“I Don’t Want To Hurt You.”

He says: I don’t want to hurt you.

What she understands: He doesn’t want to hurt me because he cares about me so much, which means he didn’t mean it when he hurt me so I’ll forgive him anything.

What he really means: Just to give you some forewarning, I’ll never really mean to hurt you but I will anyway and won’t take any responsibility for it.I don’t connect my actions with the impact on you or the relationship because I tend to only really think about myself and I’m short-term thinker – I think about what I can get now without real thought for the consequences.

If someone doesn’t understand what they did to cause you pain, what is to stop them from repeating the behaviour? A lot of people have relationship patterns which means that they have an awareness of what they are likely to do. They may have ideas to be different ‘this time’ but if they go to the trouble of saying this, it means they’ve resigned themselves to inevitably causing you pain.So move on. Don’t be a sitting duck.There really are much nicer people out there.Give them a chance to be nice to you.