The human heart is a precious commodity, and the tenderest hearts are the most easily broken. Folks used to spend a lot of time vetting a potential intimate relationship partner’s character, but sadly, character vetting has become a lost art.
The Emotional Romeo sweep you off your feet. But it’s one thing to desire only to love someone and quite another to be more interested in getting someone to love you.
While character disturbance is widepread, it occurs along spectra of both type and degree. Not every empathy-impaired person is a psychopath. And not all folks with narcissistic traits and tendencies are the same. Getting the right information and finding the right help can be a real challenge.
Pasive-aggressive personalities are very different from their covert-aggressive counterparts. And their manner of coping is incredibly self-defeating as opposed to self-advancing.
Character-impaired folks inevitably use and abuse others. And the more they lack conscience and empathy, the more seriously they’re likely to use and abuse.
Shame can be certainly be a bad thing. And some shame is truly toxic. But in our days of rampant character dysfunction, shamelessness is a much bigger problem than too much shame. The most disturbed characters among us are the most shameless.