Behavior: What Would Cause An Astronaut To Act So Crazy?

The only surprise in astronaut Lisa Nowak’s recent behavior is that people are so shocked than “an astronaut” who’s been photographed with President Bush would behave in such a way. The truth is that social behavior doesn’t have to do with socio-economic status, income, age, race or gender. It doesn’t have to do with the job a person holds, the amount of education they’ve had or the kind of car they drive. Doctors, politicians, heads of state and truck drivers all get crazy when it comes to love. Jealousy and other derivative behaviors surrounding peaceful, healthy love, are centuries old and the source of some of our greatest operas, novels, movies and other forms of artistic expression — and history.

Somewhere along the line that is Ms. Nowak’s life, while she was able to complete the education and training that led her to a fruitful, successful and rare career, no one taught her what to expect and how to behave in interpersonal relationships — especially romantic ones. Somewhere along her life line, a parent didn’t teach her that if someone doesn’t want you, your best and most healthful bet is to find someone who does. Her self-esteem was not very high if she felt that violence and attempted murder were the only ways to have the love that she wanted.

As a relationship expert, I don’t believe that she had a biological predisposition to violence. What I believe is that she had a social conditioning that led her to believe she was entitled to what she wanted — at any cost. It takes a degree of narcissism to believe that you can kill a romantic rival to get your lover — in fact, I’d venture to say that she didn’t attempt this violence in the name of love. She attempted it in the name of competition. And competition is something that Ms. Nowak mastered in order to become the astronaut she did. Competing for grades, for jobs and for status what is a man’s career field of science may have led her to act so aggressively in this personal decision she made to attempt murder on a romantic rival. This is much more the behavior of a man than a woman.

If what Ms. Nowak wanted was love, there were far better ways to get it. But I suspect that it wasn’t love she wanted, but control of a situation she felt was out of her control…. Ms. Nowak acted more out of a loss of control than she did out of a genuine love interest for the man in question. And when she lost control, she did what most men do — they lash out physically. She sought control over a situation in which she was out of control. She attempted to kill her adult rival. This is very male behavior. It is the stuff of testosterone.

That Ms. Nowak succeeded and sought a very male-dominated career, it is plausible and even very possible that she learned a lot of male behavior and did not learn a lot of female behavior. Before her career, I can only speculate, but on speculation, I would say that hers is the behavior of women who are taught as children and teens — overtly or by passive aggressively — that they can have everything that they want, that they should feel entitled to everything that they want, that they and their desires are more important than having a good character, that loss is a weakness instead of a part of life.

If Ms. Nowak had been taught by a mother and a father figure in her developmental upbringing about the natural dynamic between men and women, she might not have sought to kill a rival, but rather to move on and find a man who wanted her as much as she wanted him.