When You Lose the Pick Me Dance

Here’s my theory which is my theory which is mine (lifelong Monty Python fan): I think a lot of FW’s end up mesmerizing themselves into believing all sorts of total bs about their chumps merely because some FW tend repeat these fabricated criticisms so much as part of the bimbo-himbo/AP “training program.”

There’s a thing in psychology called “covert/indirect persuasion” where person A tells person B all sorts of terrible things about person C to invoke hubris and competition in person B who will then trip over themselves to avoid behaving anything like person C.

I only recently learned this had a clinical name but, back in college, my friends and I called it the “hubris trap.” There was also the classic pick-me dance “jealousy trap” where person A rubs person B’s face in person C’s amazing qualities but it seems like the hubris trap was more common, maybe because people tend to bond more over mutual dislike or criticism of third parties. Back in the day, we started noticing that, when person A happened to be male and person B female, the negative tactic usually relied on person B’s internalized misogyny to work because men like this would typically put “person C” down for assertive traits, like “My ex was such a ballbreaker and so jealous. Not like you who would never, ever go through my phone or nag me about where I’d been on Saturday night…” The whole idea is that person B would instantly start competing for world’s biggest doormat. Anyway, among my group of friends, it was a whole social justice thing to resist being manipulated by attacks on other women.

When FW suddenly started criticizing me mercilessly a few months into his secret affair, it set off my spidey senses because his attacks sounded suspiciously “rehearsed” and it vaguely reminded me of something. But then I chumped out, huffed hopium and went into denial for awhile. But in retrospect I know perfectly well that FW was doing the hubris trap thing with the affair partner because he’d tried the same shit on me when we were first hanging out as friends before dating.

When we were first spending time together in college, FW would drop hints what he and his friends “hated” about various women– basically unsubtle code for any kind of assertive behavior, the message being “Dance pretty for me and don’t do these things to avoid my contempt.” I just assumed he was young and clueless and laughed at him. I’d turn it around and say something like, “My friends and I just HATE men who try to train women into being doormats with the comparison game. Men like that are so WEAK and insecure that independent women scare them…”

FW then ran to all his friends and his favorite professor to say he’d met the “most amazing woman.” It should have been a giant red flag that he sounded like he’d never met a woman who didn’t eat shit before. But AH! That was *my* hubris trap! I loved being loved for my feminist creds! I fell for it and, twenty years later, learned my mistake: when they tell you who they are, believe them the first time. Eventually my novelty wore off, he became bored and returned to factory setting. In the end, he really liked groveling suck-ups.

After D-Day when FW was blathering out confessions, it turned out to be true that he’d pretty much been using me as a “head on a pike” in order to extract all sorts of self-negating behavior out of the AP where she’d scurry around him like a servile dog, act like his boring mansplaining was scintillating, etc.– anything to avoid being condemned like his ball-breaking bitch of a wife!! Probably from sheer repetition, over time he started believing his own fabrications about me and the marriage.

I think the “hubris trap” probably works particularly well on women with preexisting cases of internalized misogyny, though I’ll bet it works just as well on male APs with equivalent gender identity insecurities. For instance, a she-FW could probably ply a male AP with: “My ex was SOOO effeminate– always so hypersensitive and needy and, like, always expecting me to wear the pants and pay for everything…. I’m so GLAD you’re nothing like him!”… as she reaches for idiot’s wallet.

In short, that weird 180 where FW’s go from “You’re the love of my life and marrying you was the best decision I ever made!” to “I never loved you and you’re a bitch/asshole/sexless loser” in a short period of time probably has more to do with AP “compliance training” or “hubris trapping” than anything else.