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The role of predictability in safety.

I’ve been teaching my son about traffic – walking across the street when it is safe, looking both ways, paying attention to cars and people – and we’ve had conversations about traffic in general while driving.

Driving is only safe because, through traffic laws and cultural norms, driving on a road with other people is designed to have a high level of predictability.

Predictability is crucial for assessing dangerous situations.

Many times he wants to stand at the edge of the curb, so he is ready to go right when the road is clear. However, when he does that, the driver will often stop, even if I am right there. I realized that my presence isn’t enough to ensure predictability about whether my son will dart into the road right in front of the car.

So now we stand in the middle of the median or back from the edge of the road, and I have him stand and walk right by my side.

Those drivers have a greater sense that they can predict that my child will not dart out into the road in front of them.

When people show you who they are, believe them.

Because of a general bias to believe the best in others, we often don’t accept when someone shows us who they are. Or we give them the benefit of the doubt when they tell us they are one thing but act differently.

Or we minimize the pattern of behavior/entitlement because we emotionally reject the conclusion for that pattern: deny/minimize a pattern of abusive behavior because

• the aggressor doesn’t fit our internal model of what an abuser looks like
• we don’t or can’t see ourselves as a victim
• we don’t want to label the aggressor as “bad”, as an “abuser”

Instead of feeling that you have to make a referendum on someone’s character – and so ‘weigh’ who you believe them to be, their intentions, their essential goodness – understand that you are assessing predictability.

Do you trust this person…to be themselves?

Victims are often confused by an abuser’s behavior because they haven’t accepted the abuser for who they actually are.

There is dissonance between their internal model of who the abuser is and who they believe the abuser to be. When they assess what this other person will do, they are often wrong because their internal model is based on false premises.

Perhaps the aggressor is unpredictable in their reactions. Sometimes they will explode and sometimes they will react compassionately. This person is still predictable…in their unpredictability. What is the conclusion? No relationship with them will be stable.

In assessing predictability, you look at their actions instead of attempting to suss out their intentions.

Predictability is predicated on PATTERN.

Their pattern of behavior is what allows you to determine the predictability of that behavior. This is important because you aren’t analyzing their behavior in terms of one incident, but a series of incidents.

An abuser creates a chain of isolation around each event; you never look at the events in context of a pattern of behavior unless the context of the pattern is the victim.

Emotions put us ‘in motion’.

Our facial expressions, gestures, and tones of voice tell others how we are feeling and what we plan to do next. Some emotions proclaim: “Look out! A change is my behavior is coming!” Others say: “I am going to remain as I am now.” – Thomas Henricks

How does the aggressor’s emotional state signal their behavior? How can you predict what they will do? By looking at their pattern of behavior.

This is, of course, applicable to non-abusers as well. How does our own emotional state signal our behavior? Are we attuned to our emotional state so that we can predict our behavior, choices, and actions? Are we attuned to the beliefs behind the emotion-state and actions?

Once you can accept yourself for who you are, you can reliably predict your own actions, and therefore make more optimal choices for yourself.

Boundaries also play a huge role in this process, because effective boundaries should be clear and predictable.

I don’t know if this is something that would track for everyone, but I have noticed that I have a much harder time scheduling things with people where the relationship ends up problematic.

It seems to be a first sign that we are not on the same page

…that there is an intrinsic communication issue, and that we don’t share the same reality. Also that the other person isn’t able to model someone else accurately enough. It’s been spot on every time.

If I notice that I am having trouble scheduling with someone, I now take it as an indicator that we may not be compatible.

I don’t know if this is something that would apply to anyone else, but it has been pretty reliable for me, especially since I routinely schedule things in the course of my employment and career. I have a high rate of ‘accuracy’ to compare to, so it stands out when I show up and they are, for example, in a completely different location.

A past reliable indicator has also been if I am talking to someone, and they take what I am saying in a completely ‘off’ direction.

I call it the “wait, what??” response. This has been 100% reliable. If I am speaking to someone new and I end up saying/thinking “wait, what??” during the course of our conversation because what they’ve said is so ‘off’, I move to high alert because I have learned from experience that I may not be dealing with someone stable or safe for me.

• When you are nice/kind to someone and they respond by being meaner to you? If they see that as weakness?
• Also…if someone responds by being nicer to a person who is mean to them. (Negging low-key verifies if you are someone who will accept controlling and critical behavior, and will respond by working to earn their praise. Practically speaking, it diagnoses for self-worth.)
• If they think the job of a parent is to ‘prepare their child for the real world’ by hurting their child…instead of loving and protecting them, and teaching them how to take care of themselves and know that they always have support when things get tough.
• If they think being a leader means being worshiped and if you aren’t worshiping them, you aren’t ‘respecting’ them as a leader. (Real leadership is actually about being responsible for decision-making and outcomes.)
• Someone who criticizes you and apparently thinks you are a terrible person…but never leaves or tries to leave. They are content to stay in a relationship with a person they deem to be horrible and, instead, just constantly tell the other person how horrible they are. That logically doesn’t make sense. If you think someone is a terrible person, you shouldn’t want to stay with them. (Victims of abuse literally stay with abusers and argue that someone who is objectively terrible is just misunderstood or going through a hard time or really a good person. Abusers tell you you are terrible and stay. Victims of abuse, generally, actually leave and let go once they truly realize what a terrible person the abuser is.)

These are just examples, but I’ve noticed ‘upside down’ responses consistently as a key indicator that someone is probably not a safe person in some way.

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Several of these examples are of people working off a power paradigm: they exert power over you (that they may not be entitled to exert) and see how you react. Someone who is ’empowered’ is not going to be down with another person randomly trying to power over them.

People that experience genuine chronic victim-ness or bullying often unconsciously respond to attempts at dominance with submission, and therefore (from the other person’s perspective) give them ‘permission’ to power over them. It’s like assholes who believe you give them permission to steal from you if you leave your door unlocked, and that you deserve it.

See also:

• Random indicator for non-optimal relationships: co-scheduling
• The importance of paying attention to “WTF?” moments to help determine your safe people (and ‘WTF personality disorder)
• If you can’t reasonably predict someone’s behavior, then they are not a safe person for you
• We want to believe that we can ‘communicate’ people into being better

As I was processing a family situation with my (half) brother, what bothered me most was his belief that ‘life isn’t that serious’ means that (1) ‘not only is it okay for me to do whatever I think is funny at or to another person, but also (2) if they don’t participate and respond exactly the way I think they should, then they’re too sensitive and taking life too seriously’.

Which made me ask the question: what is the difference between fun and humiliation?

Joking around can certainly build connections, and it can be a way of building intimacy between people who – for whatever reason – are not in a position to be vulnerable with each other. I suspect that’s why we tend to see ‘pranking’ culture in masculine environments such as the military or sports. How do you build bonds and community with others when being emotionally vulnerable can potentially hand another person leverage against you? (Then there’s a point where that goes too far and becomes hazing.)

I also ended up zeroing in on the concept of ‘taking life too seriously’.

Because I think this pre-supposes two difference concepts: one, that ‘taking life seriously’ is bad somehow, and two, that finding pranks funny determines whether you do in fact take life seriously or not.

It would be very easy to say that someone who pranks around like this is immature, and that this mindset is indicative of immaturity.

But I don’t think drawing the line here makes sense because many people are lighthearted and play around with each in these ways, although I don’t think they make it a defining part of their identity or relationships with others. Or you might be playful in one moment, focused and intense in another, relaxing in another, et cetera, so ‘pranking’ organically occurs on occasion but isn’t the focus of who you are or how you are.

But then I remembered my brother’s Instagram – “I just want someone to love me for the asshole I am”

…where he is sticking his tongue out obnoxiously at the camera with his toddler in the backseat. And this isn’t a judgment on my part, his facial expression is making it clear that he is intending to be obnoxious.

(Sidenote: I actually don’t think assholes are automatically bad. I personally need a little distance, but if you get a high conflict person on your side and pointed in the right direction, they are gold. Basically, an ethical asshole. It works because they value you and what you value.)

So my ‘asshole’ brother wants to be loved for who he is…while he judges someone (like me) as ‘bad’, wrong, or deficient. And I have to be honest, that is what specifically pissed me off.

I see society, communities, and families full of individuals with deeply unique and different perspectives; and that the combination of those people and perspectives and approaches creates synthesis – something greater than the whole, and beautiful.

I think we lose something very precious when we expect everyone to be the same.

u/danokablamo defines “respect” as treating people and things that matter like they matter and “disrespect” as treating people and things that matter like they don’t matter. And it just reminds me of something I’ve said often on the subreddit, which is to watch out when people when people react in a way that is ‘upside down’ from what is normal. This is an indicator that the way they think is ‘off’ in some way, or they are following different rules.

Because the normal way to treat someone that you care about is to treat them well.

The normal way to treat someone who matters is like they matter.

I think my (other) brother nailed it when he originally said:

Guys like to say that with a guy friendship, you can mess with each other like that. But that only works when there’s trust. It’s a slippery slope to cruelty.

This only works when there’s trust.

‘Pranking’ as a relationship dynamic is a subversion of the standard.

The standard is to treat people you love well, therefore to subvert the standard is to treat them badly (within a specific set of constraints) and to do so because you can’t treat people that way regularly. Being able to treat a person ‘badly’ in this way is ‘proof’ and reinforcement of your closeness.

It’s like ‘relationship BDSM’.

I will treat you badly on purpose and you will let me because it proves how close we are and because it shows you trust me.

The problem is that the people running around doing this aren’t getting other people’s consent, and are being judgmental of someone’s normal response that they are being humiliated as if there is something deficient with that person, when literally the whole point of ‘pranking’ as a method of bonding is that it subverts normal relationship expectations.

There’s no trust if you non-consensually prank people, because they didn’t agree to the dynamic.

Or maybe it’s like ‘relationship tickling’:

I will do something to you and your body that provokes an involuntary response that I find funny.

Demanding someone participate in ‘pranking’ activity as if it is mutual when it isn’t is manipulative.

It is on the spectrum of abusive behaviors because this is essentially what abusers force or coerce the victim into doing: pretending as if the abusers version of reality is real and playing along with it. And that people are “too sensitive” or “take life too seriously” is part how the manipulation is exerted.

Pranking, to have utility as a method of bonding, has to be mutual.

And if it isn’t mutual, it’s just sparkling harassment.

I think ‘asshole’ pranksters fall into two categories:

One, being people who do genuinely enjoy humiliating others and violating their boundaries under the plausible deniability of ‘having fun’. The other group reminds me of toddlers and small children who do something once that people find funny, and then keep trying to replicate that by doing the same thing over and over, and then getting mad when the other person doesn’t respond the same way they did. Chasing that dopamine high, they keep pressing the same button.

The real irony is that genuine connection – the very thing these pranksters claim to seek – requires accepting and respecting others as they are.

A lot of victims of abuse describe how it felt ‘boring’ to be in a healthy relationship after experiencing an abuse dynamic.

I was watching, of all things, Fate: The Winx Saga on Netflix and one of the characters – a mind fairy and empath – senses a guy at the school and becomes immediately interested in him. She explains that he sounds like ‘the absence of chaos’.

Peace.

She is experiencing peace after being bombarded by the intensity of everyone’s emotional experience. He’s calm and grounded, and I had this moment of “OH. I get it.”

Because it isn’t that we need to ‘get acclimated’ to a ‘boring relationship’

..it’s that we have to change what we find attractive, what grabs our interest, in the first place. And that starts, not by tricking ourselves, but by re-framing our perspective.

Being triggered and inexplicably craving someone immediately is not “passion”.
Chaos is not “exciting”.
Peace is not “boring”.
It’s not the Most Epic Love Story, it’s “high school drama”.

We can prove whether someone loves us by how they treat us.

If we feel overwhelming desire and attachment and longing for someone, but they are not patient, they are not kind, and they are not honest? Then it isn’t love. People that actually love and care about us want to treat us right. If for some reason they can’t or are challenged in that, then they are going to do what they can to protect us, even from themselves.

Randomly, I knew I was growing when I was watching Stargate SG-1 and out of nowhere thought “Damn, Major General Hammond is sexy AF with those ethics”.

Old me would have gone straight to Daniel as the nerd, or to Jack as competent and masculine, so I was completely taken by surprise. When we change our paradigm, what grabs our interest is different. (And it’s humbling to realize that my former attraction matrices were shallow; for example, just because society values “intelligence” more than physical appearance, it doesn’t actually make it any less shallow. Because it’s what someone does with their intelligence that matters; an intelligent person is not automatically better by virtue of being intelligent.)

I do want to acknowledge that the desire for intensity may not ‘go away’, but you can still meet that need in a healthy way with a caring partner, whatever that looks like.

Reactive invalidation by others shows up a lot when someone experiences a sex act that makes them feel bad.

People are afraid of kink-shaming, others are afraid of being judged, sometimes everyone gets up in their feelings about something even if the situation has nothing to do with them.

And it’s because they feel attacked if someone is judging a sex act or dynamic that they themselves enjoy or appreciate.

This dynamic doesn’t only show up regarding sex acts either, I see it a lot whenever a discussion about age-gap relationships shows up.

Well, my age-difference relationship isn’t bad. You aren’t experiencing problems because of the age gap but because the other person is bad.

My parents met when my mom was 15 and my dad was 19, and they were happily married for 53 years!

Sex and attraction is where our subconscious reigns and can even reflect childhood triggers.

So it’s no wonder people get really protective about the things they like.

A lot of what people like, in some way, explores a power differential.

I remember reading an AMA from a necrophiliac and was blown away to discover that a lot of the appeal of it for him was subconsciously the idea that as a corpse, this ‘person’ wouldn’t reject him, that he had complete power and control, etc.

An extreme end of the power differential is degrading or objectifying one party in the dynamic.

There’s sex play that literally turns the submissive into a piece of furniture for the dominant to rest their feet on.

And this is why aftercare is so extremely important in the BDSM community

…because at the end of this ‘play’ is a time for connection where the submissive is assured that the dominant does actually see them as a person and cares for them, and the submissive reassures the dominant that they aren’t a ‘bad person’ because the submissive wanted to surrender in those ways.

Regardless of what we said to each other, you’re a human being and I see and care about you.

This is about to be an unpopular opinion, but I think BSDM can be a trap for child victims of abuse.

When you were raised and conditioned to associate “love” with someone who was selfish, someone who reduced your in your own humanity to serve their needs, someone who powered over you over and over, it is hard to psychologically untangle that wiring.

Finding someone who does that can light up your limbic system like you’ve won a jackpot at a casino, and tie that to our sexual system, means that ‘you in danger, girl’.

BDSM promises a way to have your cake and eat it, too. To meet the desires of your subconscious, the dark cravings it is hard to bring to the light and admit exist, but in a safe way.

But the trap here is that the people who are most desirous of these dynamics are often the people least able to assert themselves and communicate/set boundaries with a partner.

Because they’ve learned that love is to erase themselves.

Codependency is the chronic neglect of self in order to gain approval, love, validation, or self-identity through another person.

So people with bad boundaries get involved with something that is the psychological equivalent of a loaded gun, and they have no idea how to engage the safety, nor the capacity to do so. So they engage in acts of degradation, objectification, of training, of bearing physical and emotional pain, not only because it mirrors what they have learned love is, but they are (usually subconsciously) attempting to gain love through their submission.

The more I participate in my own degradation, the more I ‘prove’ to you that I belong to you, that I ‘love’ you.

Child victims of abuse haven’t learned that ACTUAL love is patient, kind, supportive, centers them as a seen and whole human being. What they’ve learned about is ownership and possession and submission to what diminishes their soul as love.

And so re-creating this dynamic soothes their psychological conditioning, but can leave them feeling empty and hollow, depending on who they are ‘playing’ with.

It’s no secret that abusive people are attracted to BDSM and kink communities, because they can satisfy themselves in plain sight. A truly abusive person is powering over someone else at that person’s expense and for their own benefit. What makes it tricky in the BDSM community is how often the person in a position of power-down wants this, but subconsciously can harbor the idea that their submission is beautiful and will be cherished by the other, and therefore they themselves will be seen as beautiful and cherished by the other.

In a ‘true’ BDSM dynamic, the submissive actually holds the power.

To stop the other person when things get too much, when it’s outside their boundaries, when they need assurance that they are actually valued and seen by the other person as a whole human being.

But if you don’t know your boundaries?

If you’ve disconnected from your feelings in order to tolerate the abuse dynamic in which you grew up? If you don’t even know what it is like to be seen and valued as a whole human being?

This person is at the mercy of a dominant who may or may not care about them as a person, who may or may not solely be focused on getting what they want from another person.

The longer I’ve done research, the more I see how so many of the ways we harm each other are based in reducing someone else in their humanity so that we can get or do what we want instead of feeling badly about it.

BDSM centers this and plays with it, and taboos are often where our cravings exist.

I think instead of acting as if the BDSM framework is neutral, and invalidating people who struggle with their experiences with it, it’s important to recognize that the very nature of it is to get as close as possible to the worst ways humans treat each other without actually harming each other.

And also to recognize that many people will not be able to ‘play’ in this construct, because it takes a whole recognition of self and another.

The conversation around it shouldn’t be that it’s ‘only a kink’, it should be ‘this is balancing on the edge of a psychological knife in pursuit of intensity and exploring darkness, and isn’t for most people’.

Most people cannot handle power.

…because most people are selfish and will pursue their desires at the expense of others. Most people will reduce others in their humanity and will justify their ‘desires’ as needs.

Someone struggling with a BDSM experience doesn’t need to be told ‘it wasn’t BDSM, you just had a bad dominant’, they need to be reaffirmed that they were harmed.

They don’t need #notallBDSM. They don’t need to be made to feel that they were deficient in some way because they ‘chose’ the wrong person or didn’t stop it or whatever.

This is victim-blaming, even if unintentionally, and it doesn’t respect the reality of the dynamic.

That BDSM is dangerous.

Hopefully this makes sense. I’ve avoided the topic for many years because I wasn’t quite able to articulate where the gap was between concept and practice, and because many victims of childhood abuse truly want to engage in BDSM,

but there are so many people who experience damage on a soul level with it and have no idea why.

…meaning they may believe something while angry which they wouldn’t necessarily believe when they are happy, for example. Certain memories, beliefs, and learning are linked to the physiological and emotional state in which they were formed (and may only be accessible when in a similar state).

State-specific beliefs might explain why abusers access certain hostile beliefs only when triggered.

• obedience test/’training’
• belittling/humiliation ritual/emotional abuse
• pathological ‘need’ to be the center of attention
• competitive instead of cooperative or supportive
• sadism
• status/hierarchy enforcement
• condescension
• contempt
• they don’t actually like or respect you as a person
• unreasonable entitlement

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“I dated someone like this, it took me a while to realize the pattern of them constantly humiliating me publicly. You realize it boosts their ego or they get a weird dopamine high from it. It’s awful.”
– u/TheBulkyModel, comment

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‘It feels like this person is just constantly putting their significant other through a humiliation ritual to see if they’ll stay.’
– u/neuroticdreamgirI, comment

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‘…this person is doing this to put them ‘in their place’, it’s like they can’t stand to see their ‘partner’ succeed…’
– u/Taigac, comment

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‘…stealing another person’s thunder and shifting focus to themselves. As always.’
– u/realitea1234, comment

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“It’s contempt.”
– u/Boom_chaka_laka, comment

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“May their love NEVER find me.”
– u/Professional_Sand192, comment

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‘With a ‘partner’ like this, who needs enemies?’
– u/MyNamesChakkaoofka, comment

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“My dad LOVED humiliating my mom and I swear he liked it even more when people noticed. He got to act all sweet like he was ‘just joking’ and it was all a laugh.”
– u/SharkGirl666, comment

And then the shame the victim feels reinforces the abuser’s power, the fact that the victim ‘gave’ it to them or agreed to it, creating a self-sustaining cycle.

The corruption of the victim is as important as the control itself.

The abuser coerces or forces the victim into participating in their own degradation and humiliation, or also engaging in abuse, so they are no longer innocent.

And it gives the abuser plausible deniability: the victim ‘chose’ it, participated in it, is responsible for their own abuse….which makes no one come to the victim’s rescue.

The victim is isolated physically and psychologically, in a prison of their own shame, and social reinforcement of it.

Before the victim humiliates themselves, the abuser tells them it is no big deal, everybody does it, it’s just a joke – but after?

They prosecute the victim with their own actions, and use it to prove their ‘badness’ to themselves.

A ‘humiliation ritual’ is more than just humiliation

humiliated: (v.) “make (someone) feel ashamed and foolish by injuring their dignity and self-respect, especially publicly”

It requires the target or victim to participate.

Hazing, for example, is a humiliation ritual – a ‘loyalty test’ where you make yourself vulnerable to blackmail as ‘proof’ of your commitment or loyalty to joining a high control group. You participate in debasing and degrading yourself.

That then leads to ‘moral injury’ when you try to leave the group: because you violated your own (or society’s) morals in order to pledge allegiance to a person, a group, or higher value

…and doing so injured you on a soul-level. A target feels that they ‘chose’ what happened to them, and therefore are de-motivated from leaving, even when it harms them on an existential level to stay. They may even feel they deserve to be ‘punished’ or that they are shameful, bad, or unworthy, and therefore what good is it to leave?

When we participate, we unintentionally ‘agree’, and that’s why people like this spring it on you.

They pressure you into committing, performing, participating – especially during a period of high emotion – and then later use it against you if you try to stand up for yourself or push back. You wouldn’t have chosen to even engage with the person or group had you even known that this is the direction it would go in.

And each step of debasement and shame erodes your moral line before doing the next one.

Like in “Training Day” when Denzel Washington’s corrupt cop character insists the protagonist do something illegal so he can ‘train’ him…when in reality this just gave him power and leverage over the newbie officer.

It’s why gangs require you do something horrendous to join the gang, like theft or murder

…something that erodes your own moral code and sense of integrity, so that you (1) can never go back, and (2) it begins the process of changing who you are.

The original quote contextualizing this in the realm of relationships stopped me in my tracks.

Because isn’t it what unhealthy people do? Encourage – even insist – you to violate your own boundaries, because if you don’t, you don’t love them, or you aren’t good enough, or they are manipulating you and putting you in panic by removing their love or presence.

It’s a way of training a victim:

Do what I want, and I will respond to you positively; do something I don’t want, and I will respond to you negatively.

And the victim gets so confused between their love for this person, the actions they themselves are doing, and what this means about them as a person.

This is why healthy relationships are built on respect.

Because relationships built on disrespect of the victim are relationships that are built on debasing the victim, and getting the victim to eventually, actively choose that.