Why do people get trapped in awful relationships? Because they think they’re fixing what’s wrong.

This came up in email, but I’m sharing it here in the hope that it might help people learn to do better:

A Cautious tyranny emerges when the social machine – family, job, school, church, club – is under Cautious control. A Cautious tyranny sustains itself by blocking escape – to flee a perfectly-planned paradise is not simply apostasy but insanity, for one thing, plus it calls the whole ‘perfectly-planned paradise’ idea into question – and Sociables break-up by reconciliation.

How do Sociables, considered as a type, so often end up being metaphorically imprisoned by the monster? Human beings have free will because, unlike dogs, they are capable of recognizing that a collar denotes captivity and a leash slavery – and capable of responding accordingly, by flight if possible, by rebellion if not. Sociables are poor at recognizing the collars and leashes the Incandescents and Cautious like to adorn them in. Moreover, their goal in their relationships is to keep them together at all costs. Accordingly, they don’t think to run away until the cost of doing so is too high to bear.

The quote is from Shyly’s delight, my actually-helpful self-help book. Among other things, the book documents the iterative processes by which relationships succeed or fail – and why certain social structures cannot fail to fail.

If you’ve got a buck and 45 minutes, I can change your life forever.