"Consider a common scenario. Someone's history slowly reveals itself: a past marked by addiction, by deception, by relationships destroyed through the same behaviors now emerging in your direction. You discover that the way they treat you mirrors how they treated others before: the lying, the sneaking, the betrayals they swore were behind them. The addiction they claimed to have conquered resurfaces in different substances, different compulsions, while they remain in denial about what anyone watching from outside could plainly see."
"Here the third category becomes complex. Their disorder is not a single dramatic choice (like leaving) but a continuous pattern of small choices, each one the expression of a psyche organized around concealment and appetite. And your difficulty is not simply whether to stay or go, but whether you can accurately read the character before you when you are invested in seeing something else."
Another person's psyche constitutes a separate domain of autonomous choice that flows predictably from character, distinct from randomness or control. Patterns of past addiction, deception, and ruined relationships often reemerge in new forms, revealing a consistent organization of appetite and concealment. These behaviors are expressed through continuous small choices rather than single dramatic acts. Denial by the person and hope from the partner collaborate to obscure evidence, delaying clear perception. Accurate self-governance requires updating one's assessment of that character as evidence accumulates and making decisions — staying or leaving — based on that revised judgment.
Read at Psychology Today
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