Tardiness and Missed Appointments
A Tactic to Avoid Change. When The Abusive and Neglectful woman begins to participate in a program she often go through a honeymoon period. As the newness wears off, competing desires arise or she realizes that changes require work and long-term effort. So she stops making change or growth a priority. At this point, she may arrive late, leave early, or not show up at all, usually offering phony excuses. She will skip a session if anything more exciting comes along. She may intentionally double booker herself with “legitimate” appointments to skip important meetings. When doing this she does not point out her role in scheduling the double booking her ability to reschedule, or the low priority of the appointment. She does this because she thinks that others will be unable to challenge her in this. Such behavior indicates she want to continue a dysfunctional lifestyle and does not want any input in her life that might dissuade her from it.
