How to Avoid Falling in Love With a Jerk

By Woman to Woman

Jerk warning! Allergic to jerks?!

At some point, or the other, we have all either seen, dated, fell in love with or married a jerk. And then when we thought we had learnt our lesson the hard way, there we are, once again, finding ourselves in a new relationship with another jerk!

This article aims to help you recognize why you may have an attraction for jerks and to help you fix your jerk-o-meter so that you can, from this day forward, avoid falling in love with a jerk.

John Van Epp, Ph.D., author of How to Avoid Falling in Love With a Jerk: The Foolproof Way to Follow Your Heart Without Losing Your Mind, gave some vital insights into why we fall for jerks, and how we can break this pattern of creating and recreating the same kinds of unhealthy relationships with people who do nothing but break our hearts and leave us for dead.

And ladies, I know what you’re thinking, but being a jerk is not confined to the man only.

“Jerks have no gender. The only difference is the package they come in. No one earns the right to be called a jerk from merely acting like one once or twice. If we are honest, all of us act like jerks now and then. However, the most fundamental identifying feature of true jerks is their persistent resistance to ever changing their core jerk qualities. No matter how many times they have been confronted by you or others, they still persist in their hurtful patterns. If it is possible to reform a jerk, it will almost always require a major life crisis or life-transforming event. But the longer the jerk’s track record, the lower the likelihood for improvement.”

In addition to the persistent resistant to change, you will most surely recognize a jerk because (a) he or she has a habit of breaking boundaries (e.g. he/she is a ‘player’ and persistently cheats), (b) he or she lacks the ability to see others’ perspectives and (c) he or she has a dangerous lack of emotional control and balance.

Many of the times we fall in love with a jerk it is because we are “blinded by love” and lose the ability to be rational. This is why we have to ensure a balance of the head and heart in order to avoid being in relationships which is unhealthy for us.

Further, ever since the extraordinary move of society from marriage and relationships based on common culture and common values of the parties to being more focused on relationships based on love, romance, chemistry, and intimacy, there has been spiraling incidence of relationships falling apart even faster. Ernest W. Burgess wrote that “the presumably irrational, arbitrary and fleeting nature of a romantic choice of a spouse is diametrically opposed to the serious, prudent and responsible undertaking which it should be.”

This does not mean that if common values and culture are fundamental factors in making a choice for a partner one should therefore overlook considering other elements such as love, romance, and physical chemistry and compatibility, vice versa. All these components are necessary to help better choose a partner. So, instead of bypassing the traditional focus on common values and culture, why not create a mixed balance of those two factors plus the ingredients of love, chemistry, and intimacy? There is nothing wrong with trying to have the best of both worlds by using this combination, which promises to create a better balance of the head and the heart and aid a more rational approach to relationship building.

“Too often people act on the belief that being in love entitles them to stop taking in and analyzing information about their partners. The assumption is that love itself will take care if all that come, including maintaining the relationship. Love is conceived as an either-or phenomenon. You either are in love, or you are not. And if the love switch is thrown on, the brain switch is turned off. You leap into an exciting pool of pure emotion and willfully choose to stay there until you are about to drown in bad feelings.”

Another reason why we repeatedly find ourselves in jerk-relationships is due to our propensity to “fast-track” relationships. Fast tracking rob you of opportunities to really get to know your partner well, knowing him or her only in superficial ways. “Because of your accelerated relationship, you become infected with the love-is-blind syndrome and run the high risk of making a commitment to someone you later realize is a jerk.” By fast-pacing your relationship you skip the part of going over the details of your partner’s characteristics, behavior, and responses in various situations and you also do not get to see how your partner resolves challenges or conflict either related to him or her self or the relationship. When you get infected with the love-is-blind syndrome, you are more likely to overlook flaws and minimize problems which will only grow larger as the relationship progresses. Intoxicated by your emotions, you can wind up being betrayed by the strong loving bonds and over-attachment you form ever so quickly, simply because you didn’t pace your relationship. 

“Without a plan for building safe relationships and determining the true character of the partner you picked, you can easily find your emotional immune system compromised and your vulnerability to unhealthy relationships heightened.”   

To save us, especially the naïve, Epp designed the R.A.M plan to help our foolish romantics avoid the pitfalls of falling in love with jerks. And Epp believes the plan, if followed correctly, can protect you from future heartbreaks.

RAM is the Relationship Attachment Model which is used to portray the primary forces that create bonds in relationships. The five dynamics of RAM are (1) know, (2) trust, (3) rely, (4) commit, (5) touch, and they are explained in terms of their unique contributions to the bond developed in a relationship and how they interact with each other.

It is also important to keep a balance amongst the 5 dynamics, in other words, avoid allowing one of the key dynamics to run ahead of the other. So, therefore, and simply explained, if on a scale from 1 to 10 your trust for the person you’re dating or are in a relationship with is a number 3, then 3 is the same degree you know that person and therefore should rely, commit, and consider physical intimacy.

You are heading towards an emotionally and physically unsafe relationship if there are extreme imbalances between, for example, in the extent of reliance and the amount of trust that either partner has. In fact, you need to hold back if you see one of the dynamics going ahead of another. “You are in an unsafe relationship when you depend on a partner who has not earned your trust or has consistently broken your trust.”

“”;never go further on one bonding area than you have gone in the previous....Slipping out of the zone explains the most common mistake people make in relationships. When the levels of the five dynamics are out of balance, then the emotional bond becomes unhealthy, and you tend to overlook crucial characteristics of the other person that should be exposed and explored. Thus, your love becomes truly blind.”

Believe it or not, scientists have found that romantic love suppresses the neural activity of the brain which allows you to correctly judge a partner whom you might otherwise have doubts about or negative feelings of. A massive release of hormones caused by such romantic love further clouds your analytical judgment.

Maintaining a balance of the five dynamics allows you to avoid over-attachment to your partner and helps you maintain a clear and objective perspective of your partner and the relationship.

So remember, a jerk can be a man or a woman; it is important to pace your relationship so that you can get to know your partner better. Pacing requires time, but it is essential so you avoid forming a premature emotional dependency on someone you later realize is not to be trusted. Think with both your heart and your head; and of course, most of all, don’t forget to RAM it all the way! Yea, RAM it. That’s precisely how you put your jerk-o-meter in order so you can avoid falling in love with another jerk!

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We welcome you to tell us about your experiences with a true jerk. Comment below.