Archives for February 15, 2009

If there is a single category of memories that still can make me squirm, it is the remembrance of what I did to make my sociopath love me. And what I did simply to keep him from hurting me. And what I did to try to understand the things I must have done wrong, because he didn't love me. And all the ways I pretzel-twisted my brain to excuse him for his lies, deception, disrespect and greed. The topic of this article is the next phase of healing from a sociopathic relationship: bargaining. We are in the process of healing from the moment we sustain any emotional trauma. Relationships with sociopaths typically involve many traumatic events, both large and small. Some of these events are the …

After the sociopath: How do we heal? Part 4-BargainingRead More

By AlohaTraveler It took me a long time to clearly define that what the Bad Man was doing to me was... bad. Plain and simple, it was bad for me. Never mind if he was working through pain, never mind if he had suffered many losses or had an unfortunate childhood. Never mind. He's a grown man. He was treating me in a way that I can only define as very bad for me no matter what his issues were. Really, it was unacceptable but at the time, I did not have clear boundaries as to what kind of treatment I would accept for myself before I would draw a line in the sand and say, “No more!” There were lots of excuses he made up and to be honest, there were lots of excuses I made up to try to exp …

Why I say “Bad Man”Read More