You’re Already Okay
Congratulations on making it to the recovery section of the book. Living in harmony with the world is a daily reprieve. You get the moment-to-moment experience of being at peace in your own skin. You drop your guard, making it easier to accept yourself, others, and the circumstances you face as they actually are. And you’re not under constant attack, because you’re acting gentler.
Being a dick has placed you in a position to be hurt, you realize. As the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous states, so long as we keep our eyes open and watch where we step, we’re less likely to “step on the toes of our fellows” and trigger their retaliation. With this attitude, the world becomes a more hospitable place. We just need to understand that being okay—my phrase for living at peace with ourselves and others—is the proverbial “inside job.” It’s not a matter of hoping everyone else behaves.
You’re already equipped to be okay. Choosing to read a book about bad behavior and paying attention to your psychological tendencies proves it. You don’t need to be in situations anymore that compel you to be a dick. That won’t make you feel better—you’re already okay. You just need solutions to maintain this new commitment.
Turning Trust on Its Head
We often justify acting like a dick through distrust of other people. But in my experience, most dicks do trust others. They trust other people will attack and hurt them. What they don’t realize—because they keep thinking, I don’t trust them—is that the trust they have in how corrupt other people are confines those individuals to dickish responses. Trust, after all, is a sense that we establish over time. After enough experience with someone we believe that they will operate exactly the way they tend to. So, when it comes to dicks and dickish behavior, they need to turn this notion of trust in more positive direction.
A client of mine named Joaquin once mused, “With each failed relationship I built a case against love, care, and support—even though those were things I wanted—and I had no clue I was reviving a rationale from my childhood to trust no one, ever.”
Like many people do, Joaquin figured out that when we rationalize dickery as our default setting, we turn the common notion of trust into a permanent mode of distrust. Being a dick becomes our SNAFU (Situation Normal: All F—ked Up). People respond to our rudeness in due form. And we come to “trust” that this is how the world works—people treat us like crap. If we’re bona fide dicks, we never see our part in their response.
Our culture traditionally attaches the term “trust” to people and institutions we confidently rely on, yet when we’re dicks, or if we live with other people’s dickery, we learn to trust only ourselves. Our life experiences serve as data showing that people are exactly who we fear them to be. Since that perception is crafted by disappointing, painful experiences, we take our trust away from all individuals and put it on our anxiety toward relationships in general. It’s no surprise then that we “trust” unequivocally that relationships are doomed to fail and generally frustrate us.
“I choose to date the same type of person again and again,” continued Joaquin. “And each time I fall for a woman, I struggle to handle her. I guess I’m attracted to people who need my understanding and care. That makes me feel good about myself. Eventually, though, they reject me, which reminds me of what it was like to live with miserable parents who couldn’t be cheered by anything I did. They treated me like dirt. I grew up learning to survive intolerable treatment, but it’s still hard to accept that every time a romantic partner rejected me, it actually shows that I trusted them to do that.”
We build walls against our awareness of experiences that disprove our belief that others will fail us. We establish basic trust in the failures of early childhood relationships. Parents who didn’t provide safety, for example. And these are convincing lessons of what we can expect in the future. With each relationship, Joaquin gathered more assuredness that people were coldhearted, and that he should trust his instincts about them the next time around. He believed he needed to protect himself and continue to recognize where emotional dangers lurked.
Being a dick, or believing we’re okay with other people’s dickery, also requires trust that we’ll inevitably fail and disappoint people. Statisticians call this regression to the mean—a guarantee that given enough opportunities, things return to their average state. If you tend to lie, it’s likely that despite the occasional anomaly of honesty, you’ll once again lie more often than not. When we’re in an adversarial relationship with the world, we use this “trust” principle to justify our behaviors and belief that relationships are only reliable in that they always let you down.
Breaking this skeptical pattern requires developing a new mean to regress to. I told Joaquin he needed a new default setting. One that didn’t constantly trigger counterattacks from others.
“I would like to stop trusting in negative results,” Joaquin admitted with a sigh.
Working Through It
Halting negative assumptions about people and circumstances is necessary to heal. In fact, breaking trust, in the distrustful sense of the word, is a crucial step in breaking out of our rigid patterns of putting ourselves in harm’s way. Therapists call this process working through. It involves attaining insight into our tendencies to use dickery to protect ourselves from vulnerability and accepting that this isn’t working. These epiphanies can convince us to reconsider and reframe trust, and stop wasting our time repeating patterns that don’t work. Attaining a better understanding of the ins and outs of our best-defense-is-a-good-offense way of relating to the world allows us to hit pause when tempted to react hurtfully to others’ behavior. In sum, we get into a habit of making the time and space necessary to develop responses that aren’t hostile, knee-jerk reactions. Thus, we break our previously held trust that others intend to hurt us.
As we progress, we realize that when we drop our negative point of view, personal interactions are unencumbered by the past. Instead of continuing with the same old frustration, we sever that compulsion that wound up hurting us.
Working through gets all that gunk out of our system. We need to let go of the toxic waste we’ve used to excuse bad behavior. Think of it like having an illness; you apply all available home remedies, rest, drink plenty of water, and do whatever else is in your power to clear the infection, up to and including seeing a doctor.
In a sense, it’s simple: we need to acknowledge, own, and express what had been previously acted out in bad behavior. This allows us to drop our dickish behavior and embrace the risks that come with receiving compassion, understanding, and care. In doing so, we can make genuine connections with others and exorcise those dissociated, repressed parts of ourselves. Sincere personal connections heal the isolation and loneliness that all too often drives our dickery. We experience ourselves more fully.
Since our psychological defense system protects us from anxiety triggered by people, any process that renews access to the range of emotions these defenses mask must also include people.
Typically this process is enacted, or played out, in conversations with a shrink in therapy. But since you’re not being sent to therapy (or at least not yet!) you can allow the outside world to interpret your actions for you as you work through your dickish history and clear out those stubborn remnants of your present. Because, yes, we want to halt these outdated ways of protecting ourselves and heal the damage caused to our relationships now.
The point is to be able to see ourselves—how we guard against others and our own anxieties—from a new perspective, so that, should we choose to, we can change our dynamic with the world one relationship at a time. The fact is, being a dick only allows for a narrow vision of the world and our place in it.
Know Your Rights
Remember to take responsibility for your actions. You have a right to take credit for the things you said or did that were right. Don’t let it go to your head, though. We’ve already noted the difference between being right and being righteous. And the most important thing is to take responsibility for actions that were wrong.
This is not a popular approach in our culture, but let’s be unequivocal here—without owning your mistakes you disregard the future health of your relationships. That’s like throwing your hands up in the driver’s seat as your car speeds toward the edge of a cliff, symbolically saying, “Nothing I can do about that!”
People say we’re “powerless over people, places, and things,” and for the most part I agree. However, when you claim innocence for what goes on in your relationship, you disavow responsibility for harms done and lose the power to fix what is wrong—your part of it.
Dicks believe any admission of wrongdoing is an opening to be hurt. Yet through these humble admissions, we loosen our rigid fear that the world will always mistreat us. Allowing ourselves to be wrong—taking responsibility for our part in problems or conflicts—offers a chance to work through and:
• See and feel your dissociated emotions
• Do something constructive about your role in the problem
• Enjoy the satisfaction of knowing your anxiety toward others can be overcome
While scary at first, this work is immensely empowering. Now when things go wrong in a relationship, instead of only contributing to the problem, we can be part of the solution as well. Defending ourselves, being dicks, and devaluing others aren’t the only options available anymore. We learn that yes, sometimes relationships fall apart. But each conflict can also be an occasion to strengthen our bonds by working together to put things back together.
A Moratorium between Your Rage and the World
Calling a moratorium on acting like a dick allows you to respond more appropriately. Hitting pause is not a cure in itself, but rather a strategy to avoid acting out, and to see the world is not the bad place we think it is. For instance, Monday after Monday Joan plops herself down on my couch to complain bitterly about the most recent “email battle” she’s had with her sister.
Joan and her sister share the caretaking responsibilities for their elderly mother. Each one does the majority of the care one week, and the other takes over the next. The exchange occurs on Sunday evenings, via email, and just about always leaves Joan reeling with anger and resentment.
“It’s not easy to explain to my sister what’s gone on when I look after my mom,” Joan said. They began using email after months of heated face-to-face meetings and phone calls. But every form of communication with her sister is met with disdain.
The feelings Joan expressed in therapy began with rage, but when she felt safe, she revealed that these exchanges saddened her. “They make me feel like I’m being a bad daughter,” she added. “I compare myself with Sherry and feel like I don’t measure up. It fills me with remorse and regret, and I think these emotions are caused by what Sherry says.”
“What does she say?” I asked.
“Funny,” admitted Joan, “it’s not anything overtly provocative or accusatory. I just feel like there’s a tone to her emails—like she’s being judgmental about my care. And she reacts the same way to me.”
“Did you ever consider seeing what happens when you don’t hit send? I mean, go ahead, write whatever you feel—all the hurt, rage, all that—then send it to yourself. See what happens. Wait ‘til Monday, maybe even until after our session, and see if you still want to send it.”
So, she did. And within the next few weeks, instead of raging at each other, Joan and Sherry began to discuss how sad and scared they are about losing their mother. They also showed regret and remorse for their earlier fights, and acknowledged a guilt-ridden sense that they wished they could do more for their mother. Since they’re no longer dissociating these uncomfortable emotions, they express them in ways that can be heard. Sometimes they even discuss their gratitude to be able to share these feelings with each other.
By hitting pause, Joan took a step toward working through her anxiety rather than knee-jerk react to her sister’s tone. It led to new ways of relating to Sherry and to herself, because she was no longer triggering hostility from her sister. Being aware of what we’re up to—how we act out uncomfortable or intolerable feelings—allows us to develop and refine more functional ways of expressing ourselves.
Being truly heard requires sincere communication, which is unlikely when people defensively protect themselves. More thoughtful ways of expressing ourselves help others drop their guard, exchange heartfelt attention, and eventually deliver the kind of care we all deserve from normal human interaction.
For instance, before I send an angry email I ask myself, “Does it need to be said that way? Do I need to say this right now? Does this message have to come from me?”
These are hit pause questions. Like I suggested to Joan, whenever I compose an email with a hint of anger or acrimony, I hit send—but only to myself. This is an agreement I’ve made with myself and the world. I let as much time pass as needed before I revisit the email to reassess its merit. The results are that I either:
1. Send it as is (a rare event)
2. Send it after scrubbing out the dickery (a middle ground that’s probably my most frequent choice)
3. Don’t send it at all, after which I’m grateful I resisted the impulse to lash out aggressively like I did that one time at 5:30 a.m. (ugh)
The Romeo Walkout
There’s no place that we’re more likely to act out our uncomfortable feelings in knee-jerk ways than in a long-term relationship. When someone has the potential to love and accept us as we are, it terrifies us. But hitting pause allows us to reassess what’s going on in a volatile interaction and keep our relationship from going off the rails.
“For that terrible year after our honeymoon phase, I wasn’t sure we would make it,” began Ben. “One day we were progressing to the next level by becoming proud parents of Romeo, our bulldog, then the next was like wham—full of disappointment and rage. Every time I was hurt or angry, I’d take Romeo and leave, sometimes for more than an entire day.”
Matteo chimed in, “I’d plead with him to tell me what was wrong. And I never knew if he’d come back.”
As we know, being a dick is sometimes a reaction to feeling vulnerable. That loss of control over our feelings threatens us. And at no time is this more intense than in a romantic relationship; the love for our partner takes over, and when insecure, shanghais us in a realm of uncontrollable emotion. No amount of assurance—not extra doses of lovemaking, weekends holed up in our love nest, pledges of utter devotion, or a puppy named Romeo—can remedy the fact that what would really make us feel better would be to run away.
So while it’s hard to fault Matteo for thinking Ben acted like a dick, a nuanced reading of the situation would delve into his complicated backstory. Ben’s family nearly disavowed him for his homosexuality, stating throughout his youth that they “hate the sin, but not the sinner,” a claim he always found unconvincing.
When Ben hit the dating scene in college, he brought with him an internalized homophobia, and although it was a far more tolerant setting than Ben’s hometown, he felt unable to value anyone who accepted and cared about him. Using a cold shoulder as a form of heart-protection, he blocked himself from love and from being loved. Continuing this pattern would’ve ensured his emotional safety, but it would have also come at the expense of the happiness offered by loving relationships. The pattern of loneliness and isolation that he used to protect himself from his parents’ bigotry lasted this way for years. Eventually though, after significant therapy, Ben told me he felt “prepared” for love. But was he really?
When Ben walked out on Matteo, he was expressing that he needed a break. So, was it okay to leave when his heart pounded like it was about to explode through his chest? That depends.
Hitting pause and calling a moratorium on hot-tempered reactions takes a behavior that often poisons romantic relationships (stonewalling) and transforms it into a productive episode in which we take care of ourselves. We can include our partners in this by discussing the use of a pause when we’re not in a moment of conflict, agreeing upon it as an alternative to stonewalling and freezing each other out. I find that using a pause in consensus allows us to feel supported by our partners as well; they’re assenting for us to take care of ourselves and our relationship.
When we call for a pause or a break instead of imposing one on others,36 we might find that the destructive interactions stop. We do this by dropping an inflammatory topic for an agreed upon time—be it fifteen minutes, an hour, or a whole day. Detaching from one another’s company for that time can also help.
Our moratorium is not the same as what the Gottmans call “stonewalling”—it’s the opposite. Stonewalling is the harsh, selfish punishment of simply not talking to a partner for an undisclosed period of time (what some call “the silent treatment”), whereas a moratorium is an agreed upon pause to develop a productive response as soon as you have more positive attitudes. The key to establishing a productive moratorium process is to come up with a way to implement it; this strategizing is best done when you and your significant other are in a calm, allied mood. That way, when things aren’t going well, you have set process to separate, gather your thoughts, and come back together to deal with the issue. A good rule of thumb is to return to the conflict when the warmth of the relationship has returned. Of course, the two of you will have to feel out when you’re both ready to discuss your respective roles in the issue.
Either person can request—not demand—a moratorium, which ends when both are ready for it to end.
Because Matteo and Ben had agreed to use a moratorium when things felt heated, Ben’s walkout was seen as a necessary pause that would allow him to take a break, recharge, and return, rather than a “f—k you,” as it had been in his previous relationships.
With this practice, we’re not only a lot less likely to act like dicks, we’re less likely to be perceived that way.
A Better Way to Take a Verbal Break
We’ve seen how a moratorium, a break that’s agreed upon, can take what might otherwise be a death knell for a relationship (stonewalling) and transform it into breathing room to avoid impulsive and destructive behavior. We can’t force a reconciliation until both of us are ready to repair. And sometimes the road to agreeing upon this kind of mutual pause is bumpy. But most of us can pull it off if we give ourselves and our relationships the chance.
“Don’t tell me I’ve stepped on one of your landmines again,” Carter moaned. “Molly, what did I do?” She didn’t answer. “So now you’re giving me the silent treatment?”
There’s hardly a more dickish move in relationships than the freeze out. We’re all tempted to storm out of places, even extremely intimate ones, because we don’t know how to process our vulnerability or express it in a productive way. But what about occasions when we storm out without actually doing so? Unfortunately, silent rage has much the same effect as aggressive rage. What if we transformed that passive-aggressive move into something productive?
It’s hard for Carter not take it personally when Molly gives him the cold shoulder. But he shouldn’t. Molly grew up in a tumultuous household; her parents constantly screamed at each other, and once Molly’s siblings were old enough, they joined the fight. The soundtrack to her childhood was a cacophony of tantrums and yelling, occasionally followed by the smacks and cries of physical violence. Checking out and shutting down—a form of dissociation—was how Molly survived the mayhem in her family life.
Silence is dangerous because often it’s interpreted as a personal rebuke to shut someone out completely. But when we look a bit deeper, we see that silence is often used to cover up the desperate need to escape what feels like an escalating confrontation. This type of silence nevertheless causes others to feel rejected and abandoned. It’s a lose-lose situation in that both people feel hurt.
It’s just so difficult to hit pause and remain calm when our feelings are hurt. Suggesting some other way to be, however, is also challenging. So, what if we looked at the space one person requests (as opposed to demands or imposes) as a shared space either person can call for at any time? And what if we use this space to build assurance that going away emotionally for an agreed upon time is dramatically different than rejection or abandonment?
Very calmly, Molly and Carter discussed their needs in session with me and agreed to give pausing a chance.
They discovered that even in the best relationships, individuals can need a break from one another when things get heated. It allows you to mutually retreat from a crisis that feels out of control. Having taken a few steps back allows the warmth of the relationship to return, and our good feelings for each other help us regain a state of balance. The moratorium offers space not only to calm dickish behavior, but also to convert that next critical moment in the debate into a choice made in partnership, together. What can’t be overemphasized is that the space is mutually agreed upon rather than imposed, wielded, and smashed upon our heads in the form of freezing out.
Neither Carter nor Molly have to walk away from their disagreement feeling bad. A moratorium now allows them to see that silence need not be dickish, nor is interpreting our partner’s behavior as such necessary or accurate.
It’s Time for Personal Empowerment
Accounting for and taking responsibility for our contributions, good and bad, to a relationship is the cornerstone of empowerment. Without accountability, you remain at the mercy of the actions (many of which, if you’re a dick, are counter-reactions) of those around you. Taking responsibility requires an awareness of what hurts us, what scares us, and how we’ve reacted to emotional pain and fear historically. With this awareness, we can now see and feel the injuries rather than react to them with bad behavior. This means being able to respond to the world rather than react—no longer at the mercy of our defensiveness toward things that hurt us. There may come a time when you realize being called “sensitive” is payoff for the hard work of recovering from dickery. It means you know where you hurt.
The only legitimate power to change your dickery comes from knowing what you’re up to when you behave badly. The best way to decode yourself, as we’ll see, is through inventory. Keep the focus on yourself to discover what the dickishness is about, what it actually expresses, and how it manifests in behaviors and relationship patterns. In inventory, we can take responsibility for our part in the trouble we have when engaging with the world. Inventory begins once we’ve established a willingness to do something about our struggles with others and with ourselves. Then comes the action part, when we stop being a dick!
EXERCISE: WHAT WORKS
Are there solutions you’ve found to deal with being a dick? What are they? If you found effective ways to work through your problems, but haven’t used them on a regular basis, what might the reason for that be? Are you resistant to a better relationship with the world? List solutions that might work and discuss ways to commit to them as a foundation for empowerment:
EXERCISE: TRANSFORMING DICKERY INTO EMPOWERMENT
Inventory, as I am using it, is the process whereby we account for our contribution to whatever problems, issues, or conflicts we’re having. Usually, these issues are in significant relationships, such as with a spouse or family member, or in our environment (at work, especially). Inventory involves:
1. Careful consideration of your part in the problem or conflict,
2. Thoughtful assessment of the motivations and underlying thoughts or feelings that your behavior expressed,
3. A record of your understanding (often written down), and
4. An acknowledgement of your accountability to someone else.
A “spot-check” inventory is a similar process, but the timeframe is much shorter and we use it to account for, take responsibility, and ideally cease a potentially destructive behavior right now. In a spot-check, we still ask the question “what’s my part in this?” and consider our feelings and motivations. But unlike the formal inventory, which is generally used as a means of understanding and changing chronic, often addiction-related behavior, the spotcheck inventory is a process to stop what you’re doing anytime you feel yourself drifting into dickish behavior.
Think of it as another way to hit pause before reacting to something someone said or did that hurt you, scared you, freaked you out, or pissed you off. In that pause, you can account for your part in the issue at hand and assess possible solutions. Choose a problem—preferably a recurring issue that has historically justified your dickery—and start your own spot-check inventory. You can use this model to address issues as they arise.
If there is someone with whom you can work on the following chart, take an inventory of your relationship together and explore how being a dick has interfered with the sense of safety and security between you. Use these results as a model to deal with issues as they arise.
EXERCISE: AVOIDING MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION BETWEEN YOU AND THE WORLD
The next exercise will provide awareness of common couple pitfalls. Use this knowledge to assess your relationship patterns and codevelop ways to see conflicts as windows of opportunity and cries for help. Developing alternatives to being a dick will help you quit isolating from each other as well.
First, though, I’d like to present two highly respected models for understanding destructive behaviors and diagnosing roadblocks to communication. Similarly, we might see these problems as opportunities to acknowledge a problem and work together to fix it.
As you may recall, Julie and John Gottman’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. The regular occurrence of these behaviors typically predicts failing, unhappy relationships. If you recognize these attitudes in your relationship, you might be more of a dick than you give yourself credit for. You’re also likely headed for trouble.
Dicks are notoriously bad communicators in relationships. The Four Horsemen are rampant in their romantic lives. But we should also watch out for the Twelve Communication Roadblocks identified by Dr. Thomas Gordon, which he refers to as the “Dirty Dozen”:
1. Ordering, Directing: “Stop feeling sorry for yourself …”
2. Warning, Threatening: “You’ll never make friends if …” “I’m going to break up with you unless …”
3. Moralizing, Preaching: “If you would’ve only listened to me …” “You should just get over it …” “Patience is a virtue you clearly haven’t learned …”
4. Advising, Giving Solutions: “What I would do is …” “You have to do it this way …”
5. Persuading with Logic, Arguing: “Here is why you’re wrong …” “The facts are …” “Yes, but …”
6. Judging, Criticizing, Blaming: “You’re not thinking maturely …” “That’s just laziness …” “You started it …”
7. Praising, Agreeing: “Well, I think you’re doing a great job!” “You’re right—he sounds awful.”
8. Name-calling, Ridiculing: “Crybaby.” “That’s stupid to worry about one low test grade.”
9. Analyzing, Diagnosing: “What’s wrong with you is …” “You seem grouchy.” “I know you better than you know yourself …”
10. Reassuring, Sympathizing: “Don’t worry.” “You’ll feel better.” “Cheer up!”
11. Questioning, Probing: “Why did you do that?” “Who’s calling you?” “What did you tell them?” “How come you looked at me that way?”
12. Diverting, Sarcasm, Withdrawal: “Let’s talk about this later …” “Why don’t you try running the world!?” Remaining silent, turning away
For the next exercise, look at the above behaviors and fill in your own. Becoming familiar with the ways your arguments break down into destructive fights characterized by retaliation and injury will allow you to catch this pattern early on and nip it in the bud. It’s only through seeing these traps before you fall into them that you can make better choices about the direction to lead the conversation into so conflict becomes opportunity.
As you reflect upon and write responses to the query below, you install a pause button that gives you time between being scared, hurt, or angry, and doing something impulsive about those feelings. So please, take the thoughtfulness you use in this exercise with you as you go about your daily life.
Reflecting back on arguments that turned into fights, list up to five patterns you fall into that have negative consequences. For each one, provide up to three possible alternatives that might lead to mutually satisfying outcomes.
