that choice; and while you may not actually consider the other person to be less entitled, you don't think you need to bother about that. 

The really selfish people I've observed tend to react with surprise at being told that a particular act is selfish because---seriously---it just never crossed the person's mind that anyone else would have acted differently.  You see this all the time on court TV:  pathetically unaware people who are genuinely bewildered when the judge suggests that maybe (to quote Judge Marilyn Milian from The People's Court), just maybe, the mere fact that you could take a few thousand dollars' worth of goods off someone who loves you right before you decide that the relationship isn't for you doesn't mean you should.   "If someone offers me money, I'm not going to turn it down!" they announce proudly because they honestly believe that this is how normal, functioning adults think. 

The thing is, people who think this way----and there are more of them than I'd have thought---may be all right for as long as they don't feel any need to be loved by anyone else.  Looking out for Number 1 works fine so long as there is only one. 

But when you're with someone else and still trying to be Number 1 the whole time, things tend to fall apart sooner rather than later.    Sadly, "selfishness" is a trait that people are often encouraged to develop, as if the only way to avoid having people take advantage of you or to ensure you get your just deserts and collect all your entitlements  is to put yourself first, rather than on an equal par. 

I don't think I've ever been particularly selfish, though I went through a period of being inexcusably self-centered and vain.  I was much too vain and self-centered to wish to be seen as selfish, a fault I'd been brought up to see as petty and shameful. 

I once dated a man for several months who threw a tantrum because, after cooking an entire Thanksgiving dinner for him, I had to lie down on the sofa without eating because I had the flu, thereby "ruining the whole day."   He became childishly furious and sulky every single time he didn't get his way in every matter, however trivial.   For example, he sulked for hours when, on a certain unusually cold winter day (this is Florida) I wore the only sweater I owned when we went out after he'd remarked that the pattern was (in his mind) unsuitably gaudy.   (P.S.  It was a Liz Claiborne cashmere sweater in a black and white diamond pattern that my mother had sent me).  Between his embarrassment at being seen with me and my personal discomfort in the 40 degree temperatures outside, he was all about having me catch pneumonia. 

Selfish people will grab the biggest piece of cake without a thought, knock you down to get to the bargain bin first, or go into meltdown mode if someone else through luck or merit wins or earns an honor, advantage, or recognition that they wanted for themselves.

They'll ask you without blinking an eye to spend hours on the phone with them listening to them whine their way through a crisis; but when your darkest hour arrives, they'll be much to busy to give you so much as five minutes of their time and attention.  Moreover, they'll expect you to understand---after all, they're very busy and important and in demand you are not---and will be indignant and defensive if you complain or deeply wounded if you coldly withdraw from the relationship. 

Selfishness will kill off even the most passionate love if unchecked over time.  Even someone who adores you is going to resent it if you are too preoccupied with your own terribly important problems to pay attention to his or her comparatively minor ones;  or if you consistently demand more than you ever give back. 

People are often selfish without knowing it or without suspecting that other people have noticed it.  Because selfishness is a petty, childish sort of fault, generous people are embarrassed by it, ashamed to have noticed it, and loath to point it out.  It makes such people feel petty themselves by association. 

So the moment when your lover finally decides that he or she is fed up may come as a total shock.  Never will I forget the shock, outrage, and grief of my boyfriend when I finally decided I'd had enough of him.   Yet I'd had more than adequate provocation, just in the two or three weeks before I made the decision, including (but not limited to) the following:

1. He'd decided to go to England to visit a niece even though he knew that because of work pressures I'd be spending Christmas alone, then got furious when I suggested I might visit a girlfriend while he was gone whom he didn't like and threatened to break up with me.
2. He didn't call for the entire holiday even though he knew I was alone because calling would have cost him some money.
3. He accepted a substantial Christmas gift from me, then announced that of course I must understand that he couldn't afford to get me anything because he had to pay for his ticket to England.
4. During the weekend immediately prior to his departure, he accused me of "acting depressed" (I was trying hard not to) over the prospect of spending the holiday on my own and stormed out of the restaurant where we were having dinner, leaving me to pick up the tab.

I realize he was sort of an extreme case and that the fact that I waited for five minutes after seeing what he was like reflects on my judgment.  But I was still in my own eminently unlovable phase, so---truly---he was the best I could dredge up.

But still not good enough.  Nobody should stay with someone who always takes the biggest piece of cake, the comfy chair, the side of the bed nearest the bathroom, the best car,  or the newest computer without sincerely urging you to have them first.  Or who doesn't need to be pressed to take them or sometimes refuse to do so because you deserve some of the goodies too.

4.  STINGINESS.   See the above.  This is never attractive.  It is desperately anaphrodisiac.  It's an offshoot or subcategory of selfishness.  Extravagant people can be as selfish in different ways as stingy ones, but their sort of selfishness isn't as shameful or embarrassing, so people are likely to be more tolerant of it for longer. 

If you really are in a position where you have to count pennies, it can be  mitigated by acts of kindness and generosity not involving money, but the impression that you'd rather keep your money every single time than spend it on someone you like or love is very ugly and reflects poorly on your judgment and character.

Like selfishness, it's a petty, miserable sort of flaw that more generous people won't be able to discuss with you because they are too embarrassed on your behalf to mention it.    You might even tell yourself that no one has noticed.  You might congratulate yourself on the fact that you have a generous friend who buys you presents and pays for your meals and entertainments without expressing any sort of return in kind, even on a small scale. 

Don't kid yourself.  The friend or lover who never gets so much as a birthday card from you because you need to keep your money for yourself has noticed.  That person is saying to himself or herself that it's petty to notice it and that a generous person wouldn't care or expect a return. 

But generous people do care even so and they're disappointed and ashamed when they don't get a return.   Believe it now or believe it later.

And be ashamed.  Because seriously, it's contemptible. 

5.  FINANCIAL IRRESPONSIBILITY/BAD CREDIT.  It's a pity we don't teach children as a required course from junior high school on how to manage money.   So many young people I know and love haven't a notion of how to go about it. 

Most of them recognize that they need to learn.  I'm not talking about them.  I'm talking about people who not only don't try to learn, but don't want to learn because they're quite happy to let someone else pay their bills and provide them with food, entertainment, and other luxuries.  It's not that they're stingy; it's just that they never have any money.

It's a major stumbling block for a hell of a lot of relationships and it's another fault that more stable, reponsible, generous people feel embarrassed about mentioning.   After all, the person doesn't have a job  (or one that pays very well) or any or much money.  It seems churlish and ungenerous to expect them to go without the things you are working to provide for yourself.

It also seems churlish to hold it against them that they have bad credit because they can't afford to pay their debts or to ask yourself why they bought things they couldn't afford to pay for.  After all:  there you are with your laptop, cell phone, television set, and other items purchased with your discretionary income.  Shouldn't you share the wealth with someone you love?

If you're the sort of person who says "yes," the chances are good that you think your lovin' is sufficient compensation for a few material goods.  That, my friend, is the mindset of one of nature's prostitutes (not to knock prostitutes) and sooner of later, the other person is likely to decide that the pleasure of having you as a consort is not sufficient compensation for having to carry you financially.  Someone who can afford to buy your love can also decide that it isn't a sufficient return.  And sooner or later, that's what is going to happen. 

I'm not talking about relationships in which the parties decide together that one person will work to provide the income and that the other will provide other types of support and services and that both will share equally (and responsibly)  in the financial decision-making.  That's one type of partnership.

I'm talking about relationships in which one of the parties is in a position of financial dependence out of general laziness or fecklessness or even misfortune.   In other words, even if it's not your fault, or not completely your fault, living off someone else's bounty isn't going to be good for your relationship no matter how much it's not your fault you're unemployed. 

If you're in the position, you can considerably mitigate the situation by being extremely financially responsible with respect to your partner's money, refusing to accept favors or loans or luxury items, and by making whatever efforts you can to find a way to contribute to the household, even if it's in the form of services.

And you can also show your good faith by paying off existing debts (whatever it takes to do this) or---if you absolutely MUST get the money from your partner----finding some way to begin immediately paying back the money. 

Because, let's face it, not being a financial drain is  a sort of minimal merit in a relationship.

Comments

[damozel]

Words of wisdom! I really understand human nature (as well as politics!)