THE A.S.S. SYNDROME

Angry. Sad. Stupid. We all feel these emotions regularly. Most of the times, we feel them individually. Sometimes, they occur together. You can be angry and sad at the same time. That's usually when we start yelling and crying at the same time. You can feel angry and stupid at the same time, that's when your anger increases exponentially. You can feel stupid and sad at the same time. When someone cheats you of something because you were not careful enough. But to feel all three at the same time, it takes a special event to occur. A close friend facing the greatest emotional crisis of her life expressed these emotions. So we decided to call it the A.S.S. syndrome. The emotions you end up feeling because you have been cheated by someone you trusted, cheated of something you valued greatly and because the signs were always there, in front of you. Usually occurs in toxic relationships - bosses, parents, spouse, partner, sometimes even a friend.

The most common toxic relationships are the romantic ones, followed by parents and then by bosses. In a toxic relationship, one partner dominates leaving the other feel undervalued, demeaned and confused. While the partner may claim to care, they will also say things to the partner that are insulting, condescending and rude. Often masked as a joke, the unsuspecting partner ignores it initially. The most common indicator is the consistent mismatch between words and actions. Like a parent who says they will do anything for their child's happiness but throw a tantrum if the child wants to make an independent decision. There is a lot of literature available on toxic relationships. What's not known is the sheer number of narcissistic people out there abusing their partners, spouses, children and subordinates while claiming to do the opposite.

Why is it so difficult to spot? Because we trust our intelligence and are blind to our own flawed perceptions. Even when we are aware, we feel that since we have invested so much time and effort into it, let's just continue to bear it. The sunk-cost fallacy explains why we sit and watch boring movies simply because we have paid for the tickets, why women continue in abusive marriages because they invested so much emotionally that they might as well deal with the pain of the relationship rather than deal with the pain of loneliness. This is when we end up feeling angry at the person doing this to us, we feel sad because it hurts us and we feel stupid because the proof was always there but we refused to see it and committed ourselves whole heartedly to the situation. Hence, A.S.S. We feel like an ass.

What do we do? Learn to cut your losses. Learn from a good stock trader what that means. They don't panic because their stocks have nosedived, they sell them and move on to better investments. They don't sit and mourn and regret because a really good investor learns from her mistakes and tries not to repeat them, all the while aware, that trading is a risky business. A really good trader makes money and invests the profit into other assets as well. They hedge their bets. How come we take so much care of our financial assets but not our emotional ones?

Largely because we have been sold the story of fighting to keep the relationship alive. In a marriage with kids, it makes sense. But in a relationship where the only loss is basically someone who is around to witness your journey, why do we insist on getting all audacious and challenging God and the stars and whatever else it is that we do when we're faced with the failure of a relationship? Yes, we have to be consistent, patient and find a solution to problems in a relationship. But we must be aware of what the ROI will be. Fighting twenty years to keep a relationship when you probably just have another twenty years to live - I don't know if that is a worthy investment of your time.

Don't be an ass. Cut your losses. Move to better investments - in yourself, your well being and invest in a really good therapist.