Getting better at recognizing the disordered

It seems I made the right call on cutting out the person who posted that parents should beat their children.

My husband had already written her off and unfriended her on Facebook, because of anti-Christian memes she would post.  (I try to be tolerant of other views, but her memes were deliberately insulting and obviously ignorant of the actual faith.)

Unfortunately, we couldn’t cut her off completely, because she’s the sister of a friend, and seems to be friends with all his friends.  The friend made a Facebook post, my husband made an offhand comment, this woman turned it into an attack, then began saying all sorts of vicious, venomous things about my husband–publicly, on that post.

My husband got upset and began defending himself, so she accused him of “playing the victim,” and even claimed that she had written him off “months ago” because of how “terribly” he talks to people and how patient they are for putting up with it.  (The hypocrisy of the personality-disordered is laughable.)

A couple of years ago, I saw this woman pop her son in the mouth for cussing.  Then earlier this year, I witnessed her cussing at her son, using the f– word, for bugging her when she was playing a game.  (Gee, I wonder where he learned to cuss?)  Then she posted on Facebook that parents should beat their children.

This woman is another Tracy.  Fortunately, I saw it early before I let her become a close friend.  (I recognized Tracy early, too, but because she was married to my best friend, I wasn’t allowed to cut her off before she could hurt me.)

Maybe I could tell my husband to block her so she can’t get his ire up again.  Maybe I should block her as well.  Just seeing her post happy stuff on my friend’s wall after what she did to my husband, irritates me.

I’m getting better at this, I think.  The more I’ve read and learned about the personality disordered (she has been officially diagnosed as bipolar), the easier it gets to spot them.  For example, before there was Tracy, there was the Avenger.  And before the Avenger, there was my aunt-by-marriage, who from what I’ve been told, has alienated everybody.

When we recognize these people early, we can avoid getting too emotionally attached to them, which spares us from getting hurt as badly as from betrayal by those we love.

The trouble is, my husband felt like people he considered friends, backed up his bully instead of defending him, like he got piled on.  Just like the way Richard and Tracy would treat me, only now it’s his turn.

He’s on edge because he’s afraid we’ve found another Richard/Tracy style of dynamic, meaning another round of toxic friendship and betrayal from people we thought were friends.

See, I’m not the only one who got seriously burned by Richard/Tracy, so I’m not the only one on alert and finding it hard to trust again.

But I noted that Richard and Tracy behaved like this lots of times before we broke up with them, while these other people have only done this one time and we’ve known them for a few years (longer for one of them, whom we’ve known since around 2000).  So hopefully this is an aberration and they’re not the same as Richard/Tracy.

Of course, part of living is taking risks, but with one eye open.