When one dwells with a monster for too long, the infection spreads, infesting parts of the psyche, until one becomes like it. It infects those around one, and they, in turn, reinforce its malevolency in one’s soul. The only way to defeat the monster’s insidious rot is to cast off all that it was, all that one recognizes as having come from it. It may have become hard to tell oneself from the disease, but it must be done, if one wants to cure oneself. And it cannot be done by seeking those with the same infection, the same degeneracy, the same abusive secrets hidden by a sheen of acceptability. One must run in the opposite direction and learn to see the infected around one for what they have become. The answer does not lie in behaving the way one was taught by the monster — cold, abusive, fraudulent, dismissive, using, greedy, manipulative, crude, cavalier, and cowardly. It is not to shun one who was not a monster, giving in to the monster’s infection within you. It still holds the cards within you, dictating your reactions., making you seek its likeness, making you think and speak just like it. Your proclivities are not your own, learned from the beast. Cast it out. 

You say you have learned this lesson, but you have not.