The Toxins of Abuse: How to Spot an Abuser on Your First Date

A. The most important thing is to learn to develop trust despite the recent harrowing experience of divorce and its often ugly aftermath.

You have to know WHO to trust, you have to learn HOW to trust and you have to know HOW to CONFIRM the existence of mutual, functional trust.

People often disappoint and are not worthy of trust. Some people act arbitrarily, treacherously and viciously, or, worse, offhandedly. You have to select the targets of your trust carefully. He who has the most common interests with you, who is invested in you for the long haul, who is incapable of breaching trust ("a good person"), who doesn't have much to gain from betraying you – is not likely to mislead you. These people you can trust.

You should not trust indiscriminately. No one is completely trustworthy in all fields. Most often our disappointments stem from our inability to separate one area of life from another. A person could be sexually loyal – but utterly dangerous when it comes to money (for instance, a gambler). Or a good, reliable father – but a womaniser.

You can trust someone to carry out some types of activities – but not others, because they are more complicated, more boring, or do not conform to his values. We should not trust with reservations – this is the kind of "trust" that is common in business and among criminals and its source is rational. Game Theory in mathematics deals with questions of calculated trust. We should trust wholeheartedly but know who to entrust with what. Then we will be rarely disappointed.

As opposed to popular opinion, trust must be put to the test, lest it goes stale and staid. We are all somewhat paranoid. The world around us is so complex, so inexplicable, so overwhelming – that we find refuge in the invention of superior forces. Some forces are benign (God) – some arbitrarily conspiratorial in nature. There must be an explanation, we feel, to all these amazing coincidences, to our existence, to events around us.

This tendency to introduce external powers and ulterior motives into our reality permeates human relations, as well. We gradually grow suspicious, inadvertently hunt for clues of infidelity or worse, masochistically relieved, even happy when we find some.

The more often we successfully test the trust we had established, the stronger our pattern-prone brain embraces it. Constantly in a precarious balance, our brain needs and devours reinforcements. Such testing should not be explicit but circumstantial.

Your husband could easily have had a lover or your partner could easily have absconded your money – and, behold, they haven't. They passed the test. They resisted the temptation offered to them by circumstance.

Trust is based on the ability to predict the future. It is not so much the act of betrayal that we react to – as it is the feeling that the very foundations of our world are crumbling, that it is no longer safe because it is no longer predictable. We are in the throes of death of one theory – and the birth of another, as yet untested.

Here is another important lesson: whatever the act of betrayal (with the exception of grave criminal corporeal acts) – it is frequently limited, confined, and negligible. Naturally, we tend to exaggerate the importance of the event. This serves a double purpose: indirectly it aggrandises us. If we are "worthy" of such an unprecedented, unheard of, major betrayal – we must be worthwhile and unique. The magnitude of the betrayal reflects on us and re-establishes the fragile balance of powers between us and the universe.

The second purpose of exaggerating the act of perfidy is simply to gain sympathy and empathy – mainly from ourselves, but also from others. Catastrophes are a dozen a dime and in today's world it is difficult to provoke anyone to regard your personal disaster as anything exceptional.

Amplifying the event has, therefore, some very utilitarian purposes. But, finally, the emotional lie poisons the mental circulation of the liar. Putting the event in perspective goes a long way towards the commencement of a healing process. No betrayal stamps the world irreversibly or eliminates other possibilities, opportunities, chances and people. Time goes by, people meet and part, lovers quarrel and make love, dear ones live and die. It is the very essence of time that it reduces us all to the finest dust. Our only weapon – however crude and naive – against this unstoppable process is to trust each other.

3. What are the pros and cons of online dating? Do you recommend it and why or why not?

A. The only reason and justification to date online is if you have no access to venues where you can date "real" people face-to-face, instead of mere avatars. Online dating is a disaster waiting to happen. To start with, it is unsafe as it affords no way to establish the identity of your interlocutor or correspondent. It also denies you access to critical information, such as your potential partner's body language; the pattern of his social interactions; his behavior in unexpected settings and circumstances; his non-scripted reactions; even his smell and how he truly looks, dresses, and conducts himself in public and in private. Frequently in online dating, the partners use each other as "blank screens" onto which they project dreams, wishes, and unfulfilled needs and yearnings. They are bound to be disappointed when online push comes to offline shove.