Is your Girlfriend or Wife a Professional Victim?
Does your girlfriend or wife blame you for everything that’s wrong in the relationship, even her bad behaviors? Does she refuse to take responsibility for her own actions, especially the hurtful ones? Do you frequently feel forced into a role of contrition in which you have to make up for some imagined or exaggerated “wrong” or that you “owe” your girlfriend or wife?
If so, you may be involved with a woman who is a professional victim. Don’t be fooled, she is no victim. Victim-hood is a powerful role. In fact, women who play the victim are really the aggressor in relationships. They play the victim to manipulate and control others by holding you emotionally hostage.
Professional victims are stealth bullies. Being caught in a never ending blame game with one of these women is a form of emotional abuse for the man at whom she points her finger in accusation.
The following characteristics are signs that your girlfriend or wife may be a professional victim:
1) She never acknowledges when she hurts others. She has exclusive rights to the role of “injured party.” When you call her on her behavior, she provides ample excuses for why she’s not accountable. The excuses she provides assign blame for her actions to someone else, usually the person she’s wronged. It’s always your fault or someone else’s fault, but never, ever is it her fault.
2) The victim must be victimized. If you’re not an abusive person, she’ll pull it out of you in order to play the victim script she has in her head. For example, she needles and needles and needles one of your sore spots, until you can’t take it any more and snap at her in defense.
Presto! She just got you to “victimize” her–never mind the previous 2 hours in which she psychologically tormented and bullied you into it. She needs to play innocent victim to someone’s bad guy. It’s the foundation of her identity.
This is a very primitive defense mechanism called projective identification, which, if you’re on the receiving end, is truly awful in that it makes you feel like the crazy person. It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy whereby she believes you’re the “bad guy” and she’s the “victim.” She then behaves or interacts with you in such a way that you change your behavior in response to her actions and become the “bad guy.” A telltale sign is that you feel like you’re being coerced into being someone that you’re not. It’s highly, highly emotionally abusive.
3) She blames others and circumstances for her own shortcomings or failures. The professional victim lives in “Never-Never Take Personal Responsibility Land,” which is bordered to the North by “The Land of If Only.” This allows her to blame her parents, siblings, co-workers, bosses, professors and you for her life, career and relationships not being as she thinks they should be.
She’d be running the business if only her boss recognized her talents. She’d have graduated from design school and been wildly successful if her prof hadn’t looked at her cross-eyed. She’d have sex with you more often if you did more of x, y, and z. Don’t fall for this malarkey, men. She’s right in that there’s someone to blame for her sad life. She need only look in the mirror to direct her blame accurately.
4) She admires and respects people who actually treat her badly. This is a fascinating aspect of the professional victim: They defend those who harm, exploit and bully them and vilify and lash out at those who want to help and care for them. She may fondly describe a relative or ex-boyfriend who sounds like a real S.O.B. and follow it up with, “but he’s such a good person.” Meanwhile, you bend over backward to tiptoe around her extreme sensitivities and she accuses you of “beating her down” and “not being supportive.” Huh?
The fact that she admires and respects bullies and people who abuse their power is a huge red flag because we emulate those we admire. Let me make this point crystal clear: SHE ADMIRES BULLIES AND ABUSERS BECAUSE SHE IS REALLY AN EMOTIONALLY ABUSIVE BULLY IN VICTIM’S CLOTHING.
It’s impossible to have a loving relationship of equals with a professional victim. She goes through life feeling slighted and angry, never taking responsibility for her actions or life. Good luck trying to talk to her about this. You’ll meet with extreme defensiveness and more blaming behaviors. Her only identity is that of victim: If she doesn’t believe she’s being victimized, then who is she? Someone who treats other people like crap and who is pissing her life away. It’s a matter of psychological self-preservation versus ego annihilation.
You can’t have a healthy and happy relationship with someone who holds you hostage and controls you through guilt, emotional blackmail and blame. This type of person rarely changes and usually has characteristics of one of the dramatic cluster B personality disorders, including Borderline Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Histrionic Personality Disorder, Anti-Social Personality Disorder or some variation.
If you’re involved with one of these women, I encourage you to reconsider the relationship. When I come across them in life, I try to avoid them altogether or, at the very least, minimize contact. It’s really the only way to deal with them.
by Dr Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD
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Dr Tara J. Palmatier holds a Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology and M.Sc. in Counseling Psychology. She has over a decade of experience delivering direct services to diverse populations in a variety of settings. She left the clinical field in 2005 to begin a career in multimedia editing, writing and consulting. Dr Palmatier is presently the principal clinical writer and editor for the Mastering My Life program, which provides confidential guided therapy sessions on a variety of life issues. She also runs her own blog, A Shrink for Men, and a private relationship consultation practice for individuals, primarily men, who are suffering emotional abuse in their relationships. Dr. Palmatier has a strong interest in the application of psychoanalytic theory to the Arts. Her dissertation, Ceci N’Est Pas Une Thèse: An Applied Psychoanalysis of René Magritte (May 2004) examines early childhood parental object loss, incomplete mourning, repetition compulsion and creative outcomes. Dr. Palmatier is a member of the board of directors of the Hospice Education Institute, a member of the American Psychological Association, a former graduate member of the British Psychological Society, and past coordinator of Jungian Seminars in Switzerland. | More from Dr. Tara J. Palmatier
Stumble It!
Dr. Tara,
I can’t believe how exactly this article describes my ex, and mother of my 11 year old son.
I wish i could take your advice and simply cut her out of my life, but that’s not an option with my son living with her.
She couldn’t resolve an issue with me if her life depended on it…she just runs away and plays the victim. And i’m not an aggressive person. I work in customer service talking to irate people all day, so I know how to be professional and businesslike with her, and she still runs away when I try to resolve issues with her, as if I were some kind of monster. Then i’ll usually get an aggressive, abusive email from her. Most recently I found out from my insurance that she hadn’t taken my son to the dentist in over two years, despite it being covered for every 6 months. when I tried to talk to her about it she literally ran away.
It’s obvious she has no ability to take personal responsibility and no conflict resolution skills and I’m worried that my son is doomed to follow in her footsteps.
Any advice would be very much appreciated.
Thanks, Joel
1. Your description is likely Borderline personality disorder, or narcissistic personality disorder.
2. Such is highly burdensome, especially to their families, as friends are not family are easier to to be excluded.
4. These persons cause unrest and Family upheaval
5. These individuals/”victims” incite family abandonment, exclusion, or reverberation to mirror the such behaviors by family members.
They must to survive.
I have never read your column before and this is probably the best article I have ever read. This is my mother and a dear friend of mine 100 %. It is so exhausting at times dealing with them because of the constant blame of others because of their issues. This has been very frustrating and has impacted our relationship significantly. My prayer today is that I continue to be an open minded woman who does not blame other people when things don’t go my way. I must accept responsibility for my actions and move on.
Thank you Dr. Tara.
Wow! Thanks so much for posting this! I knew I wasn’t crazy, and this just proves everything I’ve been trying to say.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
– Stephen
I’ve seen your material before and admire your work. While I personally feel that this does not represent most women, I also recognize that these numbers are on the rise as today’s woman acts more and more “entitled” in the most boldest of fashions that really scare me.
I hate professional victims, both men and women. I have nothing good to say about them and their “victimhood”. Society today needs to stop coddling them and get tough.
Enough is enough.
John Lukas
WADVPress
http://wadvpress.org
If you find a woman who takes personal responsibility hang on with both hands. So rare to find, I think, because society has so many double standards with regards to female behavior versus male behavior. Have you noticed the punishment of female teachers with regards to inappropriate sexual relationships with that compared to male teacher’s punishment? It goes down the line, and I think women are getting the message that their bad behavior will be excused.
Hi Ray,
I don’t have a book published yet. Knowing what I know about the publishing industry, I’m presently working on an e-book that I’ll self-publish. Thank you very much for your kind feedback and support.
Happy New Year,
Dr Tara
Very perception and I feel that this holds true to many people that I know (both men and women). I’m very glad to see someone wise enough to put this so succinctly.
Also, knowing some men who act in a very similar manner, I find that people’s reactions to the men who act this way are a lot less tolerant than they are to the women.
My personal interactions with people like this have been very successful to get them to either admit their fault, apologize for their attitude, avoid me altogether or realize that their problems (and sometimes there are legitimate problems) are manageable.
Dear Dr. Palmatier:
I just checked out Amazon.com’s book section to see if they have anything you’ve published. I couldn’t find anything. You could do us all a big favor if you merely took everything we’ve seen from you at MND and put it in a book. Anything more than that would be gratefully appreciated. I have some college and university instructors that are in grievous need of your truths.
You are one of the main reasons MND has become a premier resource for men in need of honesty about gender issues.
Sincerely/Respectfully, Ray
Relationships are so complicated these days I think I’ll just stay single. I can’t afford to hire a psychologist to sort out all the manipulation and lies that are going on.
“women who play the victim are really the aggressor in relationships”
That is so true – my mother did this to my father, who accepted it as his lot in life. I watch and learnt as a small boy, it is very helpful to a boy to have a father to learn from !