 How many of you have been in abusive relationships? It's okay, don't be ashamed. It's a safe space, we're here for you. How many of you would say you think that's where the cluster B person? Marceus, psychopath, borderline? Any of you get the impression that it was too good to be true in the beginning? Yeah, this is one of the things that you really need to watch out for. The cluster B female or male will scan the target first. They scan you for your values, they scan you for your beliefs, they scan you for your lifestyle, and then they reflect back exactly what you wanna hear. So if I hear you saying, this girl's perfect to me, ho ho. I wanna be going, dude, chill out. Just slow it down, let's have a little chat. If it moves too quickly, if it's a whirlwind romance, if it's too good to be true, it's probably fake. It's probably not right. If your emotions are spiking, listen, emotional dysregulation is not just anxiety and depression, it's euphoria. High levels of lust, high levels of limerence. It's not good. I know it feels good at the time, but it comes at a price. Everything that goes up comes down. You kinda wanna be more in the center, on a day-to-day basis in terms of your emotional regulation, you wanna be in the center. You don't wanna be raging out. You don't wanna be really, really depressed. You don't wanna be super anxious, but nor do you wanna be through the roof with like endorphin rushes, euphoric. If you're euphoric one day and depressed the next, what do they call that? Sorry? Yeah, manic depressive, bipolar. Manic depressive, it's not good. You don't wanna be in that place, you wanna be steady. When you see somebody as well, because we're talking about women, what male narcissists and psychopaths will do is flaunt that which they think is gonna be most attractive to the opposite sex. It could be money, it could be power, it could be status. What do women do? What's their power over us? Sexuality. Sexuality, yes it is. There is a definition within the cluster B spectrum. It's not really like widely accepted and not really that widely used called histrionic personality disorder. It's somewhere between narcissism, borderline and psychopathy. And it's a very infantile, bratish and hypersexualized way of conducting yourself. Usually it's women who get that diagnosis. So if you have a grown woman who's talking and acting like a little girl and being very, very sexual in everything that she does and showing herself off a lot, you could be looking at histrionic to borderline. Be careful of that. Why? It's not, I don't think that that is actually a case of biological preference because I've seen guys do that, like guys who don't have money but they're good looking. They'll use that strategy. I think that's just a strategy. It's about power. It's only about power. Steve mentioned this in his talk. You've got to look at the power dynamic. When you're looking at relationships and you're looking at love, if you want to evade a nasty relationship, look at the power dynamic. Are you two equals? Or is she kind of like this and you're like this? Are you really grateful to be with her? Are you the best thing that's ever happened to me? It's not good. You don't want to be in that situation. It should be horizontal. Equal means equal. Equal means equal. So you don't want to find yourself in a situation where the power dynamic is messed up. The other thing to look at very simply is how does it make you feel? I get people saying to me all the time, oh, should I leave my boyfriend? Should I leave my girlfriend? And then they want to tell me a story. They'll be like, oh, you'll never guess what she did. Here's one for you. And I'm like, I have fucking heard every fucking story you could tell. Every fucking story. I've heard them all. You won't believe what this guy did. I'm like, go on, tell me. I don't care about the story. Not really. Somebody came to me at the convention and said, hey, you know, this is what's happened to me. I wanted to get your opinion on what you think she is. And all I said is I'm looking at you and I can tell by the effect on you what you're dealing with. She's not here. I'm not gonna give it like, I'm not a witch doctor. I can't give a diagnosis by reading a tarot cards or something. I can look at the human being in front of me and see the effect of the relationship on him or her. And if it's deleterious, if this person's personality has been fractured and their confidence is wounded, when I was in Malaysia, it's a long story. I won't get into it, but I learned a concept, a mystical concept there called samangat. So as a Malay word, samangat, it means your will to thrive and to love and to live life. And some of us in these abusive relationships, the samangat gets damaged. So your will to life, your will to thrive actually breaks. This is not good. It's difficult to fix. It takes time to fix it. So look at how interacting with that person makes you feel. If it makes you feel like shit, it's probably not good for you. If it makes you feel really, really super excited and through the roof, it's probably not gonna be that good for you in the long run. Be realistic. You're an adult. If you're in a long-term relationship and you're talking love and marriage, you don't want it to be a rollercoaster. It's like, how are you gonna do 30 years of rollercoaster? You're fucking crazy in the end. So look for something that is a little bit more regulated, a little bit more dependable and a little bit more, there is a concept that we have now. And I think it's because I think it's because of living in the age of hypostimulation. Like this idea that if it's boring, even for a minute, there must be something wrong with it. Do any of you like to get bored? No. My God, I fucking love being bored. I just moved to a house in Ibiza and people are like, oh, Ibiza's a party place. I'm like, I'm in the fucking hills. It's quiet out there. All I can hear, there's like chickens and a wind in the trees. It's fantastic. If you don't like being bored, you might all be stuck in a little bit of an addictive cycle of hypostimulation. Put the phone down for a while, put the phone down for a day. Don't watch TV, read a book, but like a paper book that you can physically hold and just sit around doing nothing. See what happens. If you start going into an emotional flashback, getting frustrated, getting anxious, there might be another problem there that you need to deal with. Cluster B personality disorder people know how to keep the show going. They can keep you stimulated, keep you guessing, keep you on the back foot. They can work you like that and they have more energy than you do and they're better at this shit than you are. The final point on evasion is because I'm talking to men about women, do not make the mistake of thinking. Now available exclusively at 21 University. The all new CPTSC Masterclass by Richard Grannon. This is the world's most advanced educational course on healing from complex trauma as a man. Learn more at the link below or visit 21university.com.