Mental illness isn’t a joke and it’s not something to be taken lightly. There’s a difference between dating a guy who’s a bit eccentric or spontaneous and one who’s emotionally unstable. If you notice any of the following signs in your relationship, changes are you might be dating someone on the latter end of the spectrum:
- He often suggests doing things that are extremely risky. Halfway into your date, he suggests you do something mad, like take cocaine, jump off a cliff into the ocean, or have sex in his car that’s parked on the street. Although you might think this guy is a risk-taker and spontaneous, read between the lines: if he wants you to do something that could harm your body or get you arrested, he’s really showing you that he doesn’t care about your safety and well-being.
- He love-bombs you. The guy barely knows you and he’s already giving you expensive gifts, telling you how amazing you are and making you believe that he’s so lucky to have met you. It’s too fast. What’s his hidden agenda? If it feels like he’s laying on the love too soon, it’s a sign something’s wrong with this guy.
- He lies with a straight face. You’ve gone on several dates and catch him out on a lie. Instead of showing embarrassment, getting flushed cheeks or backtracking on his words, he comes up with an excuse really quickly and his face doesn’t show any emotion. It’s creepy and shows you that he’s probably had a little too much practice in the art of lying.
- He has a really bad temper. It’s easy to set him off and you’ve seen him lose his mind with other people, like when he’s had an argument with his best friend and it quickly escalated into shouting or throwing things around. It’s juvenile and scary because chances are one day, his temper will be unleashed on you.
- He seriously misreads situations. You were out for dinner when the waiter came over and was charming to you. Your date thinks the guy was totally hitting on you and disrespecting him. Or, your date gets into a fight with someone and later claims that it was a big setup or the guy was out to get him. He totally misreads situations or twists them.
- He makes intense eye-contact. When a guy looks into your eyes, it can be really sexy. But a crazy person will make intense eye-contact that makes you feel awkward and a bit like he’s violating your space.
- He has grandiose plans. When you ask the guy what his dreams are, he’s got crazy, over the top plans that don’t seem too logical or like they’ll work. For instance, he might have just got a new job and he claims that he can easily make a million dollars in a year. It’s talk like that which makes him delusional.
- He calls himself bad things. He might laugh it off when he tells you that he’s “crazy” or a “cheat,” but it could be truthful. You know what they say about what’s said in jest. Sometimes psychos also call themselves bad things without meaning to — it’s their truthfulness coming out, so listen to him during those moments when his mask slips.
- He has zero empathy. He tells you about how his friend fell and broke his arm in three places, but he laughs all the way through the story. When you tell him about something scary that happened to you, he’ll be quick to joke about it or tell you not to be such a baby. Psychos don’t have empathy because they don’t feel much.
- His emotions change in a second. Emotional instability is a big symptom of being mentally unstable, so you should be worried if he can go from raging about something to being super-calm the next second.
- He charms you by focusing on your weakness. The charm of a psychopath is part of his love-bombing strategy and it’s laid on thickly but in a smart way. The psycho will focus on what you don’t like about yourself when he charms you. For instance, if you feel like you don’t have a nice body, he’ll be complimenting it all the time. Crazy guys charm you in a way that’s memorable to you and they pull out all the stops to get you to like them.
- He’s surrounded by crazy people. The stories that come out of the psycho’s mouth often involve “crazy” people in his life. His ex was totally mad and she crashed his car, his brother stole from him, his best friend left him stranded at a party. The psycho share such stories to get attention and sympathy.
- He tries to be just like you. You say that you hate it when people can’t spell and your date agrees. You seem to have so much in common and it’s great. But as time goes on, you realize he’s been faking it. He actually doesn’t share your love of adventure and he makes so many spelling errors it’s ridiculous. He’s just pretending to be like you so that you feel a connection with him. Freaky AF.