Heartbreakers: Five Types of Men You Want to Flee From

Some men come with the promise of sweet heavens. They will never leave you or hurt you. Then when you don't see it coming, they give you, not only an emotional bruise, but a gaping wound that bleeds you dry.

There are five kinds of men that no one warns you about, namely: THE AMBIVALENCE, THE UNAVAILABLE, THE CAD, THE GHOSTER and the last dishonourable mention being the GASLIGHTER. These men will consume your mental, physical and emotional spaces and grip you tight with their claws. Let’s take a critical look at these types of men from a list I compiled from real-life stories. Note that I am writing from a heterosexual female perspective, but who knows, our gay brothers might have something to add.

No matter how conscious or unconscious you are about picking your men, these are sneaky ones, and they may claim not to know they are manipulating your emotions. Thus, you are the one to know and get unchained if your wellbeing and health is important to you. No matter how far gone in love you are with any of these men, and even if it means writhing in pain and suffering their absence or silence every night, you have to put on your discipline garment and reflect. Reflect on whether it’s worth it or not. And if it doesn’t, the consuming feelings you may have for these men will dissipate eventually and you will be on your way to unbridled freedom. However, watch and learn from the pattern of men you attract, lest, you walk the same road twice.

The Ambivalence: he is attentive, he is super cool and he tells you all the sweet things you want to hear. He will begin to slip sooner or later by not keeping promises and will be an expert in manipulating you into believing how he never meant to hurt you as he begins to hook up with exes and delight in keeping late nights even when you have previous plans. He is habitual in repeating these patterns without any recourse to your feelings and no matter how many times he swears to you to be better. You will begin to see the doubt he carries deep in his dysfunctional DNA about himself, which he will inadvertently project on to you: Because he will begin to show you or play the “to be or not to be” card. He will not even tell anyone you are dating. He will keep you a secret from all his friends and family. You will be the ghost lover or “the friend”. The doubt of his past, present and future will be so strong that he messes up something good. How will this hurt you? You will begin to accept his excuses, lower your values and standards because you love him so much and none of your sacrifices will matter. What you do with his presence in your life will be about how much you love yourself or the drama.

The unavailable: he is your ideal sweet, intelligent, thoughtful and sexy man but he has a strong commitment elsewhere. Despite, he still will not leave you alone, even though he is somewhat emotionally distant. He is not in an open relationship either, which will make perhaps for a different relationship experience. He is sneaking around with you. You wish things would change but they never do and you may even be in the dark on the true nature of things. And you are the one that is eating the crumbs from his shared meal. You always have to queue up and endure countless plan cancellations and endless excuses. Yes, he always has somewhere else to be and you keep buying the lies that it is all work related (if you are in the dark about his other relationship). Sometimes, he has double booked with the main lover and you have waited till Kingdom come but nothing. Other times, it is not about another lover but the commitment phobia that is deep seated in his entrails or his own unresolved trauma about being with another being.  Whichever the case, this person starves you of his attention because he is never available to you. And you have put on so much work all you do is cry or be angry. What are you still waiting for though? Is it hard to set yourself free if talking it out has never helped anyone?

The Cad: He over promises and under-delivers, he fast tracks you to the bedroom and have nothing else to do with you afterwards. It does not matter whether you made him wait for it or you have sex with him on the spur of the moment. He is over horny and he displays narcissistic tendencies. Not any word that comes out of his mouth has values. A wordsmith that goes around telling women what he knows will trigger their interest. He is a dishonourable serial womanizer. Whatever he tells you to get you into bed have been told to many others, and he has extra women on the queue should you put on your thinking cap, and figure him out. How do you spot out a cad? Pay attention to his sweet-talks and urgency.

The Ghoster: Conscious, sure, available but he owns the weapon of control for he has perfected the act of ghosting. When you don’t play to his whims at all times or you are too available, he disappears. He cuts communication faster than a cheetah running to catch its prey. This puts you in a state of doubt and self-pity. He is calculative. When you are forlorn and sorry and miss him more than the world, he reappears with flimsy excuses. This happens on and of until you are hooked on the attention of someone dangling a bone of fear in your face. When he ignores you, you crave him more like cocaine addiction. His attention is the bait upon which he drags you into a traumatizing affair. There is no gentler way to say this, unclasp yourself, unless, you are now accustomed to the tug of war jerking at your heart. But to what end? Don't put your plans aside for anyone that makes you a second thought or an afterthought. Get on board with your own life plans, dreams and purpose, even if it means spending an evening alone at home. Embrace your company. Embrace you.

The Gaslighter: Attractive, smart, devoted and maybe famed and successful. But all these nice attributes are swathed in massive insecurity with misogynistic cherry on top. This is a kind of man that shifts blames and never takes responsibility for his actions, instead, he brainwashes you to the moon! He begins by subtly manipulating you emotionally through a carrot and stick approach. He will make you doubt your judgement, your sense of reality, your wisdom and even your own being.He alters every event to suit his construction of reality. He is a perfectionist of psychological abuse that you only recognize when you have accepted the victimisation. When he indulges in physical abuse to top his mental manipulation of you, he tells you, you made him do it even though he loved you. This is a fucked up patriarch. Run for your life.