stop sign

Last year I wrote about when we try to get people to make us the exception to their rule of behaviour, which is in essence the foundation of every relationship where you stay with someone who has shown and told you, whether it’s directly or indirectly, who they really are, and yet you stay anyway. Since then, it’s one of my most frequently emailed about subjects because many now recognise that they’re trying to be the exception…but don’t seem to want to stop.

Why do people continue being involved with unavailable people or even assclowns?

Because they hope that even if it’s not today, even if it’s not tomorrow, but soon, this person will see something in them or value their dedication enough to change.

Why do people keep carrying the same beliefs, baggage, and behaviours, choosing the same types of people, different package and expecting different results?

Because rather than address any of these factors, they expect to continue to make the same choices and carry the same mentality and then ‘miraculously’, without having to stretch themselves, one of those exact same or very similar situations will be the exception to their rule and shazam, happy ever after.

Relationship insanity is doing all of those things and continuing to expect to get a different result – that is looking to be the exception.

Even though I’ve gone back several times, I’m going back again because surely this time they will be different.

If I keep pushing for change and showing how dedicated I am, they’ll change even though time and again, they’ve either promised to change but haven’t or were this way prior to being involved with me.

Even though I’ve been involved with this type before and I am yet to have a successful relationship with it, I’m convinced that this type of person is what I need to make me happy so I will try again.

Even though this person makes me unhappy and doesn’t treat me with love, care, trust, and respect and I even call them an ‘assclown’, I love them so I’m going to keep trying/going back because hopefully they’ll make me the exception.

Even though I don’t believe I’m good enough, I’m hoping they’ll prove me wrong even if I’ve made a choice that reflects my beliefs or I’m sabotaging a decent relationship.

When you persist in being the exception, you end up doing and being things that detract from you because you make exceptions – cue boundary busting, excuse making, illusion conjuring and turning a blind eye.

Trying to be the exception is an invitation for denial.

As long as you persist in trying to get people and life to make you the exception, you are highly likely to continue experiencing the pain of the rule.

Where there is any goodness to experience from the rule, you’ll either miss out or experience it in a limited capacity because you’re too busy wondering why you’re not experiencing the exception. Classic example is when you’re suspicious/turned off by people who treat you well.

In trying to be the exception, it fundamentally means that you know the rule. You can’t be an exception if you don’t know what you’re being exceptional to.

It’s time for you to have an honest conversation with yourself and open your eyes and ears and acknowledge what the rule is – is their rule of behaviour what you can live with? Is the rule of what you experience telling you that you need to make changes?

If the truth isn’t conducive to a mutually fulfilling healthy relationship or where you can be personally happy with reasonable self-esteem, it’s time to ask when you’re going to make yourself an exception to your rule of pursuing relationship insanity and do something very different?

What’s in it for you? Why are you continuing to gamble with yourself? At what point do you say enough?

If your rule is to be suspicious and distrusting in every relationship, guess what? You have to play your part and learn to have faith in yourself so that you can trust in others and either increase or roll back the trust accordingly. Distrusting people always find more reasons to distrust. Where they don’t, they make it up. Why? Because they don’t trust themselves.

If your rule is to keep going out with unavailable people and/or people that mistreat you, guess what? You have to opt out and not try to turn a pigs ear into a silk purse because you have enough experience to know what the rule is.

When your route to ‘love’ is pain, you have an idea that love comes from an unlikely source with ‘suffering’. It’s not good enough to get love from a giving, healthy source – it has to reflect your beliefs, and will give you validation. You have to be met with resistance, problems, obstacles, drama – then you believe this is a relationship worth having.

Love isn’t about having the power to change someone, especially when their rule is not something healthy.

Do you know why people get different results? Because they stop believing that thinking and doing the same thing is going to achieve different results. They accept the rule.

Even if they subsequently take risks, they have the rule as their baseline and they opt out of danger. Many are remarkable with the rule – there are people out there who have healthy, mutually fulfilling, love filled relationships without having to feel like shit all the time and living in drama and ambiguity.

While there are some ‘lucky’ people out there and that’s really only based on what we perceive them to be or what they’ve let us think they are, the great majority of people who experience exceptional results are part of creating that. They don’t wait around for people to give them the perfect job, for the planets to align, for people to change, for someone else to invent it, or for their circumstances to change.

While there will always be anomalies and those urban myths you hear about that person with no self-esteem that with no change, landed on their feet with a perfect life, or that woman that lived happily ever after following an affair with a married man, or the person that used to be a major assclown and became The Perfect Person when they ‘fell in love’, the overwhelming majority of us experience the rule.

What is the rule? – Not just the general rule – what is the rule with this person, with this situation? If it’s familiar, trust me, you know the rule.

Am I trying to be the exception?

If you can answer these two questions and apply the knowledge to make appropriate healthy choices, you will be happier and you will find yourself in healthier relationships.

Those of you who fancy being in the driving seat of your own life and living and loving with your self-esteem will find love and happiness in the rule and be very damn happy with it because you realise you were damn miserable in the quest to be the exception.

If you also want a life that’s that exceptional, be and do the things you can control instead of looking for others to be exceptional and trying to control the uncontrollable so that you can be exceptional as a byproduct.

Those of you who want to avoid change, think you know better, like to gamble, will keep trying to be exception. You’ll keep trying to find love in resistance and abnormal differentiation. Keep going – the same results await you.

Your thoughts?

Check out my ebooks the No Contact Rule and Mr Unavailable & The Fallback Girl and more in my bookshop.

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