In other words, you take the crook at face value. You make no assumptions You translate nothing. You hear exactly what he's said. You see the gun. And you believe this is, indeed, a stick-up. Then, you act accordingly.
So, why don't we do that in our romantic relationships?
Allow me to use myself as an example again. (There's no sense in dragging my friends into this.) My last relationship was with a man I cared quite a bit about. I hadn't seen him for several years, but once we connected again all those old feelings came rushing back. To me, he was perfection walking. He was smart, extremely well-spoken, an awesome listener, sexy as hell and had a deep voice that would have James Earl Jones questioning whether this man wasn't a long-lost lovechild. Whoo! ( 'Scuse me while I wipe drool off the keyboard.)
But things had changed for him in the years we hadn't seen each other. And while my heart picked up where it had left off, he couldn't do that. His life was NOT the same. He had left his wife, was in the final stage of divorce (one signature away) and had become a single father to three small children (two daughters and a son) all under 4 years old! And while he was happy to hear from me again, and confessed that he shared a mutual attraction with me, he said something I should've paid more attention to:
"I don't trust women."
Yeah, I heard him. But I didn't really LISTEN to him. I didn't SEE the loaded gun. My inner "denialogue" went a little something like this: "Of course he doesn't trust women. Poor thing -- I don't blame him one bit. I wouldn't trust women either. But I KNOW he trusts ME. I mean, it's me...it's Mish! How could he not trust Mish? It's ME! I'm trustworthy and he trusts me. He MUST be talking about all those other women in the world because I just KNOW he ain't talking about me!"
Child, I was in complete denial about the fact that this man had told me the truth. He didn't lie to me. He told me how he felt and I immediately excluded myself from the group of women he was obviously speaking of. Because after all, I'm the fantastic, fabulous MISH!!! (Give me a moment to deflate my head and my ego.)
What I'm saying here is when someone tells you who they are, believe them!
And while this great guy never behaved as if he didn't want to see me or be with me, it's peculiar that he was warning me to stay away from him from the very beginning. I'm not even sure he recognized that he'd done it. He said it so quickly as we were chatting about what had happened in our respective lives over the years. It was just a part of his rhetoric.
"I got married...blah, blah, blah...we had kids...so on and so on and so on...she cheated...blah, blah, blah...I took her back...yada, yada, yada...she cheated again...etc, etc, etc...I left her and moved to my own apartment....and I don't trust women," he said. Then we rolled right into the next subject. No one skipped a beat.
The lesson here is I can't blame him for how it all ended. He told me who he was very early on -- he was a man who did not trust women. Plain and simple. No translation needed. Roger that!
So, I say to you the next time you meet a new person and you're chatting and having a good time and enjoying all the "newness," listen to what you're being told. If a man jokes about hitting his last girlfriend and breaks out into a "what-had-happened-was" speech, you can choose to re-enact the battles of Ike and Tina or run! If your new lady tells you she has issues with commitment, you can choose to see her through it or decide it's too much work.
Learn to hear what people are telling you, and next time you find yourself in a relationship "stick-up" you'll recognize a gun when you see one.
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