In a previous post, I described Plato's hidden third category: another person's psyche is neither random chance nor within your control, it is a separate domain of autonomous choice that flows predictably from character. Understanding this distinction matters most when we're trying to make sense of love gone wrong.

Consider a common scenario. Someone's history slowly reveals itself: a past marked by addiction, by deception, by relationships destroyed through the same behaviors now emerging in your direction. You discover that the way they treat you mirrors how they treated others before: the lying, the sneaking, the betrayals they swore were behind them. The addiction they claimed to have conquered resurfaces in different substances, different compulsions, while they remain in denial about what anyone watching from outside could plainly see.

Here the third category becomes complex. Their disorder is not a single dramatic choice (like leaving) but a continuous pattern of small choices, each one the expression of a psyche organized around concealment and

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