Anger Management Workbook

Anger Busting Workbook

Page 152

All the while, these guys are also begging their partners: Please get back together. Please come home (or please let me come home). We can't work this out as long as we are apart.

How will you ever know I have changed unless we move in together again? We need each other. The kids need us together. Give me another chance. Please, I love you, I need you, I can't live without you.

Eventually, this can start to sound really good to a woman alone. Money is tight, she has three kids in tow. She finds herself thinking things like: He sounds sincere. Maybe he has learned his lesson this time. I'll give it one more try. Inevitably, the minute he unpacks his bags, the cycle starts all over again. It may take a while for his rage to build back to full strength, but there is no doubt that it will. Because he won again! He got to come home on his terms. All he had to do was look sad, make a few promises, maybe go to a few classes and time his move just right. The game is control; his goal is to get her back in his life without giving up anything important. And she was no match for him.

How do you beat this guy? Change the game, change the rules, and play to win.

How To Get A Pit Bull's Attention

For the Pit Bull, the game is all about keeping his lady in his life. When women try to get in the game, too, they make the mistake of playing for the same thing. Because she may still love him, or for the sake of the kids, or for the sake of financial security, or whatever, she also wants to keep him in her life. She just wants him to be nicer, that's all. With that strategy, she will lose the game every time. She may take action to get him out of the house temporarily, and he may accept a few inconvenient consequences. But, after a little emotional shell game, he will eventually end up back in the house, which is where he wanted to be all along!

If you want to win, first you must change the game. The game can't be about getting him to be nicer, the game has to be about getting him to be safer. The whole point of your game must be to make life safer for you and your children! He can be nice whenever he wants to be. (That's how you ended up married to him in the first place!) But that is not the same as being safe. He has abused you emotionally and maybe physically. He has threatened you. He has damaged property and terrorized the kids. As long as you are looking for ways to help him be nicer so that you can stay with him, you will lose, and it won't be pretty.

The name of your game has to be safety first. He can be charming, he can even be truly sorry and don't doubt for one minute that he won't try to convince you that he is all of that -- but that is not the same thing as being truly safe. If you are working on a plan for making him behave, the goal of the plan has to be making him a safe person to be with. The game is not over until you are convinced, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he has done every bit of the hard work necessary to assure you and everyone who loves you that he will never threaten the peace and safety of your home again.

If you are going to win, you have to change the rules. Up to now, the rules have gone pretty much like this:

He gets angry, you get upset; maybe you even call the police because it gets ugly. But when the police come, he blames you or maybe he apologizes to you, but for whatever reason the police give you both a good talking to and they leave. Or maybe you don't even call the police, you just calm the kids down and clean up the broken dishes and try to pretend that nothing ever happened.