Part of the Casswiki article series Books
How to Spot a Dangerous Man Before You Get Involved is a book by Sandra L. Brown, originally published in 2005, which concerns how women can learn to spot eight basic types of pathological men and avoid becoming entangled in dangerous relationships.
In this book, the author walks the reader through the horror of realizing the consequences of one’s actions and then breaks down the types of men that one may encounter. She gives a detailed description of eight basic types of men:
- The Permanent Clinger
- The Parental Seeker
- The Emotionally Unavailable Man
- The Man with the Hidden Life
- The Mentally Ill Man
- The Addict
- The Abusive or Violent Man
- The Emotional Predator
The author also described how mass media often taught women to glamorize romances between the “bad boys” and the ladies in their lives, and why women fail to see the warning signs, or “red flags”, of a dangerous man. These red flags are repeatedly ignored because of “unspoken” rules of society, family upbringings, and so forth. Each chapter includes examples about women who revealed their successes and failures of trying to change their approach with choosing men for dating/relationships.
This book further provides the reader with tools needed to “sense” and “respond” to one’s own “red flags”, looking at one’s past experiences and learning from them, being truthful to one’s self, and developing the ability to make conscious choices when it comes to relationships.
This book, however, focuses only on female victims and “dangerous men”, though it can be helpful for understanding male victims and “dangerous women”.