Madness Looks Normal Until It Doesn’t

The subtle signs of someone “going crazy” can go unnoticed even for the closest people in our lives for a long time.

We just feel disconnected with them on some levels and we hope they will get back on track with things.. until they never do anymore.

I’ve lived with a mother who often dissociated and made this seem like a normal part of our family life. It wasn’t until I saw other reference points of other families that I realized this was not normal.

Later in life, I looked for the familiar and found a partner who had multiple personality disorders. This is the most typical self-sabotaging pattern that occurs when you have such a turmoil in your upbringing.

I did not feel anything was wrong with him because he seemed normal, until.. he wasn’t.

The intensity of our fights grew exponentially in the course of a few months we spend together. It escalated so quickly that it felt like a full-time job to be in a relationship with him.

Often we’d go to bed upset at each other and sometimes he wouldn’t even join for bed and choose to sleep on the couch as a way to protest and show discontent. He was smoking weed, playing computer games in an addictive way and he was slacking work to the point that his manager no longer wanted him in the team and did not extend his work contract. The law protects employees so he couldn’t be fired because there was too much work to gather the data for proving his lack of professionalism. And he was quick to come back with good behaviour and change of attitude when he knew he was in trouble.

He really was clever enough to work on the edge and constantly be on the silver line of normality.

Until one day we had a huge scandal over a potential work trip I was having to London and he didn’t want me to go there without him. He made sure I’d invite him there as well. Then he found an excuse that I would be spending too little time with him on that trip and implied I was using him. The next thing he did was to make me delay buying my tickets and stall my decision until the last minute, almost losing my client. I was really bad at managing these priorities as well. He was completely manipulative of every situation in my work or private life. I was also in a bad situation with my house and mostly spending my time at his place because I needed money and was doing Airbnb in my apartment for extra money. In hindsight, it was the worst temporary decision I have ever made.

I didn’t know how to get myself out of the situation.

When you’re around someone with a mental issue, you often loose your own mind as well to their reality.

I started dissociating myself and I internalized the criticism. I was thinking that I am now bound to live with a sick person because otherwise, no one else will ever love me again. I later found out that this was part of my codependent behaviour.

He made me think I was unlovable.

My thoughts started changing from happy creative ideas to dark grim ones about almost all aspects of my life. Moreover, he was suggesting we’d buy a house together. He had dreams about a house with big windows and was always looking for them when we were going out in the city or cycling together on our road trips.

He made me stay hooked on a common dream that had no matching details in the daily life but a similar macro vision that he exploited against me.

He wasn’t there to harm me, but his mind was playing games to him as well so I got entangled in his games as well.

There were days when all he talked about was the future and nothing about the present and how we can handle the day to day life.

And then there were days when he demanded that I would work out more and stay on track with my losing weight goal and that I would keep a healthy diet. It was like that until we went to a supermarket together and he would buy soda and sweets and lots of bad stuff for our diet. He would justify that he needs that to overcome his discomfort of me not following up on his advice. Then, we’d go back to a normal diet for a few days when I would expect him home with cooked meals and a few days into the new habit he would accuse me of wanting to get him fat with my cooking every night.

The more I did of something, the more I was blamed to the point that I was constantly walking on eggshells about how he would react to a situation or something I do.

I had to change everything as often as possible so he could not keep track of my actions as much and would not be able to blame me very much for pushing a certain routine.

Then the next episode was that the more I changed stuff and could not be tracked, he was feeling more insecure and started feeling like I am hiding things from him. One night he started asking me if I have a secret lover. Then he said I spend too much time talking on the phone with my best friend.

All these things are “normal” things that can easily happen in any relationship regardless of whether they’re toxic or not.

For me, it felt like I was on a rollercoaster that could stop at any time, except it never did. It continued to ride.

And compared to my childhood situation where I could always retreat to my grandparent’s house and escape the madness at home and then things would have time to go back to normal for a while again, this was never-ending. I was spending 100% of my time with this man to the point that I no longer saw my friends.

I was disconnected from any form of reality check.

That’s when it hit me. I started pulling back. I stopped idealizing him and we even had a conversation in which he said: “I know it’s easier for you to break up with a human than a God so that’s why you are taking away the labels you’ve put on me before that I was your best boyfriend and your God”. It was indeed a shocking experience to see how this unfolds. But then I knew we were on the verge of a breakup and it’s only a matter of time until we would finally part ways.

I went to my London work trip, came back and met him on his best behaviour again. He was pleasing me and asking me to come back to his place and now wanting me to go away from his arms anymore. The intensity of the reunion was so big that on that high dose of endorphins we booked our flights to a sunny holiday destination. What a big mistake!

I was excited about the idea of going on such an exotic holiday together because I’ve never had that opportunity before with another partner. It wasn’t until I was there with him and another couple, friends of his that I realized the mistake I made. We had the first fight on the first night there.

The rollercoaster finally stopped the night we got back from our trip which was by far the worse holiday one can ever have. Besides sleeping in tears every night, I also felt like I would never be able to enjoy another relationship anytime soon because of the flashbacks I would have from this short-lived intense relationship.

Here are 5 top signs to know that something is off and not really healthy in the people you spend the most time with:

1. They are intense and they drag you in their energy

If there is one thing that people are often complaining about when they are around people who are not well mentally is that their energy is low. But the interesting part is that sometimes, the one who drains the energy deflects the blame on to the other person so you don’t know for sure what you feel anymore unless you have a very good grounding of your own energy.

Spending time meditating can help you feel where your energy is going to and how you’re anchoring yourself in your positive thoughts. The intensity of a person comes from the amount of “buttons” they can push at the same time about your past. The more you give a person access to your past and you become vulnerable and they use that against you and twist your words and shift the blame, the more energy you will lose trying to defend yourself.

2. The more things you have in common, the less you feel individual and unique

It looks like similarities are bonding and help people connect. But sick people play a game of immersing themselves into your world to the point that they copycat you and you can’t tell anymore what is yours and what is theirs. You then spend so much time together because “you’re too much alike”.

Differences are good and healthy in relationships. And positive tension and well-handled conflicts can determine a lot of growth opportunities. So having someone who is too much like you might be a sign you’ll lose your freedom of manifesting differences in the future.

Because sick people like the idea of taking over your world, they would shower you with compliments and give you the freedom to express yourself so they can copy your patterns and twist them against you to the point that you don’t want to pursue your dreams anymore.

3. The way they handle conflict is too cautious

Something that bugged me when I was having these intense fights with my ex is that he would always make sure that I was feeling guilty about fighting at the end of it. That made me want to not stay mad at him despite having serious problems in our relationship. The way conflict is handled indicates not just the maturity of the partners but also how they feel about the idea of losing you. If they fear to lose you, they would not want to take it to the extreme but they would use almost every work in the book to gaslight you while keeping you tight in the leash.

Handling conflict is the number one indicator of how a relationship is going to survive the test of time. How sick people handle conflict is particularly tricky and subtle because you think they are reasonable and calm, but they will find a way to create a series of fights over and over again for the smallest things. That helps them to not explode at once and look contained and controlled while driving you crazy over a repeated pattern of small fights over nothing.

4. They seem to play a role but you can’t tell what the ending looks like

They’re not their natural self and you can sense that because they always tell you what they know you want to hear, but despite everything being so well directed, you can’t anticipate the outcome.

The more you’re diving into the story with them, you get more details and you think you know them better, but you are always still too far from the “secret sauce”. You think you know them, but then, suddenly, there’s a shift of moods that leaves you wondering, where did you misread the signs?!

“Where did I misread the signs?!”

This was the question I had after the relationship ended for another 3–4 months after that. As life took a toll on me with the direction of the relationship, I couldn’t help but wonder what role did I play for his life if this was the way he wanted to end.

With a healthy person, you’re never left wondering what was he like because healthy people take the time to explain the differences that make you incompatible. They don’t play a role and they have no other motive to be with you than to try to create a long-lasting relationship.

5. They induce powerlessness and helplessness

Sickness comes in many ways. Some people don’t seem vulnerable at all despite being sick. The subtleness of this situation makes it harder to read who will make you feel good about yourself and who won’t. A partner who is insecure and sick will not tolerate well your show of power. As such, those partners become the bulliers who will make you feel worthless during an argument or hit below the belt when you are already down. Someone who makes you feel like this is usually not well-intended and does not support your growth. Stay away from such people!

A healthy partner would encourage you to see yourself reflectively with both good and bad and would keep you accountable without inducing powerlessness and helplessness. Someone who changes moods too often and is uncertain and unpredictable can leave even the strongest person with a very sour taste.

In retrospect, there are a few basic pillars that a healthy love relationship should be based upon which I documented in 3 other articles here:

• Emotional connection and emotional availability
• A healthy healing process supported by the safe space of the relationship
• A level of intimacy beyond friendship