Although we are a married bunch here at Girlfriendbooks, we still clearly remember our single days. Luckily, we managed, without this book, to marry non “dangerous” men; although now that we reflect, we are quite certain a few of these “dangerous” men crossed our paths.  (It definitely explains one heartbreak in college.)

To our single girlfriends, do yourself a favor, and read this book.  This is not your average self-help.  Sandra Brown knows from years of experience what she is talking about.  She could save you from intense therapy, or, possibly, save your life.

We had the opportunity to ask Sandra a few questions recently.  Below is a transcript of our interview:

gfb: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to write this book?
sb: I began my career 20+ years ago working with pathologically disordered people. From that, I saw the enormous damage done to their relationships, children, and just about anyone else that tried to help them. The unifying theme was certain personality disorders that seemed to perpetrate the most ‘inevitable harm’ in relationships although their disorders came largely masked as other issues. One night while I was running group at a DV shelter the woman was in the shelter for the 8th time that year. I asked her what we could teach her that would help her change her patterns. She said “How to Spot a Dangerous Man Before I Get Involved With Him.”  I went home and wrote the book.  The 8 types of Dangerous Men I identified are largely related to the chronic personality disorders that cause the most harm in relationships. I repackaged the names for easier identification in relationships.

 
gfb: In the book, you identify 8 types of dangerous men: The Permanent Clinger, The Parental Seeker, The Emotionally Unavailable Man, The Man with the Hidden Life, The Mentally Ill Man, The Addict, The Abusive or Violent Man, and The Emotional Predator. Knowing what you know through your work, if you had to pick one, which one would you least like to get involved with and why?
sb: Because I tried to largely align the Dangerous Man types with certain highly dangerous and severe personality disorders, the one at the top of the danger list would be The Emotional Predator because that one uses the charming and persuasive sociopaths/psychopaths as it’s model. Psychopathy is one of the most dangerous disorders related to ‘inevitable harm’ in relationships and has a 0% treatment outcome. What’s more dangerous than that?   

 
gfb:  We’d like to ask you a few questions about one of the most common dangerous men – The Emotionally Unavailable Man.  Why, despite history repeating itself over and over, particularly with married men, do women continue to fall prey to men like this?
sb: One of the things The Institute has gone on to study is the temperament traits (the emotional hard-wiring) of women who have gotten into the most disordered (ie, pathological) love relationships. The astounding find was that the women most likely to end up in these relationships (as well as the other 7 dangerous man types) were those who had severely elevated temperament traits in bonding/attachment, tolerance, empathy, trust, and loyalty. These traits contribute to a woman’s ability to trust (even when evidence to the contrary exists), the ability to bond deeply to someone who betrays them, the ability to tolerate very high levels of emotional pain, and the ability to be empathic about all the sad stories of woe in his life. Women who do not have elevated traits like these are women who don’t get involved with men like these and if they do, they kick them to the curb quickly. I wanted to study and find the REASON why women were attracted to, tolerant of, and empathic with, the most disordered and harmful partners. Her temperament traits (covered in the book which followed this one, Women Who Love Psychopaths) is the first research geared to studying why women end up with obvious betrayers.  

 
gfb:  Can a woman ever change an emotionally unavailable man? 
sb: All of The Institute’s books and products help teach Public Pathology Education which explains the permanent disorders associated with some mental health issues and what they look like and do within relationships. The Emotionally Unavailable man may or may not be able to change. It depends WHAT ELSE is also wrong with him. If he indeed does have one of the severe personality disorders along with his unfaithfulness, he will have almost 0% chance for the ability to sustain positive change (read our chapter on Neuroscience in Women Who Love Psychopaths to find out what is wrong with their hard-wiring). If he is one who is unfaithful but does not have one of the personality disorders, his chance for authentic and sustained change is higher. Those chronic unfaithful types usually have a personality disorder fueling the infidelity.

gfb:  When emotionally unavailable men have affairs, can they be in love with their wife and their affair partner?  Or, are they incapable of love at all? Is the affair partner simply a distraction from having to be intimate with their wife?
sb: Those with personality disorders have bonding/attachment issues. They typically have shallow and superficial (although intense) attachments and relationships. It’s why they can move on quickly from one to the next without being emotionally damaged from the ending of one relationship. So that would cause one to ask, “Are we talking about the same concepts of love and attachment when we are looking at the highly disordered person’s ‘love’ relationship.”  I would say no–they don’t have the same bonding which is why the woman is hurt because his shallow attachment allows him to move on without guilt or conscience. These are also types that need high levels of distraction so they are actually looking for distraction. Not away from intimacy but distraction in general. 

 
gfb:  Let’s move on to The Emotional Predator.  After reading through the chapter about these charming and seemingly loving men, we wondered – how is a woman to tell the difference between this man and a man who really loves her?
sb: Women who have ended up with the Dangerous Man types have probably been swept up in the typical pathological approach which is to ’sweep them off their feet’ and have ‘love bombing’ where the woman is ‘consumed’ by him 24/7 through over and rapid contact. Women end up moving in or marrying these types quickly on his insistence. Women who have had these pathological relationships are those who need a different approach to dating and who must date casually and slowly so she can respond to her red flags and not bond so quickly given her elevated trait of bonding. Her ability to read him correctly is not as highly evolved as other women who don’t end up in these relationships. These are women who need longer term dating with men so they can have time over a long period to test out his motivations. Other women who have not been in these relationships seem to be able to respond better to their red flags and follow up on cues and clues. These women tend to minimize, rename, or deny their red flags and so can’t tell when someone is conning them. They need more professional assistance in their next relationship and help retuning into their red flags and reading motivation below the superficial presentation.     

 
gfb:  How do these men become such good liars?
sb: Most people know what ‘pathological lying’ is however most people don’t know that the term is also associated with pathological disorders such as the severe personality disorders of Narcissism, Anti-socials, and Psychopaths. Those are the types that are easy liars and have little physiological reactions to lying so people can’t tell they are lying.  

 
gfb:  With regard to The Addict – you write that men can be addicted to many things, not only drugs or alcohol, but work, pornography, approval, even relationships.  Can you talk a little about how these men often “swap” addictions based on their current circumstances?
sb: Addictions are a complicated web of emotional, social, biological, and physical reactions. All addicts do not have personality disorders but almost all severe personality disordered people have addictions. In their attempts to mask their behaviors, they will often stop one addiction to please their partner or save their job. However, since both addiction and severe personality disorders are highly influenced by neuro abnormalities related to impulse control problems, they will quickly move to something else either substance oriented or behaviorally because of the poor impulse control. 

 
gfb: Referring to the list, which type of dangerous men have the ability to change? Which ones usually never change, despite therapy?
sb: The inability to grow to any authentic emotional or spiritual level, the inability to sustain consistent positive change over time, and the inability to develop insight how one’s negative behavior effects others has more to do with the severe personality disorders than it does the actual name of the dangerous man category. Any of those categories can and often do reflect one of the severe personality disorders. In those cases, consistent life time change is very unlikely. The issue that always determines a person’s treatment potential has more to do with the severe personality disorders than it does anything else. Therefore, any of the categories could have a man with one or more of the severe personality disorders. In the cases of The Emotionally Unavailable or The Addict, it’s possible they wouldn’t have the highly unchangeable personality disorder. However, infidelity is highly associated with severe personality disorders as is addiction. So it would be hard to say. The issue that helps us identify if a person has these disorders is a look over their lifetime and if they have enduring patterns of behavior that have not consistently changed. That’s the best determiner of probable pathology.    

 
gfb:  Based on your experience, which type of man is the hardest to extract yourself from?
sb: The Emotional Predator usually because that category represents psychopathy, sociopathy or narcissism which are like gorilla glue in a relationship. They have an intensity that women attach deeply too, especially these women who already have deep bonding and attachment traits. They also don’t go away so it’s very hard for the women to get away from a boomerang.    

 
gfb:  You write that often, men are several different kinds of “dangerous”. Which combinations are the most common, and why?
sb: Severe personality disorders have common traits which includes addictions, infidelity, conning/lying which equate to The Addict, The Emotionally Unavailable Man, The Hidden Life Man, and The Emotional Predator. Most women say they see 5 or 6 of the 8 men typologies in their men making most of these guys a ‘Combo Pack.’  

 
gfb:  Do you have some advice for women out there who are recovering from a relationship with a dangerous man – maybe the three most important things you tell clients?
sb: Get help and support. These are not the normal ‘bad break up’ relationships. The attachment to these men are intense and most women have difficulty breaking it on their own so get the help you need the first time so you don’t keep going back and re-enforcing the intensity of the bond.

Get education. Part of what happened is you did not spot pathology and do not realize the risk factors you have in your own temperament traits that work against you in your patterns of selection. The more you know, the more you can spot in yourself and others.

Get accountability. The next time you get out there, someone needs to be watching your patterns of selection and your relationship dynamics. We heal in community, we don’t heal in isolation. Much like 12 Steps has a sponsor, these women need an Accountability Partner that is a witness to the next relationship that can give her feedback if she spots pathology that the woman is missing or minimizing. The more relationships she has been in the longer she needs to work on herself before beginning again. 

 
gfb:  Could you tell us about your institute?
sb: We provide education and support services to women leaving relationships with narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths. We offer phone counseling, 1:1 counseling, retreats, and products related to Pathological Love Relationships. We are the only organization of our type offering extensive survivor support services for these types of issues. We also run an online magazine about pathology and write for other organizations such as Psychology Today and Times Up blogs. In the near future, all of our retreats will be available on our upcoming Web Channel so that people can heal at home! www.saferelationshipsmagazine.com. 

Much thanks to Sandra Brown for her time – and for making a difference in the lives of so many women!

How to Spot a Dangerous Man Before You Get Involved

Morgan manages The Four Seasons hotel in New York City, and clearly has some major issues – the loss of her sister at a young age, a complicated relationship with her mother, and a compulsion to enter guest’s rooms while they are out roaming the city.  She might pop a few of their Xanax, or “borrow” a lipstick, while she imagines a life – any life – besides her own.

But as dysfunctional as Morgan seems, the characters Strauss brings to life that interweave through Morgan’s work and personal environment give you a peek into the minds of seemingly normal women with major trust and self-esteem issues, not to mention substance abuse, extra-marital affair despair and some obsessive compulsive disorder thrown in. An aging rock star, a shy hotel desk clerk, a celebrity agent, a DC political staffer, and more - provide a fascinating look into the minds of troubled women who all happen to pass through the doors of one of the most prestigious hotels in New York.

Most of the recipes in the book come complete with pictures, and are very easy to follow.  They are also not shy at all about encouraging you to ingest a day’s worth of saturated fat in one sitting, as we noticed in the recipe for Blueberry Pancakes where they encourage you to “slather with butter”.  In the spirit of Julia Child (“if you’re afraid of butter, use cream”), we did just that  – and those blueberry pancakes were heavenly.

On to an appetizer of sorts, we tried the Oven-Fried Shrimp recipe. The panko and spices mixture was easy to put together and coated the shrimp very well – and stayed on through the baking/transferring process.  The result was a great tasting “fried” shrimp complete with a fresh horseradish sauce.

The dinner section of this book is full of mouthwatering comfort food.  Shepherd’s Pie, Corned Beef and Cabbage, Potato Gnocchi with Pesto, Coq Au Vin, Linguine with Clams, Buttermilk Fried Chicken, just to name a few.  We chose to make the Braised Short Ribs with Creamy Polenta.  After preparation and 3 hours in the oven, it was a delicious meal that we believe, did actually touch our soul.

Dessert.  What real home-cooked comfort food meal would be complete without it? As tempting as the Baked Rice Pudding, Peach Cobbler, and Devil’s Food Layer Cake looked, we chose to try out the Vanilla Malteds.  Milk, vanilla, malted milk powder, vanilla bean ice cream, and whipped cream. Need we say more?

Whether you feel like spending a Sunday in the kitchen, or need to get over that broken heart, Williams-Sonoma Comfort Food is a must-have for your cookbook collection.

Giulia is a single PR executive working in NYC who writes and cooks her way through this memoir of her multiple failed romances.  Obsessed with cooking for her boyfriends, the book not only delivers a page-turning story of a single New Yorker, but includes her easy to follow recipes as well. 

What can we say, love is a difficult thing to find.  However, Giulia seemed to want it so badly, she wasn’t taking a good look at the men she was trying, to, um, extract it from. We also tend to doubt the old adage that the way to man’s heart is through his stomach. Sure, they certainly want to enjoy good meals, but not at the expense of a stressed out girlfriend.  In one scene right out of Charlotte’s life in Sex and the City, Giulia spends days preparing a Passover Seder feast for her Jewish boyfriend. By the time it was ready, she was ready to kill him. 

The final, heartbreaking, relationship in the book was like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

Giulia, you are beautiful and successful and funny! Sit back and let a man work for your affections. We are definitely looking forward to the sequel.

I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti: A Memoir of Good Food and Bad Boyfriends

Recently I enjoyed a fashion article about the late Carolyn Bessette Kennedy.  It spoke of her timeless fashion sense.  There were many pictures of Carolyn and John.  And although in all of the pictures John appeared very fashionably dated, Carolyn looked like she could have been photographed yesterday.  It was really fascinating, even for a person who doesn’t spend alot of time thinking about fashion.

Timeless is a word I’d love people to use if they were describing how I dressed.  That is why What to Wear for the Rest of Your Life: Ageless Secrets of Style will have a permanent place on my bookshelf.