Einstein said that, ‘imagination is more important than knowledge,’ and that’s true, except when it comes to our relationships. When I was young I use to write my name and the name of my crush du jour on a piece of paper and surround it with a big heart. When I closed my eyes at night I was and did so many incredible things, things that never seemed possible in reality. I had a rich fantasy life. And I carried that ability to fantasize with me into adulthood.

As I traveled from relationship to relationship, early on I would create a vision of how I wanted the relationship to be – I’d insert the specifics of the person I was dating, but the reality was always vastly different than what I pretended it was.

In 1977 Colleen Stan left her home in California, to attend the birthday party of one of her friends. She was an experienced hitchhiker and felt comfortable getting into the van of Cameron Hooker, who was with his wife and baby.

Hooker soon left the main highway and traveled down an isolated road where he put a knife to her throat. When they reached his home, he took her out of the van and into his basement. He then put a blindfold on her, stripped off her clothes, and strung her up by her bound hands, and proceeded to severely beat her. After the beating, Hooker and his wife proceeded to have sex underneath her stung up body.

After that first night, Hooker kept Stan locked in a wooden box under his bed, for 23 hours a day.

Willpower, determination, stick-to-itiveness, resolve, whatever you want to call it – discipline is the difference between success and giving in. For me, discipline is self–accountability. It’s an internal standards meter that propels you forward, when your body, mind, or emotions are all signaling, it’s time to give up.

By far, the question I get asked the most is, ‘How do I let go? How do I walk away? I know this is killing me, but I can’t stop.’ My answer is always the same.

There has to be a breaking point – that point where you say, ‘I deserve more than this.’ It’s a cup of pride and 8 cups of discipline. If you’re not used to delaying immediate gratification then this may be very difficult for you, but it is something you can learn.

We’ve all been in relationships and given in dozens of times – it feels good for a short while, but then it fe

When your eyes first open in the morning, it’s usually because your alarm clock is making that awful aaaaaa-aaaaa-aaaaa noise. At that moment, you have to decide – do I get up, or do I hit the snooze button?  Have you ever wished that life gave us the same kind of signal – some sign that would alert us that we were off course and that we needed to wake up?

The good news is, that life does provide us with a wakeup call, except the alarm isn’t a sound, it’s a feeling. It’s our emotions.  When we waltz through life continuing to play out the same dysfunctional scripts from our childhood and we keep making poor choice after poor choice –  then we are going to, at some point, find ourselves in the grips of emotional turmoil.

Many people go through life continuing to ignore the obvious signs that something is seriously wrong. Whether you’re going to get up and do something about it, or continue to snooze is entirely within your control.

When I look back at young me, teenage me, 20 something me, I can’t help thinking, ‘man that little girl didn’t have a clue what she was doing.’ I was a bit of a paradox, because I had an innately, happy disposition, but I was always negative, always critical, never satisfied and always focused on what I didn’t have.

I was lucky enough to have my life completely torn apart by my Narcissist, and yes, I did say lucky. I was lucky, because I had been given a wake-up call. Rather than live out the rest of my days unhappy and slowly dying inside, the universe saw to it, that I take a look at my life and all of the poor choices I was making. I get a lot of emails expressing the deep, emotional pain people

When I first approached Max about doing another interview, he sounded pretty excited about it. I could tell this experience was pushing his need to be ‘special and unique,’ buttons. But when I met up with him, it was quite a different story. His mood was dark and his energy was very odd.  I felt uncomfortable, so I decided to jump right into it and get it over and done with, as quickly as possible.

Sav: So Max, my readers want to know if you are still with the same girlfriend?

Max: I have no girlfriend, my heart is empty. I’ve grown even more distant recently and I’ve realized this, so I’m taking a step back and just trying to be alone until I come out of this.

Sav: Come out of what? Are you depressed?

Max: Yeah I’m depressed. I’m not bummed out or sad. I’m just angry. My thoughts are horrible lately.

Sav: What kind of thoughts are you having?

Max: When I hear about people in Syria, or Afghanistan, or wherever, getting shot and killed – I like it. It makes me happy.

Sav: What?

How well do you know your partner? Your best friend? Neighbor? Brother or sister-in-law? How well do we really know anyone? How many times have you heard yourself say, “Oh no, he/she would never do anything like that?“ And what degree of certainty would you place on your assumption? We all think we are pretty good judges of character. We would all know if someone in our circle was kinda ‘off,’ right?

I love those real crime shows like 48 Hours, Dateline, Forensic Files and 20/20. I love the way they lay out the evidence, so one minute you think the perpetrator is this person, but the next minute, it could be someone else. For all of us amateur detectives we’re able to use logic and reason and our gut instincts to come to our own conclusions. Most of us watch these kind of shows because we want, better yet, we need to understand what drives a person to commit such heinous acts.

The most common theme for murder on these shows is a spouse murdering their partner for money, a new lover, or both. It’s unfathomable to us how someone could justify killing the one person, they should love the most, for selfish gain. It’s like they perceive this person as their personal object, a toy that they no longer want to play with, that they are free to discard at any time, and in any manner they see fit. Another common theme is, the jilted lover, who comes back to exact his/her revenge by murdering the object of their fury.  In this scenario it’s your life for my wounded pride.