Denial

     I have noticed that people want to believe the best to the point that they will insist the person telling the truth is lying, not because he is wrong, but that they don't want to hear that their world view is wrong. This world view that people are good and kind has distinct flaws.

      I moved into a room nearly two years ago. As I moved in the other male roommate was going to jail for domestic violence. It took a year for me to sort through the lies and defective world views and understand what actually happened.

       The land "lady" has got to be the most evil spirited person I have ever met. Piecing together what was left of the truth, what happened was she took his last dollar on Friday, then threw him out homeless on Monday, and conveniently left that out while she was filing charges for him getting violently angry being treated like that.

     He honestly does have an anger management problem, and he has the attitude that he is some genius that can argue his way into anything he wants to do and get violent if he doesn't get his way. That didn't help him much as he was walking away in handcuffs, but it is still a chore to get him to understand that he has work to do.

      That mortally wounded her ability to understand that the way she treated him precipitated his behavior. She walks through life with the attitude that she has a right to strip a man down to dead broke, throw him out homeless, and move on to the next one, and this should not reflect negatively on her.

       In a recent discussion she was trying to tell me that my world view is messed up, and that she is a good, decent person that is just victim to the evil attitudes of others.

    She has been caught stealing our tools and swearing she had nothing to do with it. She finally had one of us record her behavior and play back to her that she will stomp the floor, cry, cuss, lie, shout,... visibly the most emotionally abusive person I have ever met. In one such exchange I quietly explained that she could act that way for another 3 hours (which she would do) and I would still not have another dollar in my pocket.

     She moved a flock of chickens into the house 6 feet from the kitchen counter, then swore she was following CDC guidelines, and insisted she only had to clean them once a week. I saw the webpage she was working from. There was a sentence at the top in all caps that said "since you have chosen to ignore our warnings, follow these safety rules" From there she proceeded to break every rule on the page. It took a 3-1/2 hour argument to get her to flex from piss on you to she might be able to make some adjustments. Today she swears I was an ass and she could not cooperate enough to pacify me.

    This is bad enough, but having people assume this emotionally violent, verbally abusive jerk is a decent person, and I am just being unfair to her is societal level denial. The worst damage it does is that this emotionally ill person is never going to have enough pressure come to bear to get her to look at herself. She will always be supported by the assumption that the man that got violent is wrong and she was completely innocent.

      Over time I have been in counseling after each of three divorces, only to be told first that I did not have any serious problems, and after the third divorce, did three twelve step programs looking for what was wrong. This is entirely due to a society where the man is always wrong, and the woman is always innocent.

     In the twelve step programs they require to take " a fearless, and brutally honest personal inventory" It takes a couple of tries to get it right. I may be less than perfect about it, but I have noticed that the people that have never done this try to tell me I am all messed up, and are totally pig headed about looking at themselves. They try  to tell me, that takes the inventory four times a year, that I am messed up, and they, that will lie, make excuses, or make any other effort to refuse to look how unfair they have been, are completely innocent.

      Until the principles used in the twelve step programs start getting applied in a more widespread way, and the assumption that the most stubborn person is right is dealt with, the arrogant, stubborn, self centered, abusive people will continue to have the idea they are right.

    I am not going to listen to someone that has wronged me, then lied about it, telling me that I am messed up.

     Nobody lives like it, but I know most of them were taught, "what would it feel like if someone treated you that way?" It seems the new rule is: do whatever you want, then lie about it until you get your way. The most stubborn person wins.