Help for healing from the devastation of a sociopath
Many people have asked Lovefraud to suggest a treatment program to help them overcome the personal devastation of a relationship with a sociopath. A friend of Lovefraud, Sandra L. Brown, M.A., offers a program for women who are recovering from such debilitating encounters.
Sandra Brown is the author of How to Spot a Dangerous Man, which was reviewed in a previous blog post. The book describes eight types of dangerous men—most of them are sociopaths, or partial sociopaths. Brown then explains how women override their internal warning signals and get involved with these men, even when their instincts are shouting, “Run away!”
If you’ve been in a relationship with a sociopath, at some point, of course, you found yourself devalued and discarded. He merrily moved on to a fresh new supply. You’re in a crumpled heap, a shell of the person you once were.
Many of you have asked Lovefraud: How can I heal? Will I ever be able to love again?
The answer is yes, you can recover, and yes, you can love again. Sandra Brown’s program may help you.
Healing retreats
Sandra Brown offers four-day retreats at her facility in the hills of North Carolina. The program is called Healing the Aftermath of Pathological Love Relationships.
First, Brown explains pathology 101—adults with personality disorders are hardwired to behave the way they do. They are not going to change.
Then Brown looks at the dynamics of a relationship with a disordered person. The lies, the manipulation, the crazy-making—this is nothing like a relationship like a normal man. The point is to help you understand that you were not imagining things. Yes, the guy really did lie to you. And no, he never loved you.
But then Brown helps you look at your own life to figure out why you were vulnerable to the sociopath. What did you learn in your family as a young girl? How do you view men? What was going on for you internally throughout your life?
Many women come out of the sociopathic relationship with post-traumatic stress disorder, which can be reactivated by future traumatic events. If this happened to you, Brown teaches self-care techniques and symptom management to help you in the future.
When to participate
The most beneficial time to participate in Brown’s retreat is after you’ve been out of the relationship for four to six months or more. “We are a good program for women who have figured out what he is, have left, and need some psycho-education that they did, in fact, make the right decision,” Brown says. The program then helps you identify internal traits that made you vulnerable, and issues from your family of origin.
The program is not appropriate in some cases:
- Women in crisis. If you’re recently out of the relationship, or if you’re still trying to decide whether you should leave, it’s too soon to gain benefit from this program.
- Women using online dating sites. After a relationship with a sociopath, Brown believes you should stop dating for a year or two, until you’re closer to being healed. “If you’re on Match.com, don’t call me,” she says.
Adult children of sociopaths
Some Lovefraud readers have realized that their parents were sociopaths. For you, Brown offers another program called Adult Children of a Pathological Parent.
Space in all retreats is limited—only six participants are accepted for each session. For more information, visit SafeRelationships.com.
written by Donna Andersen • Permalink •
holywatersalt says:
I recently blogged on how bibliotherapy has helped me.
I read,read, read and reread when I feel weak.
I have a page of free links to articles on psychopaths, narcissist- it’s off of my blog on the right-hand-side.
Reading literally set me free- I just was relieved over and over when I finally figured out what the hell happened.
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Monday, 25 February 2008 @ 5:59pm
Glinda says:
Me too, holy. Once I had stumbled upon info on sociopaths, a lightbulb lit up over my head and my healing began. I never knew what I was dealing with- but now I know what I escaped from. It’s liberating/empowering/peaceful going through life with just your own voice in your head. The crazy-making bad man has been silenced.
I have to laugh at the comment about match.com… the xs is on a ton of dating sites, I cannot think of a better testimonial for NOT joining singles sites! If all normal folk boycott the dating sites, maybe all the disordered ones can hassle each other instead of us!
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Monday, 25 February 2008 @ 10:53pm
vmpatricia says:
I have said here before that many things helped me recover drastically in two months, including this website, after 16 months of an abusive relationship.
One book that really helped me was “Eat Pray Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert.
After two months of a nightmare, ruminating all the time about my own disgrace, feeling sorry for myself and believing my life had been destroyed, I decided to live and I spent the best moments in my life since then.
But the truth is that sometimes that feeling of humiliation and indignation of being cheated, deluded for so long comes back.
I believe the major difficulty in recovering from an evil person such as a sociopath is the fact that people who have feelings can never understand completely what is like not to have feelings for others. I think that is why it still hurts, to find this abysm in other’s minds.
I am not the same person I was before, but now I feel not as lonely as when I loved the sociopath, believing he was a normal and decent person. I just feel sorry for the fact that these people really exist.
I think that having some “paradigms” to live helps, for example, now, when that bad feeling comes back, I substitute it by the certainty that justice will be done and that I don’t have to think about it anymore.
It’s better to take good care of our own lives than feeling sorry for things that had already happened.
All the best for those who have been abused and are still struggling to get rid of the pain.
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Tuesday, 26 February 2008 @ 9:44am
SMTP901 says:
To all above, yes read. That’s why I am here today, more than a year later. I am sick and feel sorry for myself so I am vulnerable to romanticising the good days with the bad man to coin a phrase. Recently I made the analogy of feeling like a fish thrown back in the water after I was hooked. Now I swim all alone.
Donna always says here that it is the fantasy we mourn not the man. It has taken me a long time to realize this truth and also reading Sandra Brown’s work which says outgoing, personable women who value relationships are prime targets. Funny. But that is who I was and he slowly separated me from all my relationships and now I have very few close friends. It’s too late to go back and try to explain to them who I was in the relationship and what happened. They are gone. But he took my dreams, soul and those close relationships and I spend time trying to get them all back…while yes, he is reinacting with another woman in my place. I want to worry for her but I am envious, how can that be. This is a tough road and thank God for all of you.
There are days when I feel all used up and tell myself I have given up on life. It’s very hard to have your spirit extracted. I hope it returns. Thanks for listening.
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Tuesday, 26 February 2008 @ 8:12pm
swallow says:
SMTP,
You have been through a devastating experience and it takes a long time to recover. After I commenced NC it took me months for the lies and manipulation to actually sink in and then I was in shock at the degree of deceit and at my own behaviour. I felt, as you say, that my spirit had been sucked out of me and reality turned on it’s head.
As an outgoing person and someone who finds it difficult to keep secrets, I did confide in friends. I think they were quite shocked at how candid I was as my encounter with a P was an affair and they all knew me and my husband well. I live in a small place and so I had to weather the storm of gossip but I allowed myself not to worry about it and instead I concentrated on healing my marriage and myself.
My genuine friends have been very supportive even though they find it hard to comprehend. A few have stabbed me in the back and still to this day (2 years on) believe all the lies the P and the other woman put around. That is very painful BUT I do not need to listen to them.
I think you need to find a few trusted friends or a councillor to talk to. You cannot keep all this pain inside of yourself. You may think that as I am back with my husband it is easier to heal. That is true to some extent but a very good lesson that I have learnt is that the only person who can heal me – is me. It’s a long process and I am still dealing with the aftermath but it is possible to come out of this and put it behind you. I wish you all the very best.
Swallow
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Tuesday, 26 February 2008 @ 9:05pm
SMTP901 says:
Hey Swallow, thanks for writing to me. Yes, get help. I find it even hard, most therapists tell you to stop thinking about him and concentrate on yourself. I do. But then I don’t. Good days bad days I am going to try hypnotherapy as well. Why not. Glad you are back with your husband and sound like you are doing well. Thanks for saying it takes a long time to recover because you can’t really tell anyone it still brings you down over a year later. I tried to tell a good friend and she said “Are you still thinking about him?” So I feel ashamed, that is why I come here and other places because we all understand that after a relationship like this, regular time does not apply. I liked what you said about reality turning on its head! That’s what I kept saying. That nothing feels real. I still, get that way…it’s sunny, it’s a beautiful place, I have a new expensive car…but I can’t feel it anymore. Not as much anyway as I did before I was with him. Just blogging, it sure feels nice to have someone give you their time and advice. I wish you the best too!
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Tuesday, 26 February 2008 @ 9:47pm
enlightened says:
SMTP,
Ah, well… I need to stay focused on what I know to be the truth and not listen to the rest. SMTP – I know your pain. I’m guessing you have already learned as I have that time does heal all wounds, as cliche’ as it is. I am gaining on a year and I have grown like I could never have imagined – last April I was looking for the nearest bridge. Today, I am walking around full of gratitude and I am working towards peace. It will come.
I too, was involved in an affair. He was my ‘best friend’ and I was going through abuse at home. My head was ‘turned’ by this beautiful, charming man who had portrayed himself quite brilliantly as a victim in his current relationship. I was a Christian and a good person with a huge heart I don’t know how to explain my behavior except to say that I was – well, the best word that I can find would be intoxicated by this man. Intoxicated. Physically and emotionally, I was drawn to this man like nothing I had ever experienced in my life. Learning about sociopaths has helped me a great deal in understanding what happened to me. I cannot stand before God and make excuses for myself – I am simply saying that it helps to know what I was up against and it was truly evil. He was my best friend for 3 years and oh, the promises and in the end, the shattered dreams. My marriage is over. He went back to his wife, who happens to be worth millions. I am the lucky one. I have been stretched beyond words, regarding my faith. I, also, had had to deal with gossip in a small community and with lies told by he and his wife that he returned to after claiming that I had seduced him, was stalking him (NEVER!), would hurt her, maybe kill her (this after she was doubting him at one point and it got back to him that I would consider talking to her). I am still astonished at how blessed I have been. Almost a year later, most of the people in this small community see him for who he is – I have wonderful friends who have stuck with me the entire time and made many new friends. I have also had many old, mutual friends of ours come around with much support and kind words. I can honestly say that I only have true friends now – the superficial have been weeded out and I would have it no other way. All of those profound words being said… it still hurts like hell. I have come so far. My skin is thicker. My faith is stronger. What I am still struggling most with is the pain of my ‘best friend’ discarding me with no remorse. Vilifying me. Oh, what a professional victim he is. Our wolds are still completely intertwined – location wise, professionally, friends, and yes, even family. I get WAY too much news in regards to his present situation – he’s working the ‘changed man’ card. Most don’t buy it – but some do
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Tuesday, 26 February 2008 @ 10:21pm
enlightened says:
Oops – last post was for SWALLOW – sorry, SMPT
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Tuesday, 26 February 2008 @ 10:24pm
vmpatricia says:
Dear SMTP901, I wish I can help you somehow. It’s been 4 months I’m free from the sociopath and I learned a lot about how life can be so much better without an abuser to make me feel unimportant.
I believe we get addicted to some feelings and we tend to want more of those feelings even if they are not so good.
If you recognize that you have a problem and you want to find a solution for that, I just want to tell you that there is a way and that life is not that anxiety in which sociopaths put us in, making us believe, with endless lies, that that is love.
You may think you were happy with the sociopath, but that is the poorest happiness one person can get, always waiting for any manifestation of affection (at least with me it was like this) and always believing that one day, when we would get married, everything would be fixed and that he would give me the love I expected so badly.
I think the first step to get out of that cycle of self pity is to look ahead, think of what you want for your future and make this effort of thinking in other things. Your life is much more important than his. Firstly because it’s the only one you have and secondly because you’re worrying about a person who worries only about itself and has no empathy at all for others.
Maybe this is the first thing to accept in the healing process, accept that we cannot understand how can a person lack in feelings for others and leave it aside, substitute those thoughts and feelings for anything else that interests you.
It worked with me, I didn’t think I was going to survive the pain in the first 2 months, but then, I decided to think of myself and not of people who now I consider very destructive.
You must draw a plan and put it in action. It’s your life you are leaving aside, not his. He will never feel sorry for you and come back to fix you up. It’s crazy, literally, but they lack in these feelings, it’s no use trying to achieve any mercy from them.
I’m sorry for my poor English.
All the best.
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Wednesday, 27 February 2008 @ 3:47am
swallow says:
Enlightened,
It is so nice to hear from someone who has been in the same position as me! I have had a great deal of great advice on this site and the MSN site but at times some peole’s attitudes have been a little less sympathetic because I was a maried woman.
Like you, I find it very difficult to explain how this could have happened to me. My marriage was good and even when we had disagreements, I never ever had the idea of looking for someone else. The only way I have been able to describe it was I felt as if I was under a spell. I believed 100% that this man was the ‘one’ and I felt high one minute, despair the next. I knew it was an insane situation but I felt I had no control over it.
Learning all I can about psychopathy has made it easier to solve all the puzzles. My P targeted me for years, very slowly gaining my trust. His OW protected him all that time as he worked for her. When I found out about her I was devastated as she was a friend and a few weeks later devastated again by realising that she was part of the scam. She was not another ‘victim’ as she pretended to be and was happy to profit from my affair. Together they conned me out of $50,000 and nearly destroyed my family.
Luckily for me they did not succeed but I will always regret the fact that I did not see through them and that I hurt my husband and children. I am so sorry to hear what you have been through and that your marriage did not survive. P’s seem to be able to inflict wounds that we could not have imagined before we met them. I’m glad that you have good friends who have supported you. In the end I believe that honesty is the best policy and genuine friendships will survive and the toxic ones become clear.
I still have days when I get terrible panic attacks, especially when I have to hear about the two of them and know that they have got away with it scot free but those horrendous feelings of anger and fear are subsiding.
I wish you peace and happiness in your life. We are all much stonger and wiser now even if we don’t always feel that way.
Swallow
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Wednesday, 27 February 2008 @ 5:56am
distraught says:
Dear Enlightened, Swallow, SMTP and others,
I also had an affair with a sociopath. I have been spending much time soul searching to understand how I let that happen to me. I am married to a good man with unmanageable clinical depression. I am also taking care of a disabled family member and I have a child with some special needs. When I think of the stress in my personal life, I can partially understand how this could have happened, but I have a lot of guilt. In 16 years I had never strayed in my marriage nor was I ever tempted. Then I worked for this man with very few boundaries. He was funny and charming. He would confide things in me that made me believe that I was something special to him. As I got more comfortable with him, I admitted that I was having problems in my marriage and that I looked forward to coming in to work to get away from my situation. He started IMing me at work and I admitted to myself that I was definitely having an emotional affair–it wasn’t that difficult for me to take it to the next level and start meeting him after work. He admitted to me that he considered himself a sociopath and a serial adulterer–I tried to talk him out of it! How could someone so self-aware be a sociopath? It didn’t take long for his sociopathic tendencies to start showing in our relationship. He would lie about silly small things, he would ration out his attention and keep me wondering, he would never reciprocate my generosity or thoughtfulness. Just when I would give up on him, he would send an e-mail or meet me and I would again be convinced of his love. He could turn it on and off at will. I was losing my mind trying to understand him. I wanted to believe him, he created a fantasy world for me that I was completely addicted to. I feel stupid for falling for it, and even though I always considered myself someone of high moral character, I have had to come to terms with the fact that my morals are obviously not what they should be. I am trying to be kind to myself and take things one day at a time. I am trying not to let this ruin my faith in humanity. I still fight a battle in my head about maintaining no contact. I know it’s best and that I will never have the closure I need, but still, I keep wondering. That must be the sociopath’s greatest strength–they keep us wondering and ruminating ad nauseum. Be strong! You are all keeping me going.
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Wednesday, 27 February 2008 @ 9:12am
Dodged_A_Bullet says:
“getting away with it….”
That’s seems to be a common statement by all of us who have dealt with a P. Although they are unmasked, they still get away with whatever it was that hurt us….whether it be scamming us out of money, exposing us to HIV, or just breaking our hearts, or breaking our hearts in conjuction with all the forementioned, they still ‘get away with it.’
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Wednesday, 27 February 2008 @ 9:42am
swallow says:
Distraught,
You have a lot to deal with in your life and any normal person would be under stress in yor circumstances. I believe that ANYONE can be ensnared by a psychopath.
I’ve read so many times that they target vulnerable people and I’m sure that is true but it somehow implies that it is the victim that is lacking in something and needs to improve on themselves. All human beings are vulnerable at some time in their lives and the blame should stay firmly where it belongs – with the predator.
Keep up the no contact, it really is the only way to save yourself more heartache and mental torture. Remember to take care of yourself as well as others
Swallow
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Wednesday, 27 February 2008 @ 9:55am
holywatersalt says:
Women who have affairs with psychopaths are double victims- because they are tortured by the psycho and vilified by even people who know what psychos do.
I just blogged on this and I want to applaud teh women who have the guts to admit what they did– a psycho would never admit their sin.
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Wednesday, 27 February 2008 @ 11:29am
SMTP901 says:
VMpatricia and enlightened….both great advice. This sentence stood out too… “What I am still struggling most with is the pain of my ‘best friend’ discarding me with no remorse.” But I know that’s not true. Thanks for the great advice, each day is a better one. But they do still “get away with it” and that bothers me too. But yes, holding on holds you back. Amazing how similar the stories all sound and scarey too. Peace.
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Wednesday, 27 February 2008 @ 12:25pm
enlightened says:
Swallow, holywatersalt, and SMTP – thank you for your kind words. Distraught – I worked for my S as well. Everything you said about his being such a package on the outside and, in addition, confiding in you and making you feel special – powerful stuff, especially when you are vulnerable. Mine was SO good looking, charming, smart, funny – and like yours, no boundaries. Made sexual jokes all of the time. Also, he was such a JERK. But after all of his confidences about how mistreated he was, I found myself excusing his behavior as being someone who was wearing all of his anger on his sleeve – poor hurt, misunderstood victim that he was. He was, with me…sweet, loyal, generous – blah, blah. I was special. Mine never said one mean thing to me in 3 years. What I didn’t know was that he was lying to me – that he was playing both sides of the fence the entire time, playing master puppeteer. He had me convinced that his mother had hurt him and every serious girlfriend he had had hurt him – even though he had been a wonderful boyfriend. His wife was just evil, of course. Now he is back home with his millions and this poor woman who is completely convinced that he is…three guesses… my victim. That poor man just couldn’t help himself. He was hurt by her controlling behavior and he fell for my pity stories and felt sorry for me. I seduced him. He even shared all of my confidences (which were not that bad, but he brilliantly took them and played spin doctor with them).
Anyway, I thank you for that comment. And, Distraught – don’t question your values. You wouldn’t feel guilt if you had questionable values and my guess is, you wouldn’t have compromised those values if you had never come ‘up close and personal’ with a bonafide sociopath. They’re good – period. If you are remorseful and you have asked God for forgiveness, you have already received it – Grace is a wonderful thing – accept it.
Holywatersalt. I do, indeed feel a double victim sometimes. In the thick of the aftermath, a friend actually said “well, when it comes right down to it – he was never yours…period, so…” So, heartbreak doesn’t count because it was wrong? Betrayal of someone you loved more than life itself, your best friend, should not be that difficult to heal from because the relationship was wrong? Having boldfaced lies told about you, being discarded and devalued, USED, should be easily gotten over because the relationship was wrong??? Oops, do I sound mad
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Wednesday, 27 February 2008 @ 1:07pm
enlightened says:
Almost forgot.
Swallow – about your statement about keeping the blame on the predator. I recently found a book called ‘Emotional Rape’ – you can find it on Amazon, couldn’t find it in local bookstores. It helped me a great deal. It helped me come to the conclusion that yes, I have to own up to my behavior, my sin, and figure out how I allowed that to happen. I have answered to God. But I have also allowed myself to realize that I WAS a victim of emotional rape. I was used. And I will in no way accept responsibility for the horrible, subhuman things that he did to me. I am guilty of hurting another woman. I am guilty of doing something wrong. But I am NOT to blame for what he did to me and I have every right to feel victimized and to allow myself to lick my wounds and continue with the recovery process – mostly learning to love myself.
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Wednesday, 27 February 2008 @ 1:32pm
enlightened says:
Distraught, just posted a comment to Swallow that I meant for you regarding guilt – but my hope is that it would help you both. I probably seem a little nutty today – made a couple of ‘post’ mistakes. Having a crazy day and hopped on here a couple of times in a hurry. My apologies. Ever have one of those days??? Off to get my eyebrows done – maybe that will wake me up – haha.
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Wednesday, 27 February 2008 @ 2:26pm
swallow says:
Holywater,
You made such a good point about being a double victim. To target someone who is married is such a clever ploy as it automatically entraps them into a lie and alienates them from everyone. What he didn’t bank on was the fact that I was so open about it afterwards and now he and the OW know that they have been exposed to many people. Interestingly, the OW is also married and her husband (who I have spoken to at great length) has tried everything to stop the affair but no matter what he does, she will not give him up. I think now that either she is a victim with psychological problems or she is a P too.
Enlightened – I have heard of the book and I will order it. It sounds very helpful. I have gone back through my life looking for answers and I know that having had a ?P mother who physchologically tormented my sister and I all our lives, I was programmed to accept bad behaviour and always saw myself as the one who was wrong. It is horribly clear to me now that I was such a great target but the upside of that is I now understand myself and am a better person for it.
We cannot turn the clock back but we can grow and learn from the experience. I hope in some way I can help anyone who is going through this hell by validating what they say. For me, having what I experienced validated was one of the most helpful things in my recovery.
Hang in there girls, the fact that we are here means we are the lucky ones that got away!
Swallow
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Wednesday, 27 February 2008 @ 6:50pm
distraught says:
Enlightened and Swallow,
Thanks for your comments–they really helped. Enlightened, it sounds like we met the same guy–almost! It’s very clever the way they set these things up for themselves. I was the perfect target, having never had an affair–not knowing the “rules”. He knew me well enough to know that I would never tell anyone because of the shame I felt. I haven’t told anyone except you folks–there is no one in my life who would understand. I’m sure I would receive similar comments to the one you got, enlightened. Something to the effect of: “if you play with fire, you should expect to get burned”. In some ways, I think maybe I deserve what I got–maybe this is what comes out of being deceitful–but then, because of this forum, I realize this is not an ordinary situation–he is not a typical individual. He too filled my head with his sob stories and made me feel like I was the only one who would accept him for who he is. His poor wife. He told her about a prior affair years ago and he hoped that would end the marriage–but she would not let him go. Silly woman.
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Thursday, 28 February 2008 @ 5:43am
Beverly says:
Swallow. When my ex N frequently talked about the married women at work and conversations they had and admitted texting them as mates, I was ok/ish with that. Thinking that married women are safe (stupidly). When he told me that one of them (who was on holiday with her husband) had text him from holiday, I began to smell a rat. when he further told me an extremely sexual remark that he had said to one of them – I was beginning to see a game plan.
The phone numbers and intimate texts were all from married women. The penny dropped – not only could he have the satisfaction of using another man’s woman, he could have an affair in secret (she is unlikely to tell) without emotional ties, they wont want children and there is the buzz of the forbidden. Also the married women are unlikely to have other partners, so he has no competition from other males and can call on his prey as and when. I rang one of his married women and despite having his intimate texts to her in my hand, she absolutely denied that they were anything other than workmates. Had she have been willing to talk about it, I could have told her the terrible truth to protect her.
When you translate all of this into the streams of behaviour used by Ns and Ps, it all becomes part of a game plan and strategy (no doubt well thought out and tried out) and becomes so much more understandable. Presumably that is why he had different women at different levels of play.
enlightened – yes I agree – we were led to believe that we were investing in a relationship, when the person was never going to be ‘available’ in the normal sense. Although I didnt need it, he offered me his protection and he abused me, he is no different from all those people who prey on the innocent. As far as I am concerned, they are all members of the same group, just that some have different memberships!
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Thursday, 28 February 2008 @ 2:20pm
EnnLondon says:
Is anyone in the UK watching ‘The Woman Who Couldn’t Stop Lying’ on the Crime and Investigation Channel? It’s on just now.
I saw this when it was first on terrestrial television, before I discovered what sociopaths were. Now I find i stunning.
If you can, watch it!
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Thursday, 28 February 2008 @ 3:13pm
enlightened says:
Swallow and Distraught – there is another book that was recommended to me by my therapist “Shattered Dreams” – the author is Crabb (Larry, I think). I am still reading it – helps you put all of your pain into perspective in regards to God’s ultimate purpose for your life and the purpose of pain in our spiritual growth.
, I am simply saying that there are more people that love you unconditionally than you know – I promise there are.
Distraught, I am so glad that you have managed to avoid the pain of public scorn – and if I had my choice, would have avoided it myself. But I want to tell you what I have learned about friends, and, Swallow, I would be curious to know if you had similar experiences. One of the richest blessings in all of this was learning who my real friends were – and the biggest surprise of all was that those that I feared telling the MOST were the ones who stood by me. I had 3 friends who’s husbands had cheated on them. They are now in my top 5 best friends. The one who is still married was the first one to call me when the word came round to her “Are you okay????” She listened to me, she supported me. Another friend, who was one of those outwardly perfect people – mom, wife, etc. who I thought would NEVER understand my ‘horrible deed’ surprised me the most. We went to lunch one day – of course she had ‘heard bits and pieces here and there’. I got teary eyed and told her I wished so badly that I could talk to her but that I had lost so many friends…She cut me off and said “There is nothing that you can’t tell me. I am your friend and nothing you have done could ever make me turn my back on you”. These were my two friends who came over to my house one day and we had a little ceremony. We de-P’d my house. Removed every trace of him. We laughed and laughed as we went through his things -boxed things up for goodwill. There was a box for trash. Some we saved for one year for me to wait and make sure that I could let go of when I had more clarity because this was very soon after. They took it all away. The point is, I could go on and on with stories of the surprises regarding who stood by me and who stabbed me in the back – and those who just went away, period. I found out how loved I was – truly loved for who I was. Distraught, I do NOT recommend exposing yourself so that you can enjoy this particular blessing as well
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Thursday, 28 February 2008 @ 9:07pm
swallow says:
I still have most of my friends and in their own different ways they have helped and supported me. Like Enlightened I have stronger friendships than before. The few that I have discarded were friends that I always had doubts about anyway or ones that have decided to stay friends with the OW and P. One woman in particular hurt me a great deal as she was the ONE person I confided during the affair and had seen the whole story play out. After I started NC, she became best friends with the OW and when I questioned her one day as to why she seemed so uncomfortable with me when she knew all the pain I and my family had suffered she just waved her hand and said “oh I’d just forget about”. She then wrote me a letter saying there are always two sides to these things. I told her that either she couldn’t see the wood for the trees (completley blinded by the manipulation) or she was OK with her friends being conned and lied to. Since then, she herself has been cheated of money by the OW and yet she STILL remains friends with her. I understand now though that it is her who has the problem with self esteem and does not have any boundries.
To anyone who is at the beginning of recovery ( and feeling very fragile) I would advise them to be careful as to who they confide in. One, because it is so hard to comprehend the weirdness and bizarre behaviour if you have not dealt with a P yourself and two, some people that you think you can trust will turn around and bite you for no reason. Overall though, I do not regret telling my experience to anyone. Most people thank me for being so honest and warning them of what can happen and the others that attack are not worth worrying about. It’s a good way of sorting the sheep from the goats in your life!
Swallow
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Friday, 29 February 2008 @ 4:22am
enlightened says:
Swallow,
Your experience is so similar to mine. A good friend of mine who had an encounter with a P warned me at the very beginning of my recovery “be prepared for the day that people who have stood by you begin to ‘forget’ and you will hear about them socializing with him, making more casual statements in regards to what he did to you, etc.” Well, it is beginning to happen. I only have a few friends left who truly get that he is a bonafide P, see the evil in him, and will not forget what he did to me and they stay clear. I’m hoping that I will never have to deal with that changing as well. I have been praying about this and working on not being angry with these friends. Trying to remind myself that it didn’t happen to them and that makes it easier for them to move on about it. Still smarts, though. I also have to remind myself that I cannot control what others do or think and love them for who they are just as they have so graciously done for me and this whole thing falls under the subject of ‘let go, let god’ and ‘let go, period.’ The other thing I find hard, and I have read this on many other posts – even my best of friends don’t want to hear about it anymore because I should be over it by now. Some of them say this genuinely out of concern for me, but this is the tough part – I am starting to have to keep alot of my feelings to myself because, as I know you know, nobody can understand how these P’s get into our system – it is not a normal breakup scenario and there is no way to make someone understand that who hasn’t been through it. I am grateful for this site – I only wish that it didn’t have to exist. It sounds like you are doing well, Swallow – I am so glad. I have come so far, and some days I am so positive and seeing the future as bright. Then I will get blindsided by a story I will hear or some other trigger and I will go into meltdown mode. Ever feel manic???
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Friday, 29 February 2008 @ 8:52am
OxDrover says:
Swallow, your friend’s comment, “there are two sides to every story” or “it takes two to fight” is SO wrong! Yet, we are taught in first grade in school when a fight starts that “it takes two to fight”–NO NO!!! It takes one to fight and one to be beaten up!
As far as “two sides to every story” that is a total discount of what happened to you. Ask Charlie Manson what his version of the Tate killings is? Is his “side of the story” equally valid with the side of the murdered people’s.? Of course not, and for her to say that to you is totally RUDE.
Yes, even our friends “get tired” of discussing one subject, and maybe when we reach that stage it is time for us to at least “verbally” move on and not regail them with more information than they can handle. This seems a “common problem” with us (suvivors) and it takes a very very VERY special friend to limit conversations to our pain for months or years. Those friends are very rare.
Fortunately we have friends here that will listen “forever” if we need to talk about it that long. Hopefully, we can come to closure on it to the point that WE are “bored” with the story.
The being “blindsided” or “triggered” I think will slow down as time progresses. I know that I was blindsided several times by “parting shots” that they heaved over the wall even when they knew they couldn’t “win”—and now when a shot comes over the wall (NC) it doesn’t send me into a tail spin, I just handle it if it needs handling, and don’t get emotionally involved in it past doing “what needs done.” Hang in there, it gets better.
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Friday, 29 February 2008 @ 8:52pm
swallow says:
Enlightened,
It never ceases to amaze me that so many people just cannot see through them even when they are confronted by absolute proof.
I know exactly what you mean about even the best of friends getting tired of hearing the story. I think many of them genuinely believe that it isn’t good for me to keep replaying it. In some ways that is true and it isn’t healthy to dwell on things BUT they also do not realise how long it takes to recover from emotional/ psychological abuse and PTSD. I have a close friend who is a psychiatrist and she has told me to stay on anti-depressants for another 2 years! She also advised me to completley cut out any activities and friends who I associate with the P. That is difficult in small place but I have managed to detach as much as possible. The times I go into the rage/anxiety mode are when I hear anything about the two of them and it makes me almost cry with frustration and anger that they have walked away without anyone standing up to them.
It is so nice to talk to someone who has been in the same position as me. I had a few ups and downs on another board when I tried to defend a husband who became ensnared by a P. His wife was posting and just wanted some sympathy for her and her husband. Instead she got a barrage of replies telling her to dump him. It was quite alarming to read how intolerant some people were of victims who are married – as if we somehow deserved it or our pain is less!!
Swallow
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Friday, 29 February 2008 @ 8:53pm
swallow says:
OxDrover,
Thanks for your posts too. You always have such common sense comments to make. I know you have had terrible traumas with your family but you still manage to offer hope and good advice.
Thank God for this board where we can retreat to when no-one else is listening.
Swallow
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Friday, 29 February 2008 @ 8:58pm
Grace63 says:
All,
I am sorry to deviate from the conversation…but, I figured this thread is an appropriate place to put this request/comment.
I have always found support groups to be so helpful in my healing. In fact, it was through ALANON that I got the strength and courage to leave the relationship with the ex.
But, I have recently been exploring the possibility of starting a support group. I would like it to be based on an already established plan or step program, like the 12-Steps, designed to help survivors of personality disordered individuals.
In fact, we have a local 12-meeting house with plenty of space and timeslots available. I did get the go ahead to conduct an ASCA (Adult Survivors of Child Abuse Anonymous) group. However, the more and more I’ve thought about it, I AM MORE INTERESTED in setting up a group for people that have suffered from being in a relationship with a narcissist, borderline personality disordered, or other personality disordered individuals.
I have not been able to find a 12-Step program for this topic. And, I would like to not have to reinvent the wheel, because I fear I would never be interested in doing all the work required to do this.
And, I do have a number of women and one man friend that have survived relationships with personality disordered individuals, and they ARE survivors!!!! Oh my gosh…
What do you all think? Do any of you have any ideas, or suggestions? I suppose I could design a group, but, again, as I said, I truly do not have the time, energy and other resources for this. I can pull together, set it up, get the individuals to support such a group; but will need help coming up with safe content, guidelines, format etc.
Dr. Steve, Donna, ML…do you all have any suggestions?
Thank you so much in advance!!!!
Peace to all…be well.
Grace
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Saturday, 1 March 2008 @ 1:35am
enlightened says:
Grace,
I think that is a wonderful idea! I had someone suggest my going to a 12-step support group, even al-anon, because the 12 step, in general, applies to all forms of addiction and co-dependency, but for some reason, I still felt isolated because I knew that my situation was so freaking bizarre and didn’t feel comfortable talking about it when everyone else was talking about everything else under the sun BUT what I was going through. I still think it could be helpful, but to have a group that was specifically for people recovering (or still involved with) someone with a PD would be a wonderful thing.
Swallow… This whole thing about friendships is SO timely. Amazingly enough, I still have friendships with a family member and a co-worker of his. It seems that no matter how much I tell them I don’t want to hear anything about his current situation, they can’t seem to help themselves. I have to accept part of the blame for this, because up until now, I have not been assertive enough about it and I do realize that it is partly because I haven’t been ready to cut the only dangling piece of thread that has kept me tied to him. Very unhealthy, but true none-the-less. I have had friends tell me that I am NUTS to keep friendships with people that are so closely connected to him. What has been so hard for me is that I don’t know how to just CUT somebody out of my life because they know him. “Sorry, so and so, I can’t be your friend any more – thanks for all of your support over the last year, but you have to go now”. How would you do that??? Well, this very week, some “s- – t has been flying, with people talking about confidences being betrayed between myself and these friends. They’ve shared things that I said, I’ve shared things they said (my bad) and he came under attack – it was all about his lies being exposed. This must sound SO confusing, but my point is, I am feeling dissention among the ranks, if you will and OH how the P would love this, turning us against eachother. BUT, I am wondering if this is the time for me to drift away – not try to correct everything that I KNOW has been twisted and just let it go. I didn’t have the strength to do what was best for me – maybe God is doing it. Does that make any sense at all??? Thoughts???
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Saturday, 1 March 2008 @ 1:44pm
swallow says:
Grace, I think you have a wonderful idea. As I live in SE Asia I cannot help you and for me I have to go it alone except for this board and other sites as there are no therapists etc. here. If I had the chance to join a group as you suggest I would jump at it.
Swallow
Enlightened,
It sounds as if the vultures are circling. There is never one victim of a P; their poison permeates through everyone they come in contact with. We have to walk a fine line between talking and confiding in others and exposing ourselves to more pain and a smear capmaign. I indulged in ‘talking’ too and to be honest ( apart from my true good friends who really helped and supported me) I just got more pain and frustration. I did it because I could not really let go and was hoping against hope I would hear of their downfall. It didn’t help me at all as they have just carried on as usual.
You have a good opportunity now to withdraw from anyone who is involved with him. Take the tone that you are going to rise above the gossip and back stabbing. Anyone you think is indulging in this, quietly withdraw from them. If they ask you why, just say you do not wish to discuss that person anymore. If they are rude or press you tell them to mind their own buisness, end of subject. Do not give any further information that can be used against you.
My friend gave me a good tip. When I was trembling at the thought of being questioned or attacked she told me to imagine I was wearing a long grey cloak that I put on before I went out. As long as I was wearing it I was safe. If someone got to me I put the hood up!
Good Luck and try as much as possible to rise above the mud slinging. There are always going to be people who cannot see through the facade or who fuel the fire because of their own disorders or problems.
Swallow
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Saturday, 1 March 2008 @ 7:14pm
enlightened says:
“I did it because I could not really let go and was hoping against hope I would hear of their downfall.”
That helps a little. But yes, it is oh so painful knowing they are ‘carrying on as usual’ and even worse, he BENEFITED by what he did to me – not in public, but at home. Thank you for your advice – I have already come to the conclusion that it is past time that I remove myself from the talking. What I learn (it is inevitable in this small town) I will sit on. I will from here on out be able to have the peace of mind that no one will be able to quote me, and I will not have that anxiety of being questioned or attacked, as you put it. And yes, it is time for me to remove myself from a few people, and where that is not so simple, I will make it clear like I’ve never made it before that I want zero information about him or anything regarding him. The timing feels right. Wish I had done it sooner, but I just wasn’t ready. If I sound confident, I’m not. This involves an unhealthy addiction of sorts, and this ‘cutting the last thread’ thing is scary. Thank you for wishing me luck cuz I’m gonna need it! I will keep my cloak with me at all times 
Swallow, that is 100% on target. I have spent the last year letting myself be subjected to painful information because it kept the lines open for my hearing those tidbits of his misery. Yes, I’ve had news of misery, but it has been outweighed by information about him being ‘back on top’. The man pulled it off – atleast in every superficial way you can imagine. He’s still stuck being him – and that’s gotta suck
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Saturday, 1 March 2008 @ 8:03pm
Beverly says:
The encounter with someone with PDs is bad enough, but the aftermath of smearing someone’s good name just adds insult to injury and is their way of finishing off the ‘job’. Since I left him 6 mths ago, I have kept a very low profile. I have avoided all the places we went, the people we knew and I even plan when to go out around the times I know he wont be around. I want him to completely forget about me and not cause any more trouble in my life. Although I am not really scared of him (I can be formidable) he threatened to break all my windows in my home and I wouldnt want my child subject to that. I havent stuck around or asked other people what he has said about me – because I dont really care – I know the truth. Infact I have cut off all ties with people whom we both knew who would talk, so that they dont know what I am doing, so he cant use them as information channels.
I saw him yesterday for the first time since breaking up. I went to a large store and he walked in (didnt see me) and I dumped my shopping and walked out. It still galls me to think he looked so well and has obviously suceeded to some extent in his ploy. Yuuuuck.
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Sunday, 2 March 2008 @ 4:10am
swallow says:
Beverly,
Well done!! You sound as if you are doing so well. Once he knows you are off limits he will go hopefully go hunting for a new prey (if he hasn’t already). Just be on your guard for him to try and sneak back into your life when you least expect it.
Swallow
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Sunday, 2 March 2008 @ 4:38am
Beverly says:
Thank you swallow. I have good days and bad days. He will definately not be back – he created too much wreckage and he knows I would want explanations and he never reveals what he has done. He told me once that he NEVER goes back with ex gfs. I have no doubt he will not be back, I was too challenging for him, I wouldnt put up with his control and domination and he has written me off as not a pushover and not worth the effort. He found someone else really quickly (as they do) and had women (mainly married) at different levels of play. he had the cheek to put a message to me through a third party to say he had already found a woman alot younger than me and that hurt and still does. But thank you so much for your support – I value that.
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Sunday, 2 March 2008 @ 5:41am
swallow says:
When you think of that other younger woman, feel sorry for her – she is dancing with the devil and doesn’t know.
My P used to say to me when he knew things were coming to an end ” You can hate me but don’t forget me”!! Classic Narcissistic comment.
Swallow
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Sunday, 2 March 2008 @ 6:51am
LilOrphan says:
Beverly…
Of course he looks well. Worry lines? Character marks in his face? He has neither, because people without conscience don’t worry about anything but where to get their next fix!
But they are hollow. He has no real happiness, either. It’s all superficial. Was it superficial when he was with you – no depth, no emotional truth or resonance?
It will be exactly the same no matter who he is with. Only the script changes, their actions never do.
Good for you, walking out of the store! Keep walking. He may have seen your vehicle if it’s one he recognizes and may have orchestrated to bump into you in the store. Even if not, don’t be sure he’s forgotten you. They come back years and years later, emotional vampires that they are.
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Sunday, 2 March 2008 @ 10:45am
OxDrover says:
GRace,
Many of the Domestic Violence shelters house many of the victims, but of course we know that many people who have been abused by Ps are not in DV shelters.
It was interesting to me though, that when my X-DIL who had tried to kill her husband, my son C, was released from jail after about 8 months, she was put in a DV shelter for about a week as she had NO where else to go, and in our small area, that was the only place the jail could place her.
My son D picked her up and drove her to her new place of residence and returned to h er the few things my son C (her x husband had saved fro her from their home) and she was telling D that the DV people had tried to convince her that she had been abused by my son (her x husband) and she DENIEd that he had ever abused her….a few days later whenwe had to take some few more things to her, she h ad changed her tune and decided that C HAD abused her.
Of course she is back to her “old habits” now and we are NC with her now, unless and if she decided to file joint income tax with my son for their mutual benefit, but it is up to her, we won’t beg her.
I have worked with people in DV shelters, and the major problem i see is that so many of them return to the viper they escaped from or they go find another viper to nest with. It is almost like they SEEK these abusers out.
To me, the only way to stop it is to educate the victims, and a support group for people like us who are not in shelters might be very helpful. Just like this group is helpful. EDUCATION in how to spot the predators, and validation that they are NOT ALONE and that they are NOT CRAZY or bad, that there is healing out there.
Teaching the red flags to look for, all these things are so oimportant to healing.
My son C is still reeling from shock, but because I am here to BELIEVE him first, to validate him and his feelings secondly, I think his healing is progressing more rapidly than would be expected. He has passed the FIRST hurdle, which is to recognize that he CANNOT FIX it, that he did NOT CAUSE it, and that she has no conscience or ability to understand normal emotions or to repent and change her ways.
In many instances society teaches us that “there is good in everyone” which I do not think is true in the case of Ps. Any “good” they do is accidental.
Because our “pain” which is intense, is not “visible” to others who are also not “educated” to the Ps and their abililties to devestate lives, we don’t get the community support and validation that we need to heal.
Many of us (victims) are also enablers or have “toxic and malignant hope” that we can effect change in these peopole, we fixate on the “fantasy” and are addicted to the rush of possibly recovering this feeling. Sort of like a slot machine gives intermittent rewards, we keep pluging our currency of love into the “one armed bandit of humans.”
I would try a modifided version of any 12 step program or an Alonon type program which material is fairly easily available. Many victims actuall over lap with the alonon groups since many Ps are drug/alcohol addicted as well.
Good luck and God bless your plans for helping.
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Sunday, 2 March 2008 @ 12:15pm
alohatraveler says:
Grace63,
Another reader sent me a link to a seminar about starting a recovery group such as the one you talked about. It is put on by Sandra L. Brown, the author of “How to Spot a Dangerous Man.” Her website is http://www.saferelationships.com.
Send me a note if you are going to go forward with this. I don’t know if I can afford to do this right now, but I would consider it. In fact, I plan to attend a workshop in the future. I am applying to Grad School because of my Bad Man experience and I hope to work with victims of abusive relationships.
If you want to contact me.. iseethebeach@juno.com
Imagine the worldwide network of support and recovery we could create springing from all the conversations here. We could have chapters under our screen names. HAHA! (please note: I am not willing to move back to Hawaii to run the Alohatraveler group… though DANG IT… I do miss my islands!!!!)
I have wanted this forum to end up on Oprah but at the same time, I have been afraid that the community would get too big if we did and we wouldn’t be able to have the “conversations” we have now. That is selfish of me isn’t it? I just love my community here.
Good luck with this venture. I want to do it too but don’t know how to begin and don’t want to get in over my head.. that is why I am headed back to school.
)
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Sunday, 2 March 2008 @ 4:00pm
Grace63 says:
Enlightened, Swallow, Oxdrover and Alohatravler…
Thanks for the responses.
I am very excited about perhaps getting a group started. However, I am almost afraid of how I am going to sell the idea to the Recovery Center, I mean, I would like to come up with a name for the group that will not scare everyone off, if you know what I mean (Surviving and Recovering from Psychological Injuries Caused by Narcissists, and Other Dangerous People….SOMETHING LIKE THAT????)
And, I believe I can gather enough resources, design a sort of revised version of the 12-steps; but, truthfully, even though I am excited, I am starting a new job soon, and believe it will have to go very slowly…I do like the site you suggested Aloha, and the ideas from Oxdrover…they were MUCH appreciated!
The information gathered from this site, and the How to Spot a Dangerous Man site could be the start for the books, pamplets, resources, recovery stories…etc. I would put out some money even to get it started because I know it would help so many people.
Would anyone like to collaborate? Feel up to it?
Hey…I saw the EXPsychopath today…and it was weird…NO EMOTIONAL CHARGE on my part, I was free of all the overwhelming feelings of fear that I might have felt just a few months ago. And, I go see him in court 12 March. I know I have lots of strength as far as support, God, and my own inner resources go! I finally know what it means to say..living well is the best revenge.
I did laugh, and remember what a friend said to me…that lunchmeat is a perfect thing to ruin a car’s paintjob…throw it on the hood…and, it rots right through…I thought about this after he was driving by and laughed…but, I dildn’t feel the deep pain, heartache and fear I had once felt…and I wasn’t really even angry when I thought about the revenge…it just came to my mind…me and my attorney don’t expect to see a dime of the money he owes me; but, I got this GREAT JOB…and for the first time in my life I will be earning in the 6 figures AND IT FEELS so great that I am surviving, have so many terrific friends, love, a great home, God, and so many wonderful wonderful things in my life today! Now…if I can give back…I WANT TO GIVE back, try to help someone else!
I THANK GOD EVERYDAY, even when I am not feeling good…that I survived, have my life energy and sanity back…and, have a fantastic life today!
Again…thanks everyone!
Peace
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Sunday, 2 March 2008 @ 10:25pm
alohatraveler says:
Wow Grace63!
You sound FREE! Isn’t it wonderful?!
I would like to do a group like you. I am just afraid at this point. I feel like I should know something more but I don’t know what it is.
Are you considering doing the workshop with Sandra L. Brown? I think I would start there so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. I have thought of attending a battered women’s group just to see what they do. The psychological stuff is the same I think but with bruises.
( That would be hard to see.
I guess I want to do this but I want to have a Therapist oversee it with me as a sidekick. I don’t know what I would say to these people.
You got me thinking about what I would do. I think I would write a flyer that said something like:
Do you know someone that is in a painful relationship? Are you that someone?
Then I would write something like:
Does your partner do any of the following:
Intimidate you with looks, verball threats of aggressive posturing?
Threaten you?
Did he have a sad story that made you feel sorry for him when you first met him?
Was he your Knight in Shining Armor… but only for a short time and now you are wondering where that man went?
Does he call you names or treat you like a possession?
Do you find that you are always defending your character?
Are you always trying to change to make him happy?
Are you unsure about what it is that he wants you to change but it’s always something?
Is he secretive about his whereabouts?
Does he seem to be addicted to the Internet. Text messages, the phone?
Do you have disagreements that never reach a resolution that is acceptable to you or account for your feelings?
Is it, whatever “It” is, always your fault?
Did you know that you don’t have to be hit to be in an abusive relationship?
and so on.
(I am sure there’s lots more.)
Good luck. Let us know what you are pulling together.
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Monday, 3 March 2008 @ 12:13am
LouiseRosen says:
Just to add to the above comments… (my story is under case histories)…
I’m three years out now and have no emotional charge on the past.
At the present time, I look at what happened as an important life-lesson… it seems that I had been spending a great deal of my life (family, romantic and career) putting up with the sociopathic behaviors of first, my mother, then several husbands and boyfriends and numerous people at work.
It wasn’t until the last encounter that I woke up to the fact that these ‘DIFFICULT’ people in my life were sociopaths-psychopaths and that I had spent most of my life tippy-toeing around their quirks and constant demands. What a wake-up call it was when I discovered what they really were! and that I didn’t have to put up with them any longer.
I realize that I had been ‘indoctrinated’ to be submissive to their demanding behaviors and crazy-making from the time that I was a little child – so it was easy for me to graduate to boyfriends, husbands, co-workers and bosses whom I just considered to be ‘difficult’ people.
Healing took a lot of self-searching, recounting and remembering old relationships and how I succumbed in order to co-exist.
I am left with one thought – I wonder what my life would have been like if I had been aware of the behavior patterns of those around me and made appropriate changes…???
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Tuesday, 4 March 2008 @ 9:02am
swallow says:
HI LouiseRosen,
My childhood was dominated by a domineering and volatile Mother which set me up for future failed relationships with the wrong kind of people. Luckily, I made a very good choice when I married my husband but I failed to recognise that I still carriage ‘baggage’ from the past which led me to fall prey to another P.
Like you, the passage of time is diminishing the trauma and two years on, I feel that it has been a vital wake-up call and an invaluable lesson learned.
I hope that our contributions through these posts can give hope to others that are still struggling with the effects of a disordered personality.
Swallow
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Tuesday, 4 March 2008 @ 7:58pm
OxDrover says:
The aspects of the “people pleasing” and “self-depreciating” personalities that we get from a childhood in which we are expected to “overlook” or “forgive”(read: Pretend it never happened) does in later life tend to make us over look RED FLAGS in these personality disordered individuals.
Dealing with that aspect of why we were “chosen victims” and others weren’t I think is pivotal to our healing PERMANENTLY not just getting away from the “latest” P that has been in our lives.
If a person in AA didn’t realize it was the ALCOHOL and only thought it was the “vodka” and quit drinking that and went to “whiskey” instead, their life would NOT change. I laugh at that when folks who had a big problem with alcohol quit whiskey and go to BEER–as if that makes a difference.
LOL
I think we must MUST find out what inside ourselves made us vulnerable to these people. Why we did not leave the FIRST time they “got out of line” or challenge them the FIRST time they lied to us. Would totally “with it” and “healthy” people put up with what we have put up with? I don’t think so.
That was another big hurdle for me to “get” was that I was COMPLACIENT and allowed the second abuses from these people.
The old saying “crap on me once, shame on you, Crap on me TWICE, shame on ME!” I am the first to admit that I ALLOWED the abuse to continue. I didn’t start it, but I didn’t STOP it either.
I am doing my best at setting reasonable boundaries with every person in my life, who is close or not so close. “This is the way I expect to be treated.” If you do not choose to treat me that way–GO AWAY.
When people cross those boundaries it is at their peril. I have a choice in life in how I will deal with or not deal with people. I can choose who I associate with, whom I love, and whom I do not associate with. I do not have to please YOU. If I choose to please you and it i s within reasonable boundaries, that is a choice I make, not something I am compeled to do.
it is okay for you not to like me. Not everyone will like me. Not everyone will agree with me, and that is okay too.
You can have a difference of opinon without it being a differnce in principle. Having differences of opinons, or likes and dislikes though, does not give anyone the right to disrespect you or me. I treat or try to treat each person with respect, and I expect the same courtesy and respect in return.
One of the biggest pains in life has been when I loved A, and A loved B, and I did not like B, and A insisted that if I “loved them” that I had to also love “B”—I now realize that I can love you, and you can love B, but if I don’t like B that is okay, and if you insist that I must love B in order to be your friend, then, too bad—it isn’t going to happen. I don’t make that kind of demands on others and I won’t fall prey to that kind of demand either.
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Tuesday, 4 March 2008 @ 11:10pm
Beverly says:
I am sorry to say that when my exN started his (I now know) deviant behaviour, I just didnt consider it to be abuse. Uncomfortable yes. Cancelling arrangements/tired (that’s his right), going on holidays alone (he needs space), 12 mobile phones (he works nights, he needs new playthings), sexy comments to female workers (everyone has office banter), female’s phone numbers on his phone (they are married/no threat), doesnt want sex (thats his choice), he asks me ‘ in our sex life – would you xxxxx’ – (HANG ON A MINUTE – WHAT IS HE SAYING??.
He was abusing me in small ways, over practical matters, then working his way up to more risky ones. He was abusing me to my face, right under my nose and although I didnt like what he was doing, I put up with it…..then tension would mount in me,, I would over react and he would punish me by withdrawal. I kept accepting his excuses. Then as I started to suspect he had/was cheating on me, I started to check up on him – thinking – well I have no proof – I cant accuse him of anything. I thought if I did put my foot down, I would lose him or he would accuse me of being jealous/insecure, which he did accuse me of.
I started looking on websites for how to determine what signs a cheater would give. Then I thought – damn it – I dont need any proof. That is when I came to my senses. He is making me feel uncomfortable and that is all I need to know. Then the day before we finished, I am convinced that he invited me somewhere for me (a) meet one of his women (b) or he met a woman there – and that was the last straw. Even if I was imagining it, I thought the scene is so real that this is what he will end up doing to me – which equals taking a crap on me – and I am not taking it ANY MORE- GOODBYE
After going on the cheating signs websites, I found my way to tears and healing website (the descriptions were so accurate), then I found my way here.
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Wednesday, 5 March 2008 @ 3:04pm
righteous woman says:
I think we all did rationalizations…Your rationalizations sound just like mine. Now I call it suffering from hope.
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Wednesday, 5 March 2008 @ 3:10pm
OxDrover says:
Righteous woman,
Another web site on dealing with Ns and Ps calls it “malignant hope” and I think that sums it up pretty well.
That “hope against all reason” is what sustains us in the relationships. I now that in EVERY P encounter from my P-bio-father, to my P-son, and my P-X BF, it was the malignant HOPE that kept me falling for the “fantasy” of how it COULD be if I COULD JUST SOME HOW FIND THE MAGIC WORDS TO FIX IT ALL. DUH!
There is NO Santa, there is NO tooth fairy, there is NO Easter Bunny and there is NO FIX FOR A PSYCHOPATH except DISTANCE and NO CONTACT.
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Wednesday, 5 March 2008 @ 3:18pm
almost_free says:
I have to come here everyday to read all of these reminders… no contact, no fix for a psychopath, no more thinking “if only I read him this letter I wrote him, then he’ll come to his senses”. A friend asked me today how is it that we get sucked in by these people? I wasn’t able to answer her. It’s something about their being master manipulators. It’s frightening, really. All the signs were there for all of us, yet we chose to ignore them, rationalize them. Hindsight is 20-20, they say, and now looking back it all makes perfect sense that I was being completed used and emotionally abused. I wish there was some scientist out there looking for a perfect psychopath to research, because my ex-p would be heaven for them. Perhaps this could go on his license somewhere (“Certified Psychopath”), so that when he dies and his brain gets donated to science, the scientist could really take a look at what makes a psychopath tick.
Clearly, I need a break from all this thinking about this man that has uprooted my life, made me question the genuine goodness in people, and made me realize that true evil does exist in the world, and it’s not always far away or someone else’s problem.
Here’s hoping we all start taking better care of ourselves and thinking about our own lives and values, and put them behind us, as much as is possible.
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Wednesday, 5 March 2008 @ 11:22pm
Beverly says:
The first night I spent with my exN, I did something I have never done before – I went into my kitchen and hid all the knives. That tells you something doesnt it?
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Thursday, 6 March 2008 @ 3:34am
Beverly says:
For days and weeks I have been quietly stewing with a jealous curiosity about his current gfriend. Less ups and downs with her, less over reactions, more calm, no turbulence. I have even thought if only I had been less reactive. Then today, I suddenly realised that she may be less reactive and he will have modified his behaviour off the back of the experiences with me. I am in no doubt that somewhere in him, he must have been hurt when we parted, but he has fast tracked himself past that. There has probably been no ruminating or him, no tears, he has schemed on how he can find a quick replacement for me. I know they are weak inside and all these elaborations are defences.
I am glad I was reactive, it just brought things to a head more quickly and lessened the longer lasting impact, although the impact has been bad enough. She may be more accepting of him, he may not yet be manipulating and getting into his deviant behaviour, because he knows what it did to us. But the bottom line is that all people in his life are narcissistic prey to him, whether he takes the longer route or the shorter route. She is yet unaware of what he did to me and what mental cruelty he subjected me to for being concerned about him and loving him.
I realised that with him, things go very calmly when you play by his rules – he makes it clear what is acceptable and what is not, if you assert your needs or cross him in some way – bang – punishment – all so subtely executed – like Pavlov’s dogs. It can never be a two way relationship with him, he has to be completely in control of all aspects of the relationship, but if at times you are in control, it is only because he is letting you be, to keep you sweet. That is, until you suddenly realise what his game is actually about!!
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Thursday, 6 March 2008 @ 4:30am
findingmyselfagain says:
Beverly – I had the same realization one night after I broke it off with him for the last time…. I was always so worried that he’d made a copy of my house key that he used once to come over when I was not home. I started putting a chair propped under the door handle until I could get the locksmith here and spent $100 on changing my locks. I slept with my revolver under the pillow next to me in bed for several weeks.
I thought to myself – I’m dating a man I have to fear for my safety? If he has the character of someone who I fear, whether broken up or together… what kind of man is this I think I love so much? I felt ashamed of myself for making it ok all that time to be in such a relationship. Yet we continue to go back to them even knowing those ugly revelations.
I ran into him in the hallway at work the other day. We exchange a bit of conversation for the first time in 2 months. I was happy to realize I had no longing for him. There was a faint sentimental feeling, but I stood there picturing him with his likely newest conquest and I felt numb towards him.
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Thursday, 6 March 2008 @ 10:07pm
Beverly says:
Free, my apprehension about hiding the knives was because I thought he would use them on me! When I first met him I had a sense he was cruel and I didnt trust him at all. He looked like he had been in alot of fights, lots of scars etc. But as we carried on, he reassured me that he ‘doesnt hit women’, and he never overtly physicallyhit me (other than in sex) so I became more trusting of him, until his strange ambient behaviour started. What I didnt realise at the time, was that he was setting me up to mentally and emotionally abuse me.
I am astonished to hear of how you have been abused at the deepestl levels and over a period of time. I feel a connection with you and it pains me to read your story. My exN manipulated me sexually too and he was into S&M, something that is alien to me. I didnt weather much of it though, it did nothing for me and I dont count pain as exciting. I went through it abit, because I thought he might go to another party to get his satisfaction if I didnt, but I couldnt weather it. He was into heavy duty stuff and I couldnt weather it past about 10 seconds. I just saw it as him gaining permission to physically beat me through sex where no-one would see it. On one of the few times, I was left extensively bruised all over my butt and I made him go out and buy me some lotion. If only I had listened to my first red flag warning about his cruel vibes.
Also as I posted on another thread here. Yesterday, ironically, at the very day and time I met him 2 yrs ago, I had breast recall and was told that I have breast cancer. I dont know at this stage what the future is likely to hold, but apart from 1 or 2 friends, people dont realise how deeply being with the exN for only a short time – just over a year – has harmed me on all levels. Life was not easy for me prior to him, but it was ok and it was improving. For years I put everyone else before me and I was at the bottom of my own list and never moving to the top and I was just beginning to make some changes because I had not really looked after myself since he and I broke up. I realise that I cannot put the blame at his feet, but the intolerable stress and anxiety I have suffered during that year and since have certainly not helped for me. Now suddenly, through this, I have to put myself at the top of my list. Infact I am now the only person on my list! Take care. God bless you Free
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Friday, 7 March 2008 @ 8:11am
jules says:
free; i relate to what you are saying mine was abusive with sex but mostly after we broke up and i stupidly kept sleeping with him we would have sex when he visited me, he was very into it but he would never hold me after wards or talk to me or anything just get up clean himself up and walk into the other room then not long after this he just left me and went out night clubbing with his male freinds that night and probably pick up girls. this went on for a lon g time nearly a year and i let it go that way. then when we had sex he would not do things to pleasure me that i liked and he liked too when we were together, he said i dont do that with someone if im not seeing them, i felt like a prostitute i was very sad about my self then. i also slept with him once or twice maybe when i was pretty sure he had been with other woman he had love bites on him and he lied to me about it. now when i think how cruel he was and how he used me in this way i feel a shamed and totally stupid. everytime he broke up with some girl he rang me with this charm and sympathy seeking and i was there most times. now hes with some other girl a new one and i have vowed if he breakes up this time even if i am still single i will not be there for him not this time or any time. he totally used me for sex and that was all saying he was my friend, he was no friend he did not even go any where with me not for coffee or anything a walk nothing he just wanted sex stayed a few hours then left. no more not any more willi do this for him, friends dont treat you like that i shouldnt even be a friend to him after the way he left me any way but i was just lonely and he abused that. if somone else told me they did these things i did i would think how sad a nd sick theymust be but its me i did those things to my self . now i am moveing on and going to meet a man who treats me the right way and if i dont meet someone like that i will stay by my self . i found with the s path as long a s i went along with things he was sweet and charming and he did treat me ok, but when i started to question and i had the feelings i should, he got nasty and thats when he started to punish me. the new girl is young but evntually if shes got any brains she will see what he is really like. one thing i found funny when i met some of his female friends he went to school with they called him hef as in hugh hefner and i was like what ! he tried to brush it off and i thought this is not right somethings up here with this guy then lots of other red flags and warnings i did not listen to. he always played the innocent and made me feel sorry for him. then when i started looking at his ph bills he really didnt like that and i think thats when he changed his mind ab out staying with me. i dont look at ph bills normally but the thing is there is no other way sometimes to find out what they re doing. and looking at those bills shed a lot of light for me to work things out and realise he was a big liar. so now i try to respect my self and if a guy doesnt like that too bad they are not worth my attention then. thanks and good luck to you free and all of you.
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Friday, 7 March 2008 @ 8:23am
jules says:
bev; i too have been wondering about the new girl. she seems very soft and easy going just the way he likes it, not self righteous like me and not experienced like me either i thank god i was like that other wise i will still be with him probably. but yes i wonder i dont think he will play up so quickly as i dont think he wants to be alone really and will dig into her for dear life to keep her right where he wants her until he gets bored and doesnt get his way or she starts peering into his life deeper to find stuff from his past ie me and all the others. although idont think he treasts all his exs like me because they didnt question as much they just left him, but he prob punishes for that too. anyway i know he will take his time with this girl espec if shes got things he wants. and i think he s getting tired of failure it prob makes him look bad to other s his friends and so on. he once said to me every relationship is different, now i know he means he adapts himself to how ever the girl is different to be right for her. little things they say now mean something completely different to me with the knowledge ive gained. thanks to you all.
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Friday, 7 March 2008 @ 8:40am
jules says:
bev i am so sorry fo your news. i feel for you right now so much. i often wonder if the stress i experienced and the anxiety which withme was pretty extreme and all the worry whilst and after he left what was going to happen to me, i wonder if i was doing my health no good i am pretty sure i was not. it was me reacting but what was i doing to my body. this is another reason why i want to let it all go and only experience good things that make me feel good cause i do think it is unhealthy to feel bad and upset all the time. i really hope this is not the case for you and all of us. i love your posts and the advice you give me helps so much, i aM GETTING STRONG JUST READING HERE. my thoughts and good vibes are being sent to you right now. those bad evil s paths and n s dont know what harm they do to anyone. dont hesitate to write to me about anything i understand most of what you write even if my experience was different in some ways it was the same in alot of ways too.
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Friday, 7 March 2008 @ 8:59am
Beverly says:
Jules. Reading your blog before last just sounds so very familiar – almost like I had written all of it. My exN was very tired of going through and through failed relationships and whilst he is going through his mid life crisis – doesnt want to die a lonely old man, I think he has found someone who is very passive, probably naieve. Whereas I was reactive and on the ball to some degree. Like you I also wonder how many of his ex gfs have actually figured out who he really is. As you say, I think some of them have bailed out because probably he just seems obnoxious.
Yes, I think he has hooked up with someone who is probably less worldly than me, younger, complacent and ripe fodder, whilst he has her right where he wants her. I think he has modified his approach, taking it slower, not making over the top promises and I dont think he has moved in. He usually tries to move in quickly, and I think he has modified his approach off the back of me. the end result is the same though – isnt it.
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Friday, 7 March 2008 @ 9:51am
jules says:
free; that is so true always someone believing their shit. never no one even if its a casual fling or a girlfreind. i remember in one of our first conversatons on the phone when we first met he asked me if i liked sex , i should have known then thats not something you ask someone right away. mine probably had a lot more secrets too i onlyfound a few things, i used to work every second weekend so he had a lot of free time. if that man cared about you and your son he would make sure you didnt have to catch buses to work and school, words are nothing its actions that show if they really love you. they are mimics like mine said every relationship is different. i hope you heal your sexual problems why should they take anything else from us. thanks to you free. j.
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Friday, 7 March 2008 @ 8:13pm
STN says:
Jules, is that you? I think we were on the other website together (for women in love with a married man), and I just recently figured out that my MM was a total psychopath/sociopath/narcissist.
It certainly explains a lot, doesn’t it? And it certainly breaks the heart in the creepiest way possible. I still can’t feel normal now that I know nothing was in this guy’s heart as I gave him my promises of undying love. I am so glad that I left him cold one day, when he didn’t expect it. He’s almost totally deprived of NS (attention he’s addicted to) and to see what he’s doing to get more of it is just plain sad and embarassing.
But here’s my issue – I’m totally stuck living where he works. It’s horrible. I have to see him every single day. Worse yet, he has a female friend who is also a total psychopath (she loves the games, feels NO remorse, and lives to inflict emotional pain and humiliation on ME). He, on the other hand, just needs to feel important, sexy and better than everyone around him. So he doesn’t get that she’s manipulating him by giving him attention, he just loves the adoration she deliberately supplies; she does it so that he’ll keep trying to hurt me, and together they both try to torment me in any way they can. The lies, the games, the gossip -it’s getting so hard to take. What can I do? They are such good liars. I’m totally stuck here. [I live in the Middle East, in a compound for Americans, and it's small! I've got no place to run to get away from these psychos. The boss here is a total coward, always pretending real problem are nothing, so he gives them the perfect cover. All they have to do is put on the right smile, and they get away with ANYTHING]. Help, please! I’ll be glad for any advice at all. My career and sanity are at stake the longer I’m closed in with these people. I’m constantly on the defense instead of living my life as I should. Always trying to stay strong and together, but this means I get nowhere, all the time, I’m just holding my head above water, never reaching the shore…if you know what I mean.
Okay, I’m in a bit of a panic. Some days are better than this. But since I realized what a couple of Ps I’m dealing with, I feel scared, very scared, and trapped. They’re both out for revenge on me because I know their secrets, I know who and what they are…they know I’ve figured them out, and they do NOT want to be exposed. So they spend their time trying to hurt and destroy me with gossip, lies, abuse, etc.
Mostly I’m able to let it go and get on with my life, but I see the situation is escalating, they’re coming up with new tricks, new hideous games. I’m frightened for myself.
Please send advice if you can. Thank you.
STN
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Sunday, 9 March 2008 @ 8:17am
lesley says:
On the subject of NC: has anyone had trouble with not being able to stop googling the guy? Mine’s a total creep, really scuzzy, and intellectually, I want nothing more to do with him. But then I’d go and google him and the OW, try and find out what they were up to; I was doing this a lot, till it dawned on me that emotionally, it kept me in contact with him. So I’ve forced myself to stop, but it’s hard. Our ending was so abrupt, I keep wanting more information, but that’s only keeping me hooked in. The web can be a dangerous place with psychopaths, both coming and going.
Beverly, very sorry to hear about your news. How are you doing? L
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Sunday, 9 March 2008 @ 11:19am
Beverly says:
STN. Feeling closed in by our experiences is a struggle. I have been there many times. In retrospect, I think, that there is always a way out, its just that we dont see it at that time. Often in hindsight we see it later. I would suggest that you try to get as much as you can and learn what this experience is teaching you. Secondly, I would find a way to loosen your bonds, look for ways to relax your situation, can you make some adjustments, changes? Thirdly, try not to panic. Take control of your situation and ride the wave. If all else fails, listen to your deepest self, and do what you think is right.
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Sunday, 9 March 2008 @ 11:38am
OxDrover says:
Lesley,
I thinnk there are TWO kinds of NC–the physical NC where we stay away from him, and the EMOTIONAL NC where we stop “renting them space in our heads” by trying to find out information. I think the googling is a form of self torture in a way, almost like “cyber stalking”—-refusing to EMOTIONALLY LET GO.
As long as you continue this you will not be able to heal, you will still focus on HIM. I know it is diffiucult to kick him out of your head, but you can do it. I have been there, believe me. But until I QUIT trying to find out about what my Ps were up to, quit obscessing about them, I could not start the healing process. Once I forced myself to do this, the healing started.
Wanting “closure” or “information” about “why,” I think, is a common denominator with the end of all P relationships, whether they are romantic, or otherwise…it doesn’t make any “sense” what their motives are, at least to us, we can’t fathom really what makes them do the things they do. Intellectually we can, but emotionally we can’t. It is like dealing with someone from Mars. Their “reality” is not OUR REALITY.
A lot of the things “they” do just don’t make sense. My P-son tried to have me killed to insure his inheritence of our family’s assets–if he had simply kept his mouth shut and not tried to hurt any of us, JUST WAITED, I was so in denial he would have actually gotten 50% of it–instead, his grabby behavior, his rancor, cut him out entirely so he will get NOTHING. Make sense to you? I guess not, but for some reason it did to HIM.
I actually think that if he had gotten out of prison and been handed $10,000,000 he would have started stealing within a month. None of the criminal acts he has committed were from NEED, they were all committed because he ENJOYED the “rush” the “high”—the predatory “chase”–even getting caught repeatedly and sent to prison didn’t “teach him” anything—except, I guess to be a better (but thank goodness not perfect) con man.
I used to worry incessantly about his welfare in prison. Was he being abused by another “badder” inmate? Was his life safe? Now, I don’t have a single thought about what he is doing now. How safe he is or what he is doing. I DO NOT CARE any longer. He is as dead to me as if he were in the grave. The son I gave birth to and loved IS DEAD, he died about age 12 or 13, and the man that inhabits his body is NOT my son, but a monster. Like a sci-fi movie where the alien takes over the body of someone…the son I loved is no longer in there. For the last 20+ years my “son” has been gone, the body inhabited by the alien monster.
The man you loved (the fantasy of what you thought he was) is just as dead–grieve for that death, but “peeping into the coffin” won’t let you heal. (((hugs))))
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Sunday, 9 March 2008 @ 11:55am
alohatraveler says:
STN,
This may be dumb advice but is there a HR person that you can talk to. I think the one advantage we have after the fall is that we know what they are and we know what they do. Example: we know they will try to make us look crazy if we complain to anyone of authority. You know what… I think I am taking you down the wrong road here. It is such a task to educate someone about what a sociopath is. I think it would be impossible in the midst of a battle such as what you are going through.
Maybe you should apply for other jobs. I mean you must have had another job before you took this one. Get another. Get out of there. Wouldn’t it be great to just disappear off the radar. Out of site, out of mind.
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Sunday, 9 March 2008 @ 1:24pm
alohatraveler says:
Beverly,
I am sorry to hear your news about Breast Cancer. Hopefully it was detected early. Here is a video of my beautiful friend Holly. She was diagnosed with stage III Colon Cancer and she beat it.
http://www.youtube.com/results.....arch_type=
Also, my housemate in Hawaii has beat breat cancer twice. You have all of us praying for you, I am sure.
I started at “Tears And Healing” as well. I read the book and it helped a lot. Was it you that said that you feel that you over reacted to things with your ex? I would say, I doubt it. That is your BM speaking to you. I was accused of over reacting too. I started to be very deliberate with my words and contained my emotions so that I could replay in my mind things that happened… and be able to KNOW that I didn’t lose control. This happened early on when he began rewriting history and putting his twists on reality. I used to say that anything he said might have a grain of truth in it but it had be repackaged to the point that it would be unrecognizable.
Also, isn’t it strange that several people on this thread talked about a sense of fear they had with their Sociopath.. some even early on? I met a guy over Craigslist near the time that I had found LF. I don’t know for sure if it was right before or after. Anyway, he was from out of town but visiting a brother.
We agreed to meet in a public place, then we went to a beach (drove separate cars). He seemed nice but he did have a sad story. That night we kissed for awhile but the strangest thing happened. Every time I closed my eyes, I imagined him slipping his fingers around my neck. I NEVER had a vision like that in my life. I was still very traumatized by the BM at that point but still… I don’t know what that was about. The BM never did anything violent to me.
Free,
Your post was so chilling and honest. I applaud you for being so open about something so vulnerable. Sometimes, I am aghast at the things that people have to go through. I just wanted to say that.
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Sunday, 9 March 2008 @ 1:47pm
EnnLondon says:
STN, I was in the exact same situation as you six months ago. I took the opportunity to apply for another job in the company – anything to try and get out – and to my surprise my boss (who I’ve never really got along with) said ‘We can’t lose you at the moment’ (it was a placement, so she could say no) and without meaning to I just burst into tears and had to explain that I needed to get out. The ex was freelance so she just stopped hiring him. He had had other victims at work and somehow she heard through the grapevine about one of them. I told her there were others and I could see it in action. I am SO glad I told her – though I went into that meeting with absolutely no intention to. Her failure to see me as ‘a woman scorned’ makes me wonder if she’s actually witnessed a sociopath in action herself. (Incredibly, the ex is apparently in a huff about not being hired again – has totally failed to put two and two together…despite the fact he seemed to be shagging his way through the company, and upset others! They really think the normal rules don’t apply to them).
Beverly – all the best to you – I’m sure you can come through this. You’ve banished that horrible toxic influence from your life and you can beat this disease too. Hope you are feeling well.
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Sunday, 9 March 2008 @ 4:09pm
STN says:
Hi,
Thank you for your suggestions. I am trying to find a new job, and FAST. But it’s taking time, I work in a field where there are not so many openings. I may just move back to the States, give up my career and become a waitress or whatever I can find, just to get away from here. And then I torture myself with the thought that I will have allowed these beasts to ruin my career.
I guess I’m also writing just because I’m so thoroughly disturbed by what I’ve been learning. I already figured out the patterns on my own, and figured out that the best way for him to learn about pain was to leave him cold, by total surprise, with no comparable NS available. I wanted it to hurt him as much as possible, so that he could get a little perspective on having a need and the technique of deliberate deprivation; this is what he did to me. He made me an addict by deceiving me, and then controlled me by only giving me what I wanted (‘love’) when I gave him what he wanted (submission). Catching him off guard when I left him gave me a chance to regroup before he could counter attack. I did that, never even knowing the name of this disorder he has. Anyway, I’ve cut off all contact (except I have to see him daily), and my life is getting better on the whole, but there’s trouble coming my way again, I can feel it in my bones.
The good news is that my narcissist is not very bright. He gives himself away to others without realizing he’s doing it, and he has NO idea when someone else is manipulating him. So people are starting to see that he has a problem.
I’ve kept my nose so incredibly clean since I left him. I only do what’s right for me and right for the people who have shown me, with actions, that they care about me. No one I live or work with really knows my secrets though, because like you said, it’s too difficult to educate others about sociopaths when they haven’t been victimized themseleves. It would just make me sound like the crazy one.
Last week my N tried to test my resolve not to speak with him. He spoke with me, just to see how I’d react, not to apologize and make things right, of course. I said nothing, but I stopped in my tracks, looked him in the eye, fixed his gaze and gave him a look that let him know what a subhuman evil monster I know he is.
The good news is that it hurt him. He was in a bad mood for several hours, but then he actually brought another woman into work to keep him company. Imagine that, I mean, everyone knows he’s married and he’s not ashamed of doing this. His only concern is to try to hurt me. It’s astounding how unaware he is of how this is making him look. After that he went into a rage, publically about what a bad person I am. People feel embarassed by it, and they really don’t know what’s going on because he’s probably the most beloved, charming wonderful person many of them have ever met (at least on the surface, of course).
If his psychopath partner were around (she’s out of town) she’d at least be smart enough to make him cover up these obviously idiotic behaviors. She’ll be here again soon. She’s more sick than him, she manages to have about 4 ‘boyfriends’ simultaneously, while she’s married and to convince everyone around here that it’s normal. And they GO ALONG WITH IT, AS IF THIS IS NORMAL! And get this, the men are all about 30 years older than she. Can we say issues with daddy? My N is her youngest, neediest victim. He’s only a few years older than she. I thought both were my friends when things started…I never imagined the sick world I would enter when these two became a regular part of my life. I’m frightened by it’s absolute ugliness and emptiness.
I don’t love him anymore, not after I read what a real narcissist is and see that he is one. But I do look back and realize that there were real moments of love between us, when he managed to let his guard down after mostly just abusing and manipulating me the rest of the time. One night he held me in his arms all night long, just held me close to him. It was the sweetest time I ever spent with him. After that though, he went right back to old behaviors. Shutting me down every time I had an opinion, criticizing, hitting me, flirting with anything that moves, dominating, demeaning me, pulling me in just to push me away, you name it. It was all there.
Funny thing is I think he tried to warn me. He used to say that ‘when this is all over, you’re going to hate me.’ He knew what he was doing, but couldn’t stop himself. It’s so sad to me now, because I feel like if I hadn’t let the affair begin, I might have had a chance at helping him. I feel like if I hadn’t let that monster in him who’s addicted to sex and domination grow, he might have been able to control his bad side.
He used to tell me, “I always knew I was bad.” “You don’t know the real me. I can be very mean, so be careful.” And he was right.
It makes me sad b/c I think he was trying to control himself, as much as he was able. But he lived his whole life getting what he could from as many women as possible. And now that’s the part of him that’s taken over, completely, and a huge downward spiral has begun to accelerate. I have so much regret that I contributed to that. I lost so much happiness, I lost so much time and energy, so many opportunities to have a better life.
Spirituatlity has been my answer too. It is for people who’ve been to hell and who know what the darkest place in the world feels like. The only way I can make myself feel better is to give everything I have to doing what I know is right, to dedicating myself to a higher path with 100% conviction. Faith in that is the only thing that makes me feel safe and comfortable anymore. Yoga is part of that for me, and it’s changed my life for the better, it’s the only active way I can bring myself together, mind, body and spirit.
Why am I writing all of this? Because I have no one else to talk to here and I just have to get it out in a safe environment, where people won’t think I’m crazy for seeing things the way I do. Thank you for letting me do that, and for caring enough to give me some advice. There are no HR people here, I wish there were. I suspect the boss, who is the only boss around here, is at least partly a narcissist too. He bascially just shuts anyone up who expects him to care about the living conditions here. He likes to dominate and manipulate too, and takes credit for other people’s work all the time. And guess which people all get along famously? Right, the man I ‘loved’ (my narcissist), his psychopathic female ‘friend’, and the boss. They all see eye to eye about me and my opinions. They like to cast me as the ’sensitive’ one, who doesn’t really understand anything and who needs them to make it all clear for me. They want to be examples to me, teach me how to handle my emotions without outbursts.
Meanwhile they all know that I’m on to them, and what they are. It’s such a circus, such an incredible circus, with me as the caged animal. But none of them ever imagined how strong I would get, or how clever, or how I’d plan my way back to a place where I had control again. My N was taken completely by surprise when I dumped him (he actually had tears in his eyes as I walked away and has been climbing the walls for weeks looking for another source of NS), and I just outwitted my boss who had been trying to keep data that I needed in order to get credit for my own work. I tricked my boss into giving it to me, and it’s the last thing I’ll ever really need from him again. Is it wrong for me to want to see them all fall, face first, into the dirt, with me standing on their necks? Because that’s what I want.
Anyway, thanks for listening, and for having made this a safe place to talk about these things.
STN
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Sunday, 9 March 2008 @ 4:47pm
STN says:
Dear Beverly,
I just wanted to wish you well separately (I wrote too much above and you’d never find a message for you in that mess).
My health also suffered terribly from the abuse. Something that worked for me that might work for you is a total detox of the body and the spirit. Yoga has poses just for this, and for healing spiritual injuries. Beyond that, a detox diet for the body worked wonders for me. Really. It’s what helped me begin to look and feel like a normal person again, inside and out.
It can be very simple and not too untasty. I’ll just give you my diet plan, but you could always devise your own.
1. For two weeks or a month (you decide)
First thing in the am, drink hot water with the juice of one lemon and honey if you’d like.
2.Drink nettles tea all day long and/or the lemon juice in hot water.
3.Eat plain yoghurt with flax seeds, flaxseed oil and honey as one meal (tastes a lot better than it sounds).
4. Eat bean soup, with vegetables and natural broth for another meal (any kinds of beans, a mix, whatever).
5. Eat as many raw fruits, vegetables as you’d like.
If you can get organic foods and spring water to do all of this with, so much the better. I did it for a month, with a set back here and there, and it flip flopped my whole system, into one that was so much more under control and full of energy again.
Yoga every day, with real commitment, can work wonders. There’s a great website with tons of free yoga lessons and info. (do a search for anmol mehta’s kundalini pages).
Even if this doesn’t appeal, I hope you’ll find a way to heal yourself from the inside out. I wish you all good things.
Love (from one abused but healing woman to another), STN
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Sunday, 9 March 2008 @ 5:00pm
OxDrover says:
Alohatraveler,
Your comment about him putting a “spin” on the truth, and it always had a GRAIN of truth in it, but was totally twisted.
Remember when you think about that kind of thing, that RAT POISON IS 99% PURE CORN MEAL. Someting that is 99% “truth” and 1% lie can be just as poison, but the amount of truth makes it “slide down more easily.”
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Sunday, 9 March 2008 @ 6:21pm
Beverly says:
STN, Thank you for that. I am going to start a detox almost immediately and I will incorporate your advice in my regime. it is very sound advice. I used to be very good at looking after myself and would eat sprouting seeds etc, but over the winter, I never went out and sat at home very down. Thank you.
EnnLondon, Yes, I got his toxic influence out of my life and as all survivors here know, it can be a battle on its own to do that and then the aftermath. My experience of things is changing quite rapidly at the moment.
AlohaT – Thank you for your positive support, that is good for me and I have had so little positive support for myself over the past 6 months, struggling through a crisis after a crisis, I really havent looked after myself very well. I think we all wish we had heed the first warnings. But we didnt and some of us are working through that knowledge too, as well as working through the severing of this type of relationship – no mean feat! I would totally support what you say about honouring those flashes, those pictures. I had alot of nightmare dreams when I was with him and I rarely have them. The first dream I had I never told him about. I dreamed that I had my laptop stolen and I found it in a second hand store where the thief had sold it. As I went to identify it, the shop staff told me that they had to clear down the hard drive and when they examined it they made an identification. They stuck a label onto the laptop and it said ‘This laptop belonged to a killer husband and an isolated housewife’. You can imagine my horror. I even asked him if he can killed someone and he flew into rage. I had more disturbing dreams. I dreamt that I was in a big house full of windows and that the devil who was dressed as a young attractive man, was throwing stones at my window. In my experience, every insight, picture, feeling or warning should be heeded and acted on. Now, my immediate action would be to remove myself completely.
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Sunday, 9 March 2008 @ 6:48pm
alohatraveler says:
STN,
It sounds like you are planning you escape. I am glad. I have had a very rough road back once I left Maui and landed back home, broke and shell shocked. I did not know I had PTSD for a very long time. And I had a friend that was calling me “obsessed” and “stalker.” Can you imagine?! After the nightmare I went through?! And she should have known better because she has studied the DSM IV but failed to sort out what happened to me. In retrospect, this “friend” has been toxic in my life and today I have been rumminating on that… and making meatloaf.
)
Anyway, it was a friend of this “friend” that pointed me in the right direction after hearing just 5 minutes of my story. That is how I found that book, “Tears and Healing” about Borderline Personality Disorder.
I understand your vision of standing over them with your foot on their necks. That made me laugh. I totally get that. The cause of my “obsession and stalking” on the internet was that I wanted to stop this man but I wasn’t sure what he did to me. I wasn’t sure if I contributed in some way. I was so confused and also, I wasn’t sure if he had done anything illegal and yet it felt so wrong. I was afraid of saying what happened because I knew the things he would say about me would put me in a tail spin. In fact, after I left the island, I heard through a friend that Captains that worked for the snorkeling boat tours that BM and I worked for at the end, wanted to know if I could help them with any information to get him fired. They were getting fed up with his Narcissism. He had managed to get himself hired as the “Port Captain” which means that all the other Captains reported to him and they thought he was a… nickname for Richard.
) Did you get that? Anyway, I was way too traumatized and declined to help them.
My point of this story is that it sounds like your Bad Man is starting to build an unsavory reputation for himself. People are onto him. I am sure they don’t know what is wrong but they know something is wrong. Get out of there if you can and then just wait. His reputation may close in on him, especially in the micro community you described overseas. As it turns out, it took more than a year but the BM is having more and more trouble finding anyone to play with. Maui is a small community. I am surprised that he has not been beaten to a pulp by someone’s big ‘Bra” (brother in pidgeon). I have also heard from a resource, that BM has been set up numerous times for dates where no one shows up. I LOVE THIS!!! He has quite a reputation on Craigslist in the islands and for awhile, he was taking an internet beating every time he posted an ad. I don’t know how he is finding ladies right now but.. I am currently in contact with a woman who moved to Maui, partially because of their online love affaird and is now being stalked by him. We have been emailing for a month or so and just talked yesterday for the first time. I have “met” some wonderful ladies over the web… just like here at Lovefraud. My dream is to go to Maui for a visit and meet all of his victims at Starbucks in Kihei and have him walk up and see me there with all these good women. God that would be BEAUTIFUL!!! He would run away crying.
Poor Bad Man.
( He hurts me no more.
Tell your story here if it helps you. I read every detail with full concentration and attention. I know what it means to desperately need to be understood. Feeling understood accelerates the healing. That’s my experience anyway.
You are part of a network of smart, articulate, WISE woman.
Aloha… E.R.
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Sunday, 9 March 2008 @ 8:42pm
shesaid says:
The abuser is long gone but the fun just never seems to end for me! After I got rid of him, the police told me he had confessed to drugging people. I discovered my mystery illness was that he was poisoning me with prescription painkillers for the better part of a year. Despite his own confession, the police did nothing about the crime – they can’t without catching him in the act themselves, apparently.
Meantime people at work don’t seem to want to let go of the past. Even though it’s been a year and a half since I got rid of him, they remember the drowsy person who couldn’t focus and could barely stay awake. Every time any little thing goes wrong, they are quick to jump all over me. Even though I was fortunate enough to not lose my job, it still cost me my raise and bonus that year and I get passed over for promotions. I’ll have to change jobs and start over elsewhere. Also since he called me at work and threatened to kill me last summer, I really don’t ever feel safe at work or at home. I find myself wanting to get away from any place he was familar with, and wanting even to change my name to feel safe.
I have people who have encountered him after me who don’t get it and who think if they are ‘just friends’ with him they won’t suffer any damage. Even if they don’t get conned, stolen from, or drugged – there is a vast array of other trouble and destruction he can cause. There was him using my name without my consent or knowledge in committing larceny – which could have brought me accessory criminal charges. There was him impersonating me on the internet, which almost got me sued for libel/slander.
I live under constant credit check – my credit is still great, but I will never be able to not have a watch on my credit. I’ve gone through the process of changing all of my account numbers, just in case he decides to steal my identity later on – he had gone through my important papers box and noted my social security number, account numbers, etc etc.
Fortunately, I never got any STD, but I have nervously gone for testing every six months anyway and I was just finally feeling like I’ve gotten my life back in my own control.
Ha!
HERE’s the kicker. While he was searching for jobs, he had a couple of job interviews in other states. He managed to convince companies to fly him here or there for interviews based on his fake resume and completely fake credentials.
I let him borrow my shoulder -carry on bag for those several trips. I usually travel with my other bag, the pullman, so my shoulder carry-on bag has sat inside another bag for most of the last year and a half.
Fast forward. Here I am today, arriving in a foreign country on a business trip. I think nothing of Customs wanting to wave their drug-detecting wand over me and my things; I’ve never used drugs; Ive never tried drugs; most kinds of drugs I’ve never even SEEN. I’ve never even tried smoking.
I was thinking they would find nothing more stuck to me than cat hair and the melted gummi bears in the top compartment of my luggage.
Well then to my complete horror the rubber gloved customs lady came back with her wand and announced that not only my carry on shoulder bag tested postive for COCAINE but so did my hands, and even my laptop.
Guess who I found out after I got rid of him had a cocaine habit. He must have been carrying drugs around in my luggage. The microscopic residue of his poisonous personality just seems to be on me no matter how much I shower. Now i wonder how I’m going to get back home to the US. I already took a shower with my carry on bag and shampooed the hell out of it. Does customs now have me flagged as a druggie???
I have been wishing for decontamination and a haz-mat suit. How do I get something I can’t even see off of me?? I think I will go to the airport an extra two hours early when I leave and have them test all my belongings and see what they have to help me get home.
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Sunday, 9 March 2008 @ 8:55pm
OxDrover says:
The Trojan Horse-P that my P-son sent to harm our family, went through my personal information as well. He took control of my cell phone account, and ran up the bill to hundreds andhudreds of dollars. He even got online with the on-line account he had set up there with a password that only he knew, so I could not set up my on-line account or access it.
He had my credit card numbers and would order things off late night TV–you know the “send $49.95 and I will tell you how to become a millionaire in realestate”—of course when these things arrived unordered, getting OFF their billing list is like trying to get out of the Mafia–you are n for LIFE. What they don’t tell you is that yea, the $49.95 is only the FIRST payment and they bill your credit cards monthly forever.
When you call to try to cancel, you get someone in Singapore who doesn’t speak English or have the authority to cancel the order. It is a nightmare.
I ended up abandoning my cell phone account and getting another…I had to file individual police reports on each of the things he “ordered” in my name on my card…this was all simple “harassment” that drove me BANANAS for weeks–months.
After I secretly fled my home and went into hiding, he came to my house and did vandalism, pulling phone cables out of the outside of the house, turning on the water and letting it run, locking some of my lifestock up without food or water, etc.
Fortunately I never stayed away long and always came with a companion, and at different times of day to check on things, so no major damage was done to the house or the animals. The terroristic tactics though, left me with night sweats about what might happen…I knew I was not safe in my own home as long as he was loose.
There is no end of their deviousness or their enjoyment of inflicting problems upon us. Even when he was in jail awaiting transfer to prison, he sat there concocting bogus harassments to try to make our lives more “interesting” and miserable.
just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean that someone is not out to “get you”—if they can imagine it, they will find a way to try to do it. Getting “revenge” against you for NS injury is many times their motivation for these things.
I will never again underestimate the depth of the malice in these people when they are frustrated in their desires.
Even after the TH-P was arrested, he sat in the court room smirking at me like he had “won” by making my life miserable for so many months. Well, it may not be much consolation, but he is now in the third worst prison system in the US, and his life time of prison terms so far will not even compare to what he is in for now. While he was in the local county jail awaiting transfer to prison, one of the local crack head/meth smoking pieces of trash heard about what he had done to our family and kindly broke his nose for him for being such a “bad guy” and bragging about what a bad a$$ he was.
I guess I shouldn’t gloat, but sometimes “what goes round comes round” in strange ways.
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Sunday, 9 March 2008 @ 9:53pm
STN says:
Aloha and Beverly,
Thanks for writing back. I’m glad you’re going to go for the detox Beverly, I think it can only help, and it might just help a lot.
I’m having a bit of hard time today. I couldn’t sleep last night until about 4am, just fear-based adrenaline was rushing through me because of what I learned about my N and his P, and realizing that my boss is an N too, but in a more veiled way. So when I got up today, I did yoga, and lots of it. I put myself in a great mood, felt so strong, and was just glowing from the inside out. But of course, I ran into my N. He was looking beautiful. So handsome, so well put together, he reminded me so much of the illusion of a man that I fell for. Somehow over the weekend he managed to go from acting like a raving lunatic, climbing the walls desperately searching for NS, to this stunning man I saw this morning. He was wearing the cologne he wore when I fell in love with him. I was stopped dead in my tracks. It was all I could do to keep from melting. I lost that good mood I was in, partly, and have been fighting to get it back by reminding myself that what I love is just a fantasy, a perfectly orchestrated illusion. Reality with him could never live up to it, in fact it shattered me when I tried being with him.
So it’s just an internal struggle in me between wanting the fantasy and accepting the reality.
It’s hard to see him bounce back though, because it means he found a new supply of NS, most likely by running to his friendly P, who has no doubt done all she can to drive a wedge between him and me forever. Last night that is all I wanted, to be safe from his bad behavior, and I knew that if he was getting his NS from someone else, I would no longer be a target.
Why is it that I don’t want that after encountering the same man this morning? I just want the good in him to rise to the surface, and see through that P’s act, and Iwant him to become aware of his own NPD, so that he can become a better man. Why is it that I’m still invested like this? I feel like he’s not all bad, and that I want the good in him to prevail. I know better in my head, but the sight of him in all of his refined, illusory glory really got to my emotions. It was the man I fell in love with. He’s back for the first time in about 6 months. For the last 6 months he’s been a total embarassing wreck, desperately searching out attention, i.e. since I dumped him and he had no back-up NS available.
Oh well, I’ve got to believe that this is somehow for the best, in the long run – because the short term sucks. Thank you for reading and caring, I appreciate it so much. I do believe that what they do will harm them the most, in the end. But it is hell clearing out the garbage that I allowed them to bring into my life. It has a way of sticking to you like glue. And everything they ever did that was bad somehow gets pinned on the victim (so I get what you’re saying about being characterized as the ’stalker’). It’s insane how the longer you’re around them, the more their diseases are identified in you. I don’t get how they do that!
Anyway, one thing I do get is that the only way to prevail is to remain absolutely squeaky clean, and 100% committed to clearing sh*t out of your life and building only on good, healthy things. These kind of people only see the world only in terms of games, they don’t understand truth and decency and ethics. I feel like as long as I have truth, courage, wisdom and a clean heart on my side, they can’t win in the long run. And if I don’t give their garbage a harbor in my life, it will have to float right back to them, eventually.
But I tell you, it hurts to see the illusion of the good man, b/c that illusion represents all I ever wanted in a man. Ugh.
Hope you’re all doing okay today.
STN
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Monday, 10 March 2008 @ 7:48am
Beverly says:
STN. I think I have been down that route too. Knowing what a cruel manipulator he was, but also grieving for the loss of company. It is painful to think, that I will never have the opportunity to have him back, because he destroyed all possibilities of reconciliation and he crossed my red line. I think having a good clearing session in one’s life and bringing only healthy things is good advice. Some of us are working towards making the experience a turning point, lessons learnt, but of course the old painful feelings still arise.
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Monday, 10 March 2008 @ 11:31am
STN says:
Hi Beverly,
Thanks. I hit a bit of rough spot these last couple of days, and talking with you is helping. And I’m remembering what I learned and somehow forgot over the last few days. The best defense against these types is to be strong, and emotionally self-sufficient, because they turn any weakness in us into a strength for them. They use our weaknesses against us. So if I find myself longing for the fantasy man again, I’m going to be tough as hell on myself and remember that that’s all he is, a fantasy. The real man was a nightmare, like you said, he crossed the red line. I let mine cross it about 1000 times too many.
Anyway, I wish I could help you more with your situation. I did have a thought that might bring you something good. I know that lauging can dispel my bad feelings, so sometimes I rent my favorite comedies and watch them back to back. I like stupid stuff, like Austin Powers and the old Pink Panthers, and I make myself laugh at every lame joke, until I end up cracking myself up. It’s great, and it brings some much needed light into dark times. Maybe a movie marathon of your favorite comedies could help you too. It’s just a thought, but there it is for whatever it’s worth.
Hope you’re doing okay today.
STN
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Monday, 10 March 2008 @ 12:48pm
Beverly says:
Hi STN. As I am writing this, I have just been watching comedy! I am attempting to cut all the negativity out of my life. Im ok thanks. I had some nettle tea, oh its bitter! Put myself on an ultra healthy diet and building myself up. Ive decided to quit my job and I will be going sick after this week and taking time for myself, but Im going to try and stay occupied. Thanks for your support STN
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Monday, 10 March 2008 @ 5:54pm
STN says:
Hi Beverly,
You sound great, actually. While I’ve been healing, I’ve been fortunate in that I get to make my own schedule. So I’ve been able to rest when I need it, relax, read, learn, rebuild relationships and remake myself during the last year. Even after a full year, I can’t say I’ve gotten rid of all the crap in my life, but I have gotten rid of soo much of it. And it’s liberating…at least on the good days when I’m not freaking out about something. I hope your next year will be full of liberation and strengthening.
Adding a little honey to nettle tea might make it a bit better, and letting it steep for a long time helps with the bitterness. But you’re right about it, it’s not exactly delicious. Still, it’s super healthy, a tonic for all sorts of things… the Arabs believe nettles treat 75 illnesses, and if you ever meet a bedouin, they’ll be able to list all 75 of them for you:). People who saw me as I was last year, and how I am this year after all of this rebuilding I’ve been doing (including the drinking of nettles tea) keep commenting on how the light has returned to my eyes, my skin, etc., and they think I’m in love, because on good days I glow from the inside out. Ha. If they only knew it was about dumping the ‘love of my life’…. Still, learning to love yourself after betraying yourself completely is a big task, constructing healthy boundaries is too, and I think I’m doing better with it all the time. Progress seems cumulative, overall. It sounds like you’re on a similar track. I’m really impressed by your plan to quit the job and do the overhaul. Not working will give the space and time to do it right. I’m happy you have the chance to go for it.
I’m wishing you lots of good luck and energy for the road ahead. I think taking really good care of yourself and the people who truly love you is the most powerful, purifying, healing thing you can do.
xo, STN
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Monday, 10 March 2008 @ 7:09pm
OxDrover says:
Beverly, I think taking off “sick time” is a very good and healthy thing for you to do at this time in your life, I applaud you for doing that good thing for yourself.
I retired about 6 months after my husband was killed. I had “always” worked, long hours and stressful job because I thought that is just “what you do”–but I realized finally, that I had to take care of myself first, and that I actually wasn’t able to continue to do the things that I had been doing, much less doing them “well”—I realized that the “Type A” race I was running was totally unhealthy for me—and that the amount of decrease in my income wasn’t going to put me behind a shopping cart on the street.
I am fortunate that I had that choice, but I am also glad that I MADE THAT CHOICE. Why I hadn’t made it before I don’t know. LOL In any case, good for you!
It is odd to me that sometimes the very thing we need to do to help ourselves is OBVIOUS and right there “before our noses” and we don’t even see it, at least in my case it was. I am now trying to make myself MORE AWARE of the things I need to do for myself, as well as the things I do do that are not healthy. Each day is a bit more progress in the right direction for me, and I think for you as well. God bless.
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Monday, 10 March 2008 @ 8:14pm
OxDrover says:
Free,Somewhere I have a list of “19 things to look for a lie” or something on that order, I read and reread each of them and they all made sense. One of the things was that if you asked someone a question and they “skirted around the issue” it was a deception.
When the Trojan Horse-P showed up with a new vehicle (he had tried to borrow money to buy one from me and I had told him “no, you don’t have the income to repay it.”) I asked him outright if my mother had loaned him the money to buy it. His answer was neither yes nor no, but “I have friends in Texas.”
I knew right then he was lying. My mother denied loaning him the money as well…but later she forgot and “let the cat out of the bag”—he was taking advantage of my elderly mother. He had also, unbeknown to me started to drug her, and her mental and physical condition rapidly decreased to where her words were slurred, and she was completely unstable on her feet. He used the “loan” for the truck to convince her that I was “after her money” and “trying to control” her. Which, as many elderly people trying to hold tightly to independence was frightening to her, he even threatned to withdraw from her and “leave her alone and undefended” and of course my DIL, who was having an affair with him reinforced this plan until my mother had put most of her assets into bank accounts with my DIL’s name on them, revoked my power of attorney, without telling me, and put considerable amounts of money into CDs in my P-son’s name. She even put all her important papers, including the “loan agreement” with theTH-P and her will (of which there was no copy filed at the court house) into a safety deposit box in my DIL’s name.
Yes, I was upset that he had conned her into “loaning” him the money for the vehicle, and there was no lien on the title, only the “loan agreement” which in effect, legally gave him the vehicle “free and clear”–especially after my DIL tore up the loan agreement.
Elderly people are especially succeptible to being conned, and my mother in particular. These people had no intention of anything but greed and malice. There is no doubt in my mind, after their attempt to kill my son C (DIL’s husband) and their taking the money out of the account, tearing up the “loan” agreement, and trying to run, that if my son had not discovered the affair, that they would have at some point arranged an “accident” for my mother, which would not have been difficult since she had frequently fallen and broken bones in the past, and they would have had a nice “grubstake” for a “new life.”
After he was arrested, along with my DIL, among the TH-Ps personal effects we found passport applications, and information from “Russian Bride” agencies, as well as the incriminating letters that my P-son had written him from prison instructing him how to “manage” my mother and me for best effect.
Looking back on the “first point I went wrong” with the situation was that after I discovered the first LIE, I sat down with him and DISCUSSED how “inappropriate” it was for him to take money from my mother, and “gave him another chance” —I WILL NEVER AGAIN OVER LOOK A LIE. ANY lie, the FIRST lie, the first deception.
Interesting too, was that he kept “excusing” himself that it wasn’t “really a lie”—he DID have “friends in Texas.” He just didn’t answer the question I asked. DECEPTION is a lie, either by omission or co-mission—A LIE IS A LIE, no matter if it is 99% truth or 1% truth, or 0% truth, it is a LIE, people who lie are not all Ps, but ALL Ps lie.
I WILL NEVER AGAIN TRUST ANYONE WHO LIES. I will NEVER AGAIN “forgive” a lie and let that person back into my circle of trust. NO exceptions. I may still have to deal with that person in my life one way or another, but I will never take my eyes off them, never trust them. Never give that person the opportunity to stab me.
I will never again overlook any sign of malice or rage in someone.
Trust is something EARNED. I will never again so easily trust someone to be what they say they are. Betrayal of that trust or lies will forever put someone out of a circle of trust—no matter who they are. Or what their relationship to me is.
In the 40 years I knew him, and the 20 years my husband and I were married, he never lied to me or deceived me, and I never lied to him or deceived him. We had lots of disagreements over the years, but we NEVER LIED. You can have differences of opiinon without having a difference of principles. If a person violates someone else’s rights or lies to them, I can BELIEVE they will LIE TO ME when the time is convenient for them to do so. Therefore, if a man will cheat on his wife while still living with and married to her, he will cheat on me. If a person steals from others, he will steal from me. If he disrespects others and treats them poorly, but treats me well, He will eventually come to treat me poorly as well.
The best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. People do change for the better, people do go to prison and reform, and people are addicts and go into recovery, but the vast majority of addicts and ex-convicts do NOT reform or go into recovery.
EVen the ex-convicts that do not return to prison do not necessarily live “successful” lives after returning to society, they just don’t want to go back to prison again, so they alter their behavior somewhat but that doesn’t mean they start singing in the church choir.
My DIL is out of jail now and on probation. She is scared to death of going to prison after 7 months in a jail facility, yet she is still trying her manipulations etc. JUST ON THE EDGE of the legal line, but she is still crossing the MORAL LINE, and even trying to get possession of the Trojan Horse’s vehicle which is still parked at my mother’s house, even though she KNOWS she is the one who tore up the loan agreement, and even though she KNOWS morally the vehicle does not “belong” to him or to her. Fortunately, my mother was able to file a lien against the vehicle for “storage” and will eventually get the title to it so she can sell it and recover some of her funds.
My DIL’s stint in jail did not “reform” her or make her see the “error” of her ways—it is still in her mind “someone else’s fault” and she is still trying to gain by deception. In a way it is good that she is doing this, because it is helping my son C heal from this P-encounter, from the 8 years he was married to her, and to SEE that there is nothing he could have done to have prevented all this, that it is NOT his “fault.”
He had committed to the marriage “for better or worse” and would have hung in there even though he was very unhappy and she had emotionally and financially abused him the entire time they were married. But her behavior, her lack of any demonstrated “repentence” (though she wrote such a beautiful letter of repentence to the church) her continued LIES and manipulations, have “freed” him from any obligation to the marriage or the relationship. So now he can heal.
Setting boundaries that are logical and reasonable is important in our healing process and I have consciously set my boundaries, and there will not be a “second chance” to those that cross that red line. Every time I have given someone a “second” chance for lies and/or malice, it has blown up in my face like a land mine. Never again!
The only lie I will ever forget is the one when I ask you if these “pants make my butt look big?” Then you BETTER lie! LOL
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Tuesday, 11 March 2008 @ 10:24am
gillian says:
Beverly,
I am so sorry to hear your news and am sending prayers and good thoughts your way.
STN,
As I read some of your posts I kept saying, “Oh my, oh my,” because I can totally relate to what you are going through. It is so crazy-making to remember so vividly the “reality” of the man we were in love with, to mourn the loss, to wish somehow we could have that back, to wonder if he’s thinking about us, how can we get through to him; who is he with (we know who he is with), what is he doing–is he holding her, loving her, kissing her, caressing her–and it is such torment because we can’t help but envy the way we know the new woman is feeling. It’s the highest high, the most sublime state, to feel so cherished, so special, so adored.
We want that back.
But we can’t have that back. We never really had it to begin with. And yet, coming to that realization can only do so much to ease the pain. Having been thoroughly duped for so long–in my case 18 years–I think it’s impossible to immediately let go of all we’ve been brainwashed to believe. It takes time for reality to seep in, for the translucent real image of evil to be superimposed and to ultimately replace the opaque false image of goodness.
It is such a, I don’t know if schizophrenic would be the right word, but for lack of a better one I’ll say a schizophrenic experience.
For me, still living in the same smallish town I’ve lived for all those years, I cannot escape the memories. Practically everywhere I go I’m faced with having to superimpose an ugly reality over a beautiful dream.
This was a favorite restaurant. That was our favorite booth. This was the mountain we’d hike up every summer. That’s the hospital where he and I met, and where our daughter was born. I can still see him lying on his belly, gazing at our baby in her isolette. I can see his striped brown shirt, his corduroy pants, his chin on his hands, the look of amazement on his face.
There’s the high school cafeteria where we attended many an awards banquet. There’s the middle school field where the cross-country team ran. There’s the movie theatre, the coffee house, the boat dock, the post office, the front yard, the back yard, the living room, the kitchen, the bedroom. All these places we inhabited together; and all of it no more than a dream.
I want that back, oh, how I want that back. I go there in my mind. I think of him happy in his new life, and me left behind, mourning my loss, and I ache.
Many say: Good riddance to him, and now what are you doing for yourself? I know they mean well but they just don’t get it. They can’t. Why, they can barely believe he’s guilty of the terrible things he’s done.
“Really?” they say. “Do you think he wants to kill you? Really? You think he did all that? Really? I think he wants to come home.” They won’t believe, they can’t believe, a story that sounds so utterly preposterous. It makes more sense to believe the lies coming out of the S’s mouth. That stuff is believable. That’s in their realm of experience, not the astounding things I’m telling them.
Why at times I can barely believe it myself. The horrors of what he’s done hit me anew and I think, that’s impossible! I never saw him do that, I only know it because of the evidence, his admissions, my imagination, but I never saw it.
It was one gigantic magic trick, which my mind hasn’t quite grasped.
He really sawed the woman in half. He made the Statue of Liberty disappear. Didn’t he? Well, didn’t he? I saw it. I know I saw it. Loads of other people did too. Could we all have been wrong?
Well yes we could have. As hard as it is to believe, we most certainly could have, we most certainly were.
My God, I made enormous decisions based on this Fraud, decisions that profoundly impacted my children when all along I thought I was acting in their best interests.
After 17 years, I divorced my first husband because he was abusive to our children. I soon got involved with my S, we married, he became Dad to my kids. They loved him, trusted him, turned to him, laughed with him, talked to him, leaned on him.
The duplicity is staggering and it makes me so angry to know that my children, who once felt safe and secure in this man’s “love,” are feeling bereft too, wanting to tell him off, but they’ll never get the chance because he–the S–doesn’t care.
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Tuesday, 11 March 2008 @ 1:30pm
STN says:
Hi Gillian,
Thanks for writing. It’s true, the fantasy was the best love I’ve ever experienced in my life, I’m sorry to say. I mean, it was the highest high while it lasted. I thank heaven that the sociopathic woman I mentioned intervened and ’stole’ the N away from me. At the time I felt utterly betrayed by them both, and of course, I was, but I now know that I’m the lucky one. I only invested about a year in the relationship itself, and started pulling out after that. I can’t imagine 18 years, with children involved. I mourn the loss of 12 months of the relationship, the desolated aftermath, and the 12 months of recovery I’ve been going through, but I am so glad for the gains, the insight it all gave me.
And yet I feel so wounded still, sometimes. It does take a long time to reconcile the parts into an integrated whole, to deconstruct the fantasies, see them as the lies they were, and to learn to focus only on what I can control about the situation. It is so hard, I fight a battle inside myself almost every minute of every day, and even when I sleep I know I’m fighting because of the kinds of dreams I have.
I don’t know your story, but really, having 18 years of lies, an entire life built upon lies, I cannot imagine the depth of the horrors that that must bring. I’m so sorry. How could he make it last with you as long as he did, if there wasn’t something more to it than the usual using, abusing and leaving without a care pattern? It boggles my mind.
BTW, something I read tonight really helped me feel better. If you feel like it, look up anmol mehta’s yoga/kundalini page on the net and read his take on the meaning of relationships. I had spent the entire day today losing my fight against the blues, but once I read that, I felt better immediately. Even if you’re not into yoga and that sort of thing, what he wrote about relationships hits home, and it at least helped me see the real value in all the pain I’ve gone through.
Okay, as you can see, I write a lot sometimes, so I’m stopping myself. But thank you for writing and understanding. It feels so good to be understood and validated, after so many people have been trying for so long to get me to pretend that nothing is wrong, or worse, thinking that I’m the one making problems. What an unspeakably horrible nightmare it’s been!! Best thing is that on good days I know the value and strength of my own opinion and intuition now. I didn’t used to before I had my encounters with the N and is S/P. But yes, in sum, it does hurt like hell to lose the fantasy, because the fantasy was designed just for us, they made it according to our idea of perfection and they played upon our most vulnerable needs. Can I ask you, do you think yours really adored your daughter as he stared at her with wonder and amazement after she was born? Can they love their own children?
Good night, STN
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Tuesday, 11 March 2008 @ 3:19pm
OxDrover says:
STN, your question about “can they love their own children?” I do not think so, I don’t think that they are capable of “love” in the sense that they feel anything but OWNERSHIP of another person. As Dr. Robert Hare says, if you ask a psychopath if she loves her children of course she will say “yes” but she doesn’t equate the fact that she doesn’t FEED them with not loving them.
I have seen people I knew were psychopaths do things that were APPARENTLY, on the surface, “unselfish” and very caring. However, if you look at the MOTIVE they do these things with (which will eventually become apparent) it is for some self aggrandisement or setting up a victim “for the kill.”
It is ALWAYS about THEM. If they were to loan you money, it is not to help you out, but to get you obligated to them in some way in which they can use you.
When you “fall in love” with someone our bodies secrete hormones to help with the “bonding” so that hopefully our children will have two parents to help raise them. This is nature’s way of providing two adults to look after the offspring. These hormones last for about three years, I have read, and then they fade away, but hopefully, in the meantime you have established a “relationship’ that transcends this flush of “first love” and a couple will stay together out of mutual respect, caring, and friendship, even though that first “flush of love” is long gone.
I’m not sure if the P gets those hormones when they are in a new conquest or not, possibly. But they hold out the “bait” to you of the “best relationship every” and your hopes get built up that you are going to spend the rest of your life in this ecstasy and then, at some point, you realize it is ALL A LIE—maybe 3 months or 30 years, it doesn’t matter, but you realize that your DREAM LOVE was all “smoke and mirrors” and that not only to they NOT love you, they scorn you, totally disrespect you, care not a flip for your feelings…..and you crash like an eagle with it’s wings torn off, spiraling to the ground where you lie bleeding and wounded wondering what the heck happened to you—what airliner hit you?
You didn’t see it coming, once you were soaring so high, gliding on the thermals, and the next thing you know you are plummeting downward at the speed of light. You look up and you see your mate, your wonderful vision of perfection, flying off into the sunset, not even noticing that you are bleeding.
They pretend to be whatever it is that you WANT them to be, just like a fisherman uses a lure that resembles the kind of food that the particular fish he is after likes…it sucks you in, but it isn’t real, but the HOOK is REAL.
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Tuesday, 11 March 2008 @ 6:44pm
righteous woman says:
OMG – OxDrover – that is a perfect analogy…that is exactly it. My S says he loves his children, but does not feed him. His son is an object. And I accept that…and my son – who will be 18 in 2-months, accepts that. Time will tell what effect his paternal bond had on his psyche…But, I had to make sure I raised a man fit for the world…not fit for his father.
I went through much turmoil with my son’s father with a belief that a boy needed a father. But his father wouldn’t even kiss him on the cheek when he was little. Shook hands with him like he was some guy from around the way when he decided to grace him with his presence.
STN I know what you have are good memories..shrouded with the realization it was all a work of art of a con. It is Easy for me to look back now and accept what my situation really was..It will become easier for you, also, with time. It is part of healing. Keep your head up.
RW
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Tuesday, 11 March 2008 @ 7:31pm
tryingtorecover says:
Gillian, “My God, I made enormous decisions based on this Fraud, decisions that profoundly impacted my children when all along I thought I was acting in their best interests.” I feel exactly the same way. What you said about the memories everywhere – I go through that too, but not very often lately. If I remember, your a couple of months behind me in time. Everyone has a different time frame but the last 3 months have made a huge difference for me. I felt like I hit bottom and wasn’t going to climb out, but I did. I feel like I’m taking small steps in the right direction. I haven’t talked to my ex since Dec. That last time is what started the downward spiral. Now that I haven’t communicated with him other than through TM and lawyers I feel so much better. I found out yesterday my divorce is final. I’m looking at this as an opportunity to become the person I truly am and want to be instead of the person I had become after so many years of abuse.
STN, I agree with OxDrover. I don’t think they can love their children either. Bad Dad looked at our son with wonder and “love” for as long as he looked just like him. When he started looking and acting more like me and my family, Bad Dad started losing interest. I get complements all the time about what a nice young man he is. Even the nun who lunch monitors told him to tell his mother she did a good job raising him. lol – You have to know the stories about this nun. Legend has it she makes kindergartners cry on a regular basis. Bad Dad will never know what he is missing with his son or does he care to. Though I’m sure he puts on a good show for the people in his life he’s now fooling. I’m sure they think he misses his son terribly.
OxDrover, your last 3 paragraphs – great description.
There are so many of us out there. I recently found out an acquaintance has a P ex husband. Her story is much worse than mine, but yet the same. One “minor” thing he does is short her $5 dollars in child support every month. He has done much much worse, including physical violence, but when I heard that – it’s just so typical of a S.
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Tuesday, 11 March 2008 @ 8:21pm
OxDrover says:
Shorts her $5! GREAT!!! I love it, SO LIKE A P!!!! At least that is one thing you can laugh about, but how pointless to do such crappy stuff, yet to them it is a VICTORY to just get by with ANYTHING crappy or tacky, or hateful.
EVen after the Trojan Horse P had done so many things to me, my house, and my animals (locking them up without food or water in the heat of the summer) when I wasn’t home, I think the WORST thing he did was to sit in the court room and SMIRK at me…like he had WON. He had “gotten by” with what he had done, and even though he was in jail, he still felt like he had WON!
I don’t know why I can’t get that PICTURE of him sitting in the court room in his orange jump suit and his jelly flip-flops, handcuffed to the criminall sitting next to him, and yet he SMIRKED—HE DID NOT CARE HE WAS IN JAIL…he still had “gotten away” with his petty crap.
I know it isn’t logical or rational that I should be so concerned or fixate on that darned SMIRK, but it was his final STAB at me was to sit there with the smirk.
Reminds me of one of those old stupid jokes, about the guy who’se house was invaded by a motorcycle gang. They robbed the house and terrorized him and his wife. They drew a circle on the floor with chalk and told him he had to stand in the circle or they would kill him. Then in front of him they raped his wife and tore the house apart.
When they left, his wife was crying and he was LAUGHING hysterically…his wife asked him why he was laughing that their home was ruined and she was raped, etc. and he answered “Well, while they weren’t looking, I stepped out side the circle.”
The holding back the $5 on child support is sort of the Ps way of “stepping outside the circle” and the smirk is also his way of “stepping outside the circle.” Just anything to “get even” with those of us who have given them N-injury. After all if we weren’t like we are, their lives would be wonderful, after what they have done for us, and for us to treat them like we do…..shame shame on us! LOL
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Tuesday, 11 March 2008 @ 9:21pm
gillian says:
STN,
I have a little free time right now and then I’m not going to have much time to spend at my computer for the next few days, so I wanted to quick write something back.
How did he do it for 18 years? I sit here shaking my head, I can hardly believe he did it myself. He was so damn convincing. Actually, if it had not been for a couple of wild flukes, he would have gotten away with leaving me for another woman the end of last May and I would never have known why. He was planning on leaving under false pretenses, making something up, some need to be alone, whatever.
A friend’s husband says he doesn’t understand how he got away with so much for 18 years. He said there must have been red flags. My daughter from my first husband says that this guy doesn’t really know my husband; my husband (her step-dad) had everyone fooled. The duplicity is unbelievable. He was such a great actor. Phone calls to me several times a day. Ending every conversation with, “I love you.” Sweet cards at birthday, anniversaries and Christmas. All our friends thought we had the best marriage. He was affectionate. He made me sushi. He said the right things.
But it was all a lie. I never really knew what he was thinking or doing. When we were apart I couldn’t wait to be together; when we were together he couldn’t wait for me to leave.
He lied to everyone, kept a different story and mask going for any number of people. I realize now he can work with a large group of people who interact every day and each one of them sees a different man. One can be the woman he’s having a long-term affair with, one can be a casual fling, one can be a co-worker who sincerely believes he is a faithful, loyal husband. To some men he is a Christian, to others he’s a player.
I don’t know how he did it. I don’t know how he does it. I recently asked him how he could be so sure none of the women from work he had sex with would not talk to each other. How could he be so confident?
He said he always thought he was too smart.
Evil is more like it.
As for his sense of wonder at the birth of our daughter, I don’t know. It sure seemed real at the time, but then again everything seemed real, and now I know he doesn’t care about her.
He knew the brakes were shot on my car since the end of last October and he said nothing. He knew my daughter often rode in that car too, out of the mountains.
I think all he ever cared about is his image. To pass for normal. Maybe part of him wanted to be normal. Maybe he thought having more children would help. I don’t know. He definitely wanted a daughter; he already had a son. I think for his ego. I’m not sure.
But I do think the only reason he wants to have anything to do with her now is to use her. He has fallen in love with a new woman (he dumped the “other woman” in December), who is 18 years younger than him, and her parents live nearby, and they are probably close to his age, and I know what he’s thinking. He wants to marry this woman and he’s thinking it’s not going to look real good if his 17-year-old daughter doesn’t want to have anything to do with him. I guess he’ll have a lot of ’splaining to do.
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Tuesday, 11 March 2008 @ 11:33pm
STN says:
Hi Everyone,
What Oxdrover describes is exactly my experience. I saw through it in time to fool him, but I nevertheless went through it, exactly like the hell you describe.
It’s the hook, they want you to be hooked so that you will do whatever they want. And then they despise you for being dependent. Ew.
With mine, basically I caught on to the pattern late last year, but knew I was still hooked and couldn’t just walk away. So I tricked him into thinking everything was fine with us, and I fed him HUGE doses of NS. I wanted his addiction to grow,while mine secretly got weaker. Anyway, I had him right where I wanted him, eventually. Basically, he let his guard down in ignorance/arrogance. He thought he’d always be able to get me back, as long as he just pushed the right buttons. So he didn’t have any back ups, no one else was around to supply his NS, and I knew it. And that’s when I slammed the door in his f-ing face and walked away for good. I left him high and dry on purpose. And he’s spent the last several months climbing the walls, and re-grouping.
That said, it broke my wretched heart to do it. I saw tears in his eyes as I left. Now I have no idea what they meant. I wonder if he just realized that he’d been had. Can’t tell. Part of me thinks he did love me, in small portions, as he was able. But maybe not. I can’t tell.
Anyway, Oxdrover, you are so dead on with your description of the trap they set for us, the hook being deliberately diguised and then dangled right before us, how they tailor the hook just for us and what we want. They feed on our dreams and vulnerabilities. Ew.
Revenge: it happens that my N was targeted by a S/P and she’s playing him like a fiddle – she plays him exactly the way he’s played every woman he ever used for NS, and he’s too arrogant to realize that she’s driving away all of his backup sources of NS in his life. His bill for years of narcissistic indulgence and maniplation has just arrived, and smacked him down at least a few notches. It’s a nasty little co-dependency there, and it’s precisely what each of them deserves. What goes around does come around, if the victims just get themselves up off the floor and away from the mess. At least that’s what I believe.
I’m just glad that I got to be the one who outsmarted him and his manipulations, at least I outsmarted him long enough to send him into an ocean of pain, an addict without his NS, it’s exactly what he’d do to me to get me to submit. Monster.
The idealist in me holds out hope that he’s got enough decency in him somewhere that the pain will get to him. But I’m hoping from a clear distance now… I have no more investment in the outcome of his personal struggle, I can’t afford to stay invested. No way. My goal is to get myself to a secure place in life where this can’t happen ever again, to me or anyone I love.
Anyway, thanks for writing.
Bye everyone,
STN
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Wednesday, 12 March 2008 @ 5:41am
jules says:
gillian . ; MINE WAS LIKE THAT TOO SO DIFFRENT AROUND OTHERS AND DIFFERENT SITUATIONS. AND THE NICE LOVE TALK AND BIRTHDAY CARDS A MATTER OF WEEKS BEFORE HE LEFT ME IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY HE TOOK ME TO A NICE EXPENSIVE RESTURAUNT AND PAID FOR THE WHOLE NIGHT HE BOUGHT ME A NEW DRESS TO WEAR, AND ON THE BIRTHDAY CARD HE WROTE ; HAPPY BIRTHDAY AND I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO SPENDING MANY MORE WITH YOU. THEN A BOUT THREE WEEKS AFTER ALL THAT HE LEFT ME. ALSO ON NEW YEARS WHICH WAS AT THE SAME TIME AT MIDNIGHT WE KISSSED AND TOLD EACH OTHER THAT WE LOVED EACH OTHER STARING INTO OUR EYES. SO YOU CAN IMAGINE MY DISBELIEFE WHEN HE SAID I AM LEAVING. ONCE WHEN I CAUGHT HIM OUT DOING SOME FLIRTING AT WORK AND ONE OF THE WOMAN TOLD ME I CONFRONTED HIM AND I SAID YOU KNOW WOMAN TALK TO EACH OTHR ABOUT THINGS THEY TELL THINGS SO DONT THINK WOMAN ARE STUPID AND WE DONT KNOW STUFF THATS GOING ON IT ALWAYS COMES OUT EVENTUALLY IF NOT SOONER. AND IT DIDNT MAKE HIM CHANGE HIS WAYS HE JUST KEPT DENYING HIS BEHAVIOUR WHENEVER I CAUGHT HIM OUT I WAS STUPID TO ACCEPT IT I SHOULD NOT HAVE I SHOULD HAVE ENDED IT THEN. ALSO WHEN WE FIRST STARTED TO SEE EACH OTHER WE WORKED TO GETHER AND I WAS HAVING A DAY OFF WORK BUT HE WAS WORKING, I CALLED HIM AT LUNCH AS USUAL, AND WHEN TALKING HE SEEMED TOTALLY DIFFERENT HE DIDNT SAY ANY OF THE ROMANTIC STUFF HE USUALLY DID OR USE MY LITTLE NICK NAMES HE USUALLY DID OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT IN FACT HIS WHOLE TONE WAS DIFFERENT. AFTER THAT DAY I LATER FOUND OUT HE WAS WITH ONE OF THE GIRLS AT WORK WHO WAS ON HER LUNCH BREAK AND SHE SAID HE FOLLOWED HER AROUND THE WHOLE LUNCH BREAK AND HE EVEN GOT A PHONE CALL AND STILL SAT WITH HER WHILE TALKING AND DIDNT MOVE AWAY LIKE YOU WOULD IF YOU GOT A PHONE CALL. WELL THAT WAS MY PHONE CALL AND I CONFRONTED HIM ABOUT IT AND HE SAID IT WAS NOT TRUE AND DIDNT FOLLOW HER AORUND THAT DAY AT ALL. AFTER THAT I TOLD HIM SHE TOLD ME HE WAS VERY DIFFERENT TOWARD THAT GIRL IN FACT HE DIDNT LIKE HER ANYMORE AFTER THAT. THIS WAS IN THE BEGINING WHEN I WAS JUST GETTING TO KNOW HIM I COULDNT BELIEVE THE DIFFERENCE IN HIM ON THE PHONE AND HOW BLATANT TO SIT THERE WITH HER WHILE TALKING TO ME. THIS WAS A BIG BAD SIGN I SHOULD HAVE RUN AWAY THEN. ALSO THE GIRL I AM TALKING ABOUT HERE I GOT TO KNOW HER WELL THRU WORK AND SHE SUFFERED FROM AN EATING DISORDER. MAYBE HE COULD SENSE HER FRAGILITY, SHE TOLD ME SHE GOT A BAD VIB E FROM HIM SHE FOUND HIM CREEPY AND SAID HE WAS UGLY ALSO SHE HAD A BOYFRIEND AND DIDNT LIKE THE WAY MY EX STILL FLIRTED AND ANNOYED HER IT WAS INA PROPRIATE. I SHOULD HAVE LISTEND TO HER WHY DID I CHOOSE TO IGNORE ALL OF THIS I STILL WONDER I AM SMART, WHAT WAS I THINKING I MUST HAVE BEEN VERY LONELY . HIS BEHAVIOUR WHEN I THINK BACK NOW SEEMS ALMOST IN HUMAN LIKE AN ALIEN OR SOMETHING . HE WAS A GOOD ACTOR HE TOLD ME HIM SELF HE LOVED ACTING AND SHOULD HAVE BEEN A PROFESSIONAL. IT WAS OK FOR HIM TO OPENLY FLIRT BEHIND MY BACK AND GOD KNOWS WHAT ELSE BUT I FI SO MUCH A S WAS NICE TO A WAITER HE WOULD GET JELOUS AND SULK. ALSO I DONT KNOW WHY THEY DONT WORRY ABOUT GETTING CAUGH OUT ITS AS IF IT DOESNT WORRY THEM. BUT ONCE WE HAD A DISAGREEMENT AND HE MADE ME ANGRY AND I THINK HE THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO LEAVE HIM HE TOLD ME HE FELT SICK THAT I WAS UPSET AND MIGHT LEAVE HIM AND OTHER TIMES HE CRIED AND BEGGED ME NOT TO LEAVE SAYING I CANT LOSE YOU. HE WAS REALLY EMOTIONALLY DISTRAUGHT, I THINK THEY HAVE TO LEAVE ON THEI R TERMS AND THEY DONT LIKE TO BE THE ONES GETTING DUMPED. DOES ANY ONES ELSE AGREE I WOULD L0VE YOUR FEED BACK HERE. THANKS A GAIN.
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Wednesday, 12 March 2008 @ 6:21am
jules says:
OX DOVER; WHAT IS N INJURY? SORRY FOR NOT KNOWING BUT I HAVENT HEARD OF IT BEFORE. CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME. THANKS
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Wednesday, 12 March 2008 @ 6:46am
Dodged_A_Bullet says:
Jules, if you wouldn’t use ALL CAPS, your posts would be easier to read…:) thanks!
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Wednesday, 12 March 2008 @ 8:32am
tryingtorecover says:
Ox Drover, I understand the smirk thing. It’s sometimes the littlest things that get me the most. Things that nobody else would even notice, but I know what they mean and he knows what they mean. Secret torment. People can’t understand unless they have experienced it. I didn’t understand what was happening all those years until I got slapped in the face with a betrayal I couldn’t explain away or deny. Although I think if he would have gotten dumped by the gf or cold feet before I grasped what had happened and he wanted to stay, I would have ended up some how saying I was sorry to him for making him so unhappy and driving him away. Thank God he left. I truly was so messed up and brainwashed. Healing is a long painful process, but so worth it in the end. (I’m not at the end yet so that’s at least what I keep telling myself. LOL)
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Wednesday, 12 March 2008 @ 10:30am
Beverly says:
Hi all. Just catching up reading all your news. The details of our encounters may be different, but we have all been through a similar nightmare and it doesnt stop even when they have gone, the aftermath just reverberates. My phone he used to phone his women (which I dont use any more, but I fire it up periodically) rang the other day, to message me from the telephone company for an upgrade. It wasnt my telephone company, probably one for his spare phone numbers. Eerie.
I dont know if any of you believe in signs from the universe. But one of the signs I had, and I had a few was standing in the shopping queue and there was a magazine with a huge headline advertising a forthcoming programme. It said ‘XXXX’s (his name) Shocking Secret’!
Thank you for your message Gillian, the more prayers the better! Dear Free thank you for your hug – I felt it! I notice when people have not been here for a while and think about them, hope they are doing well. I am ok at the moment, get days when my energy is low and not feeling well. Just had confirmation of the diagnosis and got to see the surgeon next week to discuss treatment. I was telling my friend that the people on here are just the bravest and best people ever.
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Wednesday, 12 March 2008 @ 11:20am
OxDrover says:
Jules N-Injury is Narcissistic Injury, it is a “slap” at their arrogance, it is a put-down, a revolt of some sort that they perceive as “hurting” them.
If they lose control over us it is an “injury” to them. They become angry, rage filled, etc. and that is what motivates them to “seek revenge” for the “terrible thing” that WE did to THEM.
My X-BF who was a P was N-inured by the womanhe was involved with before me (during the time he was pursuing me he was still tring to get her back)
She had asked him, after an 8 year affair while he was married, if he would ever leave his wife and marry her, and he told her no, that if she wanted a full time man to go get one.
Well, she did. In the meantime, his wife had found out about his MANY on-going long time affairs with his “harem” and kicked his butt out.
So he went back tothat GF and said’ “Darliing, I’m ready for a full time relationship now” and she said “Too late sucker, you told me to find someone and I have” He was so Narcissisticly “injured” that he literally burned down her house as he saiid to her “I will destroy your life” and he did.
After I put 2 and 2 together and realized he was a fake, and I kicked him to the curb, I had given him N-injury, cut off his Narcissistic Supply (NS) and he was furious zat me. I figured he would do something like trying to burn my house too, and I literally threatened him that if my house burned, even if it was struck by lightening and I saw the lightening strike I would still BLAME him and he had enough fear of my sons’ retrobution (he knows that they are protective of me) that he decided to use alittle more subtle approach to his revenge at me, and he succeeded in psychological revenge, but what he didn’t know was, that ultimately it turned out to my benefit.
He called me the night of the anniverswary of the last time I saw him, in the middle of the night to gloat about it…not being awake, I answered the phone before I looked atthe caller ID and was so groggy I listened for probably 30 seconds before I realized what he was doing. Then I hung up.
But, like the smirker, he had to GET IN HIS DIG. For several months after I kicked him to the curb, I grieved for the “fantasy” relationship—I felt old,fat, ugly, undesirable, etc. which of course made me very vulnerable to his “hook” and “bait”—but it was because my husband had just tragicly died, and I was still grieving for him, for my lost love and companion etc. and I wanted to think I could have that again.
Now I realize that I am 60 yrs old, and I do have wrinkles, and I don’t have the figure I had when I was 18, but I am a much better person than I was when I was “beautiful on the outside” I am beautiful on the INSIDE and that is much more important. I am OK by myself, and if I ever stumble upon a man I can love that will really love me back, he will NOT be afantasy man. I will NOT ignore the red flags because I am NO LONGER vulnerable and needy.
All the red flags were there, I saw them and still I fell for him, but like the fish that is starving, I would have grabbed at anything that even resembled FOOD for my starving soul.
NO MORE—I am feeding myself. I am taking care of myself, I am growing, learning, and becoming stronger each day.
I am listening to myself, about my o wn needs, wants and desires, and I am taking care of them. There is no one on earth who can do that for us, we have to do it for ourselves. No other person can be our “lives” because people die, people leave, and we must stand on our own. It is wonderful when you can share a relationship with another human being, your parent, your child, your spouse, but in the end, we are here ALONE inside our heads.
I loved my husband passionately he was my best friiend. Not perfect but wonderful. I miss that. I would love to ohave that kind of relationship again. But I will thrive without it. The memories of the fun we had, will always be there. But I don’t just have tohave some “warm body” to be complete. ONE is a WHOLE NUMBER. Not just half of 2.
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Wednesday, 12 March 2008 @ 1:58pm
STN says:
Oxdrover,
I have to say, you and I reached exactly the same conclusions independently. Our experiences really drove home the same lessons in each of us.
I think relationships are a mirror, they let us see ourselves, who we really are, what makes us tick. I was so lonely and had sooo much trust in the world and people in general before my N. Now I learned the hard way that I have to have boundaries, to be emotionally self-sufficient, that I have to deliberately align myself with things and people and situaions that are good for me, otherwise the bad stuff will have a chance to gain power in my life. I really needed to take responsibility for the quality and purpose of my life, this was my big lesson (or at least one of them).
Another big help was to realize that the Ns and the S/Ps own the evil they’ve committed, not me. Whenever I have that black empty feeling inside, the feeling that only the victim of one of these monsters can know, I make myself send their evil back to them. I simply refuse to own it, tell myself it belongs to them, and that’s that.
And as soon as I really do that, with my heart and head, I feel a lot better. Just focusing on strengthening my own weaknesses and building a better life for myself is my priority. He will have to pay his own dues. But I do fear his retribution. The good thing is that he has an image to protect here and he knows it. I wonder how far his illness will take him tho. It’s disturbing to the core.
Jules, I agree, they fear being dumped more than anything. It’s all about their ego. That’s it, so it seems.
Beverly, I do believe that the universe shows us things that we need to know, especially when we have our eyes open for it. Hope you’re doing all right, hold on tight and do everything you can to release the poison from your system that this nightmare brought to you. I can see how much my health declined during the abuse. It’s not a mystery why. This is how the body reacts to corrosive emotional forces. The more light you bring into your life, the more healing I believe you’ll do. Maybe I sound like a nut, but that’s what I believe.
xoxo, STN
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Wednesday, 12 March 2008 @ 6:34pm
jules says:
thanks to you all for your input i agree with it all and feel you all too. i believe in signs too and and i had a few this week they were funny but pretty easy to see actually relating directly to what is happening in my life right now. so i am being positive about it all and i will see what happens. havnt heard from the s path hes got a new lover so i wont be hearing from him and i wont be contacting him either. i just hope the new girl is switching on her radar to what is happening for her sake i bet hes wondering why i havent called or contacted him i know hed be dying to gloat at me, well that is bad luck isnt it its funny how when they find a new person they act like they dont need any of the old ones but i bet inside he is itching to know what we a re all doing now. his curiosity will be up. love to you all. free; i looked up the link you sent it was a good read and explained it to me so thanks. and i think we are taught not to judge someone and i think this is wrong i think we need to read people better and not be afraid of calling a spade a spade in life espec if it saves us from being hurt. my mother had a saying she said if it looks like a pig and it acts like a pig its a pig, mine was a pig for sure.
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Thursday, 13 March 2008 @ 8:36am
OxDrover says:
Jules, I think that “judging someone” is trying to “mind read” and the Bible tells us “Judge not lest you be judged” and that by the “same measure ye meet out, you will be measured” which essentially is that the rules you apply to others will also be applied to you.
However, even the Bible tells us to be “wise” and to “know a tree by its fruit.” We can never truly know what is in a persons mind, BUT that said, we can sure SEE how they behave. We can “guess” at motive and intentions by observing BEHAVIOR, and the “best indicator of future behavior is past behavior.”
Most Ns and Ps are not so consistent over a long period of time that they do not “drop rotten apples” (in other words, RED FLAGS), it is that we chose to not examine these “rotten apples” and don’t see that the rotten “crop” gets worse and worse, until that is all it is. We keep hoping that there is something we can do to “improve the crop” all the while we are standing knee deep in “rotten apples.”
We stay in DENIAL because the “taste” of that one or two wonderful apples we ate off that “tree” was so good, and we keep hoping that we will get more.
In training animals by giving them rewards, INTERMITTENT reward is much more effective than continual rewards.
If a rat gets a grain of corn EV ERY time he pushes a lever and you stop giving him corn, he will pound on the lever for a little while but then he will give up. If you INTERMITTENTLY give him a grain of corn, he will NEVER STOP POUNDING on the lever, because he is SURE that the next time he will get one. The slot machine which gives intermittent “rewards” to people putting money into it works on the same principle and that is why it is so successful and if you walk into a casino and see hundreds of people sitting there “hoping to get lucky” and thinking that the VERY NEXT PULL will reward them.
The Ns and Ps giving us “intermittent” rewards in the form of a sweet tasting apple once in a while, but mostly giving us rotten to the core fruit, keeps us hoping that the very next apple will not be rotten and keeps us in denial.
It is only when we overcome our instincts to fall for the intermittent reward, just like the rat pushing the lever, and to use our LOGIC and INTELLIGENCE that we can overcome the Ns and Ps.
Believe me I have callouses on both hands from pounding on the “lever” hoping that my Ps will give me an apple that isn’t rotten. NO MORE.
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Thursday, 13 March 2008 @ 11:22am
Beverly says:
Hi OxDrover. I am five years younger than you and you are so right when you say that self love and beauty from the inside are the most important, together with wisdom and truth. I have to say that I related to your comments about the rotten apples. Very very good point about the intermittent reward and pain strategy they use – maximum long term effect for minimal effort – and the response carries on after they have gone – clever huh! IT IS an illusion, a very real, technicolour, all singing and dancing ILLUSION!!
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Thursday, 13 March 2008 @ 2:20pm
STN says:
Oxdrover, I have to say again that that is EXACTLY how I see things too. And the nastiest part is that they know exactly what they’re doing. They lure us in with the good apples, and only when we give them what they want do they throw a morsel or two at us, just to keep us addicted to our malignant hopes. That is exactly it. I’m amazed how much we see eye to eye on this.
As with the judgine versus being smart, I think there’s a difference. When I saw someone is a monster, I’m judging him, condeming him. That’s prob. not the most elevated thing I could do. If I said that his actions are monstrous and that I need to protect myself (without descending into hatred or utter depression), then I’m just using my head. I think that’s the difference, and you are right, we are here to use our heads in life, to guide ourselves to good situations by figuring out what people’s motives are. Motive tells it all, because an N or a s-p can do things that an angel could do, but the *reason* they do it would be so utterly different. Motive. That’s really it.
xoxo, STN
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Thursday, 13 March 2008 @ 4:13pm
OxDrover says:
The “funny” (odd and laughable) is that I am so logical, so smart, and YET I let my emotional malignant hope keep me in denial for sooooo long….or if I got out, to whip me right back into it.
a combination of being “programmed” as a child that “forgiveness” meant “pretending it didn’t happen” and that if you didn’t do that THAT WAY that you would burn in hell forever.
Here I am 60 yrs old and only having learned that the Bible does not say that, and that forgiveness is not for THEM it is for you, and it does NOT mean that you have to turst them again, only that you ROOT OUT THE BITTERNESS IN YOUR OWN HEART (which is toxic to YOU not them) but it does not mean that you “pretend that none of their bad behavior happened.”
Changing the entire way you think and relate to people, learning how to set reasonable boundaries when you have been trained to let people walk on you, let people crap on you and that no matter what if they give you a “fake apology” even though your gut knows it is fake, you have to “pretend it didn’t happen” is so difficult.
Each day is another day stronger and on the road to recovery, but it is hard to recover when you are lying wounded on the ground, suckiing your thumb, wondering what the heck the license number of the train that ran over your life was. You didn’t see it coming because like a horse in harness, you had the blinders on.
Once you take off those blinders and start to SEE, really see, the evil that lurks in the minds of people without consciences, you start to get strong, to learn that you don’t HAVE to be a victim, that it is OK if not everyone in the world like you, and that as long as you stay within your own NEW moral construct you can, the world will not end if you stand up for yourself.
I realize that there are people in the world who will not even admit that there are “evil” people in the world. I have a friend like that and she “excuses” everything (she was by the way, married to an abuser) and after 11 years of being single, she just married another one—one that is not even a good faker in my mind…he “put the hit on” me before he moved over to her, but I wasn’t falling for his line, so after a few weeks of trying, he moved on down the line. I’m sorry to see her marry this man, I didn’t go to the wedding because I couldn’t make myself even appear to be joyful at their ceremony, because I knew what was in store for her. But, I KEPT MY MOUTH SHUT, because she did NOT want to hear the truth either from me or her best friend (who also saw the truth in this man–or lack of it as the case may be).
Learning to NOT give unsolicited advise is another thing I am having to learn to do. I cannot save others who do not want to listen. So zip it!
If people want my opinion I give it, but not to those who do not want it. And, I do not play the “games” (as in Eric Berne’s book Games People Play) of “oh, ain’t it awful” either.
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Thursday, 13 March 2008 @ 7:33pm
OxDrover says:
I just had to share a call I received from my son C, whose X-wife (the divorce IS final!) tried to kill him when he discovered the affair she was having with a DIAGNOSED P.
Like many of us, he was in the FOG and refused to “see” what was obvious in her character or in her behavior. He was absolutely committed to the marriage, and even after finding out about the affair, he offered to “work it out.”
It ended up that both her and her P-BF went to jail when my son managed to get through to 911 before her BF broke down the door (gun in hand)…she is out on probation now with a no contact order, and the BF is still in prison.
My son has had a difficult time getting his head around all this, even though he knows that his P-brother, who is in prison, had sent this “Trojan horse-P” ex-convict friend of his to infiltrate our family by renting a house from me. I know he has been doing well, and yet that he was hurting so deeply too. Wanting closure (don’t we all) wanting to know, from her own lips what her motivation was (all she did is lie–surprise!).
I have given him Robert Hare’s book, Without Conscience, and also sent him the URL for this group as well, and he has lurked here I know, and read some of the articles etc. I’m not sure if he has read my postings or this blog but he may have. In any case, today we really talked about his feelings and his relationship with her. He is on the road to healing, taking good forward strides toward closure with all this mess. It came to a “head” in early August when they were arrested, though the entire “episode” which included his wife stealing money from my mom and her BF establishing himself as my elderly mom’s live-in caregiver—which had been going on for 7 months prior to that arrest, but my son in these few months is so much further along in the healing process than I ever even hoped that he would be. I personally know how long it can take to accept that they will withhold closure, almost like a “parting shot” at you—
But I just wanted to share some happy news with this group! And to thank everyone here. I know that this group has not only helped me, and others, but my son as well and I am so proud of him, so relieved that the worst of his pain appears to be receding like the tides and he is on his way to a newer and better life.
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Wednesday, 19 March 2008 @ 6:52pm
findingmyselfagain says:
OxDrover: first to say, I always enjoy your posts, you have such a great way of explaining things. Thank you.
So happy for your son – what a grand accomplishment – for him to see himself healing. For you, what a relief to know he is going to be okay. My son is 22 and in the Navy – I have to worry from afar ~ so I know how your kids, no matter how old are always your kids and you celebrate their every success.
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Wednesday, 19 March 2008 @ 10:09pm
OxDrover says:
Thank you findingmyselfagain,
Glad you enjoy my posts. and Yes, I am really pleased that my son is seeing his way to healing. I know after almost to the day 8 years of being married to her, and “sticking with i t” even though he was very unhappy for most of those 8 years, though he kept his cards about that very close to his chest…that he is seeing that it isn’t anything that he did, but that she was using him from the get-go as a meal ticket.
I didn’t realize until after their separation (when she went to jail for attempting to kill him) that apparently she had tried to physically fight with him for years. He would not do this and would just leave until she calmed down, but their life was chaos and crazy and unhappy. But, he was committed to the marriage “for better or worse” no matter what.
I think now he has learned a great deal about Ns and Ps, I gave him Robert Hare’s book “Without Conscience” and other things with which to gain more knowledge. I’m not really sure whether his X would be diagnosticly classified as Borderline Personality Disorder of full blown Psychopath, but the bottom line is that she is PERSONALITY DISORDERED. He is accepting now that he will never know all her motives, except that she was USING him and LYING, stole from my mother, had sex with him and pretended that she was trying to “patch things” up after he discovered the affair she was having, but it was’nt becasue she was trying to patch things up with her husband, but to “throw him off the track” for a few more days while she got the money into her hands. Essentially she prostituted herself for money by having sex with her husband when she didn’t want to.
It has been difficult for him to accept these things, and realize that she was lying to him by making love to him.
Since her arrest, he has moved about 350 miles away, so I too am “worrying” from afar, but in many ways we are closer now than when they lived next door to us. We talk on the phone regularly, he is living with a male friend of his (so he isn’t alone) has a new job that he absolutely loves and gets up each morning with the feeling that he GETS to go to work, ,rather than HAS to go to work.
He is climbing out of the financial hole that his X dug him in to. Also he has stepped up to the plate as far as controlling my enabling mother, to keep her from sending money to my P-son in prison to enable him to mount another attack on our family. He is very supportive of my NC with my mother and all around the thing I am so happy for him to be on the road to healing from this disaster.
My own road to healing, which I realize is a life time journey, not a destination, is also going well, and I actually feel stronger each day, more self assured and less apt to be a “people pleaser” to my own detriment.
It makes me very happy when I see people on this blog who come here in the shape I was in only a few months ago, and see them grow and heal. It’s just one of those things that it is so nice to share!
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Thursday, 20 March 2008 @ 10:57am
alohatraveler says:
OxDover,
I LOVED the Rat and the lever. That was great. I was a rat!!! Dang. I remember how hard I was trying. I even remember saying to him, “I am trying to be a good girlfriend with 100% of my being and it still isn’t enough!” The weird thing is when I broke up with a good man several years before, he aknowledge me for being such a nice girlfriend. Still, I kept trying to get it right for that BAD MAN.
I hate to hear what happened to your son. It makes me so sad. I am almost 39 and never married and then I always hear about good guys that get into relationships with women tha are so exploitive and I all I ever wanted to do was love and be loved. I don’t get it.
Still, as I was reading your post and others above, I reminded myself that when I was with the Good Man, he was my whole world.. and that was a mistake because when it ended… there was nothing. I won’t even do that again.. make a man, even a good man… my whole world.
I have learned all my lesson the hard way. Honestly, does anyone ever learn anything from everything going perfectly? Not that I know of.
Time to head to the beach. It’s my day off.
Aloha… E.R.
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Thursday, 20 March 2008 @ 1:23pm
OxDrover says:
Well,, I’m not sure that anyone learns a thing by “success”—at least I never did, most of what I have learned is by making mistakes—LOL
I love reading the Old Testament, where the Jewish people would get rich and prosperous and then start behaving badly, and when things got tough again, they cleaned up their act for a while, until things got good again. LOL I think maybe it is just human nature and we aren’t unique in that aspect.
It did take me a LONG TIME however, to see the pattern I had set up for myself in trying to “please everyone” and be “all things to all people” EXCEPT me.
It is odd to me that I could see in animal training all the things to do and not do, and basically people are animals too. We react pretty much like the rat in the cage does for the stimulus, but I never caught on that I was behaving that way when it was obvious that I was. HINDSIGHT IS ALWAYS 20/20 though, so now I am trying to be more mindful of how I react to other’s behaviors and proffered “rewards.”
I am trying to “think” with my head as well as my heart, desires and instincts. Trying to be more aware of not only myself but others as well. Trying to keep an OPEN MIND, but not letting my mind be so OPEN THAT MY BRAINS FALL OUT! LOL
I don’t want to be cynical and bitter, but at the same time, I am growing a back bone in all aspects of my life, not just in dealing with the Ps of this world. But in other things, smaller things, where people want me to enable them, and also where people offer to enable me. I am more able to require, no demand, respectful behavior from others, and to give respectful behavior in exchange. I am responsible, why should I tolerate irresponsible behavior toward me or my things?
I am learning when someone asks me for something that my gut tells me is something that I really don’t want to do, I say “NO”—and DON’T feel guilty about it. In the past, I would have done it because I didn’t want to upset them, even if it interfered in what I had planned or was doing. I would drop my own needs on the ground to go do something for someone that THEY should have done for themselves.
Poor planning on their part, poor decisions on their part, doesn’t make it MY EMERGENCY.
So in all, the P experience as long as it has been (most of my life) has been pretty stiff tuition in the School of Hard Knocks, and I think I have a PhD (LOL) but I finally got the lesson and I don’t want to go back for any more “classes” or pay anymore “tuition”—the price was too high and the lessons were too painful!
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Thursday, 20 March 2008 @ 2:14pm
greengirl says:
I’ve been reading Lovefraud for a while now, but this is my first time posting here. I’ve gained a lot of insight from the information on this website, as well as the comments from the readers.
I believe my ex has sociopathic tendencies, and may be a full sociopath. I read somewhere on here that sociopathy is a continuum, and I think he is more towards the “scumbag” end of the scale than the “murderous psycho” end, however he has managed to absolutely devastate me. We broke up several months ago – after swearing for months that I was the love of his life while simultaneously lying to me and emotionally abusing me, and encouraging me to move cities so that I could move in with him, he very suddenly changed his mind and decided to end our relationship in a very dramatic and hurtful fashion. I was devastated, as I’d believed his lies about how much he loved me, and plus I’d given up my job and apartment to move cities to be with him. I now realize that this was a dumb move on my part, live and learn I guess.
I’m having trouble getting past this. I’m better than I was when it first happened, but I am still really in a lot of pain. I really, deeply loved this man – well, the man that I thought he was, anyway.
On top of that grief and loss, I’ve had to do a lot of re-building of my life, as I gave up so much to be with him. Plus, the loss of the dreams I had for the future, and the promises he was making to me – it all equals a whole lot of loss. I feel like just when I think I am doing better and finally starting to heal, I backslide and wind up crying and depressed again. Yesterday I was feeling quite good and positive, and I went to yoga for the first time in a long time. I think the yoga released something, as I nearly broke down sobbing during class, and then wound up bawling my eyes out for the rest of the evening. When will this bloody pain ever stop? I have been busting my ass trying to get past things – going to therapy, journaling, reading about abuse and sociopathy and relationships, looking at issues in my childhood and family that may have led to me getting in to this relationship, etc. etc. I’ve also been trying to concentrate on me, getting my career back on track, spending time with friends and family, self care, all the rest. And STILL, I am in so much pain sometimes I don’t know if I will be able to stand it. How long does this take, anyway? I am so tired and frustrated at this point.
Also, this man promised that he wanted to have a family with me, and we were planning to start trying to have children sometime this year (or so he claimed, anyway.) I have always wanted kids and a family, and I was so excited and happy. It is so hard – everyone says to just focus on myself and not worry if I am ever in a relationship again.
Well, I am a very people-oriented and family-oriented person, and this is so hard for me to do! One of my biggest goals in life has always been to have a happy marriage and children, and so I feel like trying to find other goals is just a way to make myself feel less crappy until I find the right guy. I can’t see how I will be able to be happy if I never get to be married and have kids, because this is something I’ve wanted all my life. Maybe this all sounds very negative, but I’m having a lot of trouble reconciling this with the advice to just focus on me and not worry about every having a relationship again.
How do you learn to balance the strong desire for a relationship with the “need” to be okay alone? Everyone says to me that I have to forget about a relationship and stop wanting one, then I will find one. This is weird advice, to me. I’ve never heard anyone say, “If you want a good (job, education, house, hobby, whatever), then you need to NOT want it and not look for it, and it will happen.” So why should it work this way when it comes to finding a partner?
Sorry for the length of this post. This is an issue I’ve been wrestling with for the last few weeks, and I’ve seen so much wisdom from the ladies on this board, I figured if anyone can relate to what I’ve written it’s probably you ladies. My friends and family are wonderful, but they really don’t get what it is like. I’ve been through other breakups in my past, but none has ever devastated me like this man has. I wouldn’t have gotten it myself if I hadn’t been through it.
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Monday, 24 March 2008 @ 4:08pm
OxDrover says:
Dear Greengirl,
Welcome.
How long? As long as it takes.
Having a desire that he held out to you like a “fantasy” for you to reach for that brass ring, and then to grab it away is typical P.
Wanting a husband and a family of chldren is a normal and reasonable desire…but to predicate ALL your happiness on having that is setting yourself up for “failure.”
Placing ALL your happiness, now or in the future, on “having” anything or not having something is risky business. Happiness I think is a SIDE EFFECT of being satisfied WHERE YOU ARE, AS YOU ARE, and there for if you will only be happy IF XYZ, then you may never be happy.
I am a widow, and I loved my husband, he was “mu life” but he is GONE…if I were only happy if I had him, I could never be happy again. Sure, you are sad when you lose something or someone you really love…but being happy is not what we have so much, I think, as what we are satisfied with.
The Apostle Paul, a very wise man even if you are not a Christian believer, said (paraphrased) “be happy where and how you are, if you are a slave, be a good slave, it is okay to aspire to your freedom, but if you never get it, be happy and content where you are if it is out of your control. If you are married be happy, if you are single be happy. If you are rich be happy, if you are poor be satisfied and happy.”
Wanting anything is not “bad” unless it is something that you cannot be happy “witout”— My grandmother used to tell me, “don’t wish your life away” when I said “Oh, I’ll be so happy when I…….__________(fill in the blank) graduate from high school, get a job, get a house, get a car…etc.
Enjoy the YOU that is TODAY. Don’t give up your dream of a “happy home” but realize that we need to enjoy and appreciate the NOW for waht it is. Appreciate the freedom that you have now (without a kid on each hip) to take time for yourself, the yoga, or wahtever else you enjoy, that you might have to give up for a while when you have children, etc.
I would love to have another relationship with another “soul mate” but I am realistic enough to know that it might (probably will )NOT happen. I am 61. But I have also come to the realization that I will NOT send the rest of my life pining about NOT having that or being needly or lonely, because want to be happy.
After my husband died I was needy, felt fat, old, ugly, wrinkled, and “no one will ever want me again, no ne will ever care about me…PPPPPPOOOOOOOOR ME! Well, that needness, that depression, that lonliness left me open to a P predator and he latched on to me like glue….fortunately I got out after 8 months, but spent another 6 crying and feeling bad. Now I am even older, and probably more wrinkles, but when I look in the mirror, I like who I see.
Be good to yourself and focus on YOU and being happy today and as the Apostle Paul said, BE CONTENT with what and who you are, and HAPPINESS WILL COME…and my guess is you will have a family when the time is right. (((hugs)))) from an old woman who earned every wrinkle and every gray hair!
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Monday, 24 March 2008 @ 5:03pm
greengirl says:
OxDrover,
Thanks for your thoughts. I am trying really hard not to feel desperate, depressed, etc., as I know then I will just be vulnerable to another person like my ex. It’s tough some days, though. It’s true that right now I can do whatever I like, I am not tied down to kids or a house. But, before I hooked up with my ex I was feeling like I was getting to the point in life where I had done many of the things I wanted to do before having kids (traveled, worked, partied, gone to college, and many other things), and I was wanting to turn my attention towards having a partner and a family. I’m in my 20s, but I left home when I was very, very young, and so I’ve essentially been living as an indepenent adult for much longer than most people my age.
Actually, my S found me when I was in a very vulnerable place last year. My S was someone I had dated years earlier, and broke up with because he treated me poorly (we never lived together the first time, just dated for about a year.) I was heartbroken then, but eventually I moved on, was in another relationship and wound up getting married (as did the S.) I always deep down carried a bit of a flame for the S, as when I dumped him the first time I was still in deep denial about who and what he really was.
My husband and I were seperating last year. We realized that we are both good people, but that we were not right together as a couple (would have been better to realize that before the wedding, I realize, but what do you do.) So, here I was seperating from my husband, in a big career transition at the same time, a bit at loose ends about what to do with my life. I was basically happy with myself and my life, but my life was definitely in a big transition. Well, in swoops my S ex, saying all the perfect things about how he had loved me all these years, never forgotten me, he is seperating from his wife, and he has always felt he lost out on a good thing with me and that we should be together and make all our dreams come true.
He pretended to be the perfect man for me, pursued me, romanced me, promised me a home and a family (the things I was losing out on by splitting with my husband), amazing sex all the time (something that my marriage lacked, and that the S knew was lacking in my marriage). Basically, any way that he could find to manipulate me by telling me what I wanted to hear, he used, including using our shared religious beliefs to strengthen his “case” of why we should be together (eg. “Oh, I know that God wants us together and is behind this somehow.”)
He even involved his child (with his ex-wife) in to the act. He shares custody of his kid, and so he had me helping to caretake his child, talked about how this was my stepkid, his kid was getting very attached to me, when he and I had a baby this year then it would be like his kid was my kid too, as the kids would all be siblings. He would reassure me that he was serious about me by pointing out that he would never, ever have someone around his child unless he intended to be with that person permanently. Ha. Then when he abruptly dumped me (and of course blamed it all on me and what a horrible person I was), I had to grieve not just him but also losing the relationship with his kid, who I’d become really close with.
It all sounds so stupid now, but I was vulnerable and I so wanted to believe that I was finally getting my “happy ending” with this man that I’d never really forgotten about. Well, I found out in fairly short order WHY there is a saying about things that seem too good to be true. It is so sad how S’s will hook themselves to people who are vulnerable, as you were, as I was. The last thing I want is to be vulnerable to another S. It is so hard though – when I was living with him and his child, I *loved* being in a family environment and step-parenting and everything else with it. Loved it, adored it, didn’t care that I wouldn’t have as much time to myself for the next few years.
I realize now that the happiness I felt in that situation was an illusion, and couldn’t have lasted (in fact, it did not last.) I just wish I could be in a situation like that with the right man. I am trying to be content, and trust that things will work out and I will find the right person at the right time, but it’s tough for me to have faith now after thinking my dreams had come true and then having them all crushed so severely. I also don’t think that everyone eventually finds someone. I have several female friends who are in their mid-40s, have been single most of their lives, no kids and never married despite the fact that they would have liked to be wives and mums. And I watch them dealing with regret and sadness that their life has turned out this way, and I worry that that will be me in 15 years. There are definitely things in life that give me joy and satisfaction, and I am trying to get back in to my own life, work on my career, travel more, etc. I just worry that one day I will wake up and be 40 and be alone and realize I missed my chance to do the family thing, and I would find that very difficult.
Sorry to sound like a broken record. I am trying to just “live in the now” and not worry about the future – definitely a big life lesson for me! I am used to being the type of person who figures out what I want, and goes for it full out. Through this whole experience I’m having to learn how to be patient and how to just let things be – neither of these are easy for me!
I really do appreciate your comments, and I will try to keep them in mind.
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Monday, 24 March 2008 @ 6:43pm
Beverly says:
Dear Oxdrover, I am not far behind you in years and you are so right. After many years out of a relationship, I yearned for one, and it was like I was ripe for the picking. Now after the nightmare I went through with the exN, I only want to have a relationship with myself. After feeling depleted on all levels, I am conserving my energy for my surgery on 26th March.
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Monday, 24 March 2008 @ 7:02pm
findingmyselfagain says:
Beverly – I didnt know you had surgery scheduled. Will you be doing chemo or radiation as well ? We’ll all be pulling for you ~ stay in touch and let us know how you are doing when you feel up to it. Sending blessings your way…..
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Monday, 24 March 2008 @ 10:06pm
OxDrover says:
DEar Green girl,
Right now, I am taking care of ME–FIRST and FOREMOST. I am not assuming responsibility for anyone else—and in addition, I am cutting out all stress in my life that I can in any way accomplish.
Each day is getting better…and at the end of the day I’ve “made a little progress” at something that I want to work on or wanted to do, or just some sweet memory of the day.
There’s laughter in my life again, and in my heart. My twisted sense of humor is coming back and I am seeing all the funny and absurd things in this world that there are to chuckle about! Relationships, even GOOD ones, take workk and energy, and right now I don’t have any to spare on anything but my own renewal.
Beverly,
I hope all goes well for you—take care of YOU for the healing of your body as well as for your spirit! You have SO many prayers and good wishes going up for you.
Last summer when I had the tick fever and was so sick, running fevers every day for two months and I LITERALLY DIDN’T REALIZE I was critically ill because my stress level was so high and I thought the “hot flashes” (haven’t had those in 10 yrs) was “just stress” DUH, (and I call myself a health care professional?) Anyway, I DO know that taking care of yourself and decreasing stress is the ABSOLUTE KEY to healing!
I’ve always been like the “energizer bunny” and never slowed down, kept going no matter how steep the mountain, but I finally realized that I am HUMAN, I am not and don’t have to be SUPER HUMAN and ask more of myself than I would EVER ask of another ten people. Maybe my illness was God’s way of telling me to SLOW DOWN! I don’t have much patience with “being sick” and never have had any, so always tried to keep on keeping on, and I realzie now, how SILLY (and stupid!) that was. Now if I don’t want to get out of bed til noon, I don’t. If I want to get up at 6 a.m. I do. AND BEST OF ALL I DON’T FEEL GUILTY ABOUT IT!
My strenth is returning slowly, and can be “up and about” and working so far up to 5-6 hours a day–and I was so weak I couldn’t hand wash a single sink of dishes without sitting down once or twice to rest. On days I feel good I do more on days I am tired I do less….so am listening to my body, and the world has NOT fallen down without me to hold it up. LOL
I know that you ARE listening to your body and that will help you so much. ((((hugs))))) and Prayers.
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Monday, 24 March 2008 @ 11:28pm
Ariadne says:
Greengirl,
I like you, I was worried after the relationship with the N that I would never find a man to really love and care for me. But the pain of that relationship made me face the pain I felt in childhood resulting from my socio stepmother’s abuse. You mentioned leaving home at an early age. Is it possible that you are still affected by childhood problems?
Nowadays people make fun of the cliche therapist saying “Tell me about your childhood.” But it really is important to face what we were running away from. I ran straight out of the country but I just ran into similar situations because my heart was stuck in the situation at home. I guess you can’t run away from yourself. After finally dealing with that and talking to my friends and some family members about it, I felt I was finally free to leave the situation that I was stuck reliving over and over again. Only after I started to be true to myself did I find my husband- who is sweet, caring and loves me unconditionally. I never knew a relationship like this could exist because I had never seen anything like it- my family is so messed up! Lol
So I think when people say “You have to not be looking to find someone.” I think they mean, like Oxdrover said, that you have to be happy with yourself first or nothing, not even what you think you want, will make you happy. I remember reading somewhere that marriage between two miserable people is just a mixing of their misery, it can only increase. But if you are happy with yourself, you will naturally attract a good man who is happy with himself too. Then you can be sure that he doesn’t need to put you down or prey on you to feel good because he is happy with himself already and has the courage to treat you with respect.
So, if you aren’t happy with yourself or if you feel like you are waiting for someone to make you happy, disordered people will be attracted to you like sharks on blood. They can sense when a person is in need, even if it is temporary because of a loss or a breakup. It is not your fault, by any means, but it is something to be aware of when you know you are vulnerable.
Beverly,
I’ll be praying for you and hope that all goes well with your surgery.
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 @ 3:47am
Ariadne says:
Sorry, I meant “I, like you, was worried. . .” but I like you too! Lol
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 @ 3:56am
STN says:
Dear Beverly,
I haven’t been visiting the site much lately, but you came to my mind this morning and I was wondering how you’re doing. I just saw that you’ll be having surgery very soon. I want to wish you all good things, and the strength and courage you’ll need to face these transitional days, between the fallout from your old painful life, and the new life you’re getting, the new start. It will be a wonderful day when you get the diseased experiences you’ve had out of your life and out of your body for good.
I agree with all the ladies on the site who say that we attracted these monsters into our lives because we were vulnerable and needed to learn how to be happy with ourselves, and to be able to protect ourselves. In a way, the monsters that brought us through hell are our gifts. They can liberate us from old ways of being that kept us depressed and in a state of longing, lonlieness, etc etc. As soon as I let go of my N and his SP (it was a team from hell), and disowned all the evil they attempted to instill in my life, I was liberated. I began to figure out that I have to be okay where I’m at, with what I have, and with who I am before I’m ready to add positive things in my life. Once I realized that all of the rotten, hurtful, twisted, demeaning and sick things my N was doing BELONGED TO HIM, I was able to set myself free. I made it clear to myself that the bad things he did are not mine to keep in my heart or my head, they’re HIS, and I threw them out of my emotional, psychological, physical and spiritual life. Of course, I have to keep doing this again and again, because that’s just what it takes to keep it from returning. I just keep telling myself that all of the wretchedness is of his making, because he made it deliberately and treacherously, so it belongs to him and him alone. I came at the situation with a pure and trusting heart, like so many of us, and my real ‘crime’ was not protecting myself sooner than I did, and not knowing how to care about or value myself enough. And now I know better, so the case is CLOSED. I have to see my N every day, but I make sure he knows that I’m doing just fine now that his poisons are out of my life. I look at him with a smile on my face brighter than it ever was when I was with him. And people keep telling me that I look like I’m in love, and so much better than I did a year ago (when I was still with him).
So my point for you Beverly is that I think getting rid of any lingering vestiges, residues, toxins, or whatever you want to call them, from these monsters, is the very best thing you can do to start really healing, and building a new life…with a fresh foundation. I am hoping that you’re doing fine, regardless of it all. It sounds to me like you’re really going to turn things around in your life, and you’ll come out of this transition shining like never before:). I really believe that.
xoxo, STN
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 @ 4:57am
STN says:
Hi Beverly,
I forgot to mention something. I got to the point, too, where I was nothing but depleted on all levels. I felt like a puddle of water that had been run over by a steam-roller. It was an exhausting low, I could do nothing but sleep and cry and shake. My health was devastated, I simply could not function. This was exactly one year ago.
Just to give you a sense of how things went for me (in case your case my turn out to be similar), after clearing my N out of my life (I was fortunately out of town between Feb. and October of last year, and well away from my N), I gave in to the exhaustion and just committed myself to clearing out all the things in my life that were poisoning me. After a while, I had a kind of breakthrough, I think it was in May. I was still feeling incredibly fragile and every day was still painful on many levels, but I felt I had really purged the things that had been causing me to grow weaker and weaker in life. And from that point I started to rebuild my strength.
I think I had a gift from the Universe/God, because I was sent unexpectedly for work to an island, where I could swim and sleep as often as I wanted for about 5 months straight. It was heaven on earth, even though I was still working my way out of emotional hell. Anyway, I took what good things I had and worked the situation for all it was worth. I swam and walked and slept as often as I wanted, and gave in to what my body and heart needed. And I ate the healthiest of foods, took ayurvedic treatments designed to build strength, and drank tons of bottled water. Ever so slowly my strength returned. I was shell shocked for half the time I was there, but when I left the place, I was a new person, with a whole new way of thinking and being.
I feel like you’re in the purging stage these days, and that your surgery can be followed by a time of much needed rest and eventual recovery. I only wanted to mention these things in case they could offer some hope, and a sense that what you’re going through may bring you (ultimately) to a much better place.
xoxo, STN
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 @ 5:26am
greengirl says:
Dear Beverly,
I hope your surgery goes well, I’ll send some healing thoughts your way.
Dear Oxdrover,
Doesn’t having your sense of humour come back feel amazing? I’m also finding that each day gets a little easier, and that life seems fun again sometimes. Sometimes (like yesterday when I made my first post), it does feel really “two steps forward, 1 and a half steps back”, but over time I can see that I’m still going forward. I also agree with you that relationships do take a lot of work, and so right at this very moment I am more than happy to be by myself. It’s only when I think about the long term that I start freaking out. Guess I just have to try harder not to do that, and, as you say, just focus on me right now.
Dear Ariadne,
Yes, I am still affected by family problems from my childhood, including abuse, neglect, death, divorce, illness, substance abuse, mental illness… you name it, I think we had it. I’ve dealt with it the best I can over the years, and it has been a very hard battle at times. A year ago I would have told you that I still had a few issues, but was basically okay. Now I know that, as a kid, I dealt with all that pain the only way I was taught how, which was to push it down and deny that it was that bad. So, now I am grieving this relationship and trying to heal from it, and part of that is grieving earlier losses and trying to heal things that have needed healing for a very, very long time. I’m going to counselling for this, and it is helping.
I think that was part of what made me so vulnerable to the S – part of the reason I wanted a happy family so badly as an adult was because I felt I never had that as a kid. Now, I know that even if I woke up with the perfect husband and children tomorrow, it would not do anything to fix the pain from my past. It’s still very much something I want, but obviously I have some stuff to work on first. I guess it’s just hard for me not to go to a place of panic that I will never meet the right person, and I’ll be alone forever. I hope this gets easier over time, and it’s something I am working on in counselling. I hate that just having a basic human desire to love and be loved can leave us so vulnerable to these predators. Argh.
Okay, here’s another part that’s hard – before the S came along, I basically was happy with myself. I still had issues from when I was a kid that left me WAY more vulnerable then I realized, but I was happy. I had a nice place to live, good friend, good career, etc. etc. The piece that was missing was the “partner and kids” piece. And when I thought I had that piece with the S (before I figured out what a monster he was, when he was still being “good” to hook me in), I was way, way happier than I’d been on my own. I had created a life for myself that pretty much rocked, but sharing that life with someone I loved, working towards shared dreams and doing the family thing, was WAY better than things were on my own.
So….. yeah. I’m trying to “get” all this, I really am. I want to be better. I just have trouble wrapping my mind around this concept. I guess I feel like I wasn’t miserable or depressed or looking for a partner to make me happy. I thought that I had a nice, full happy life, and then I found a partner to share it with and things got even better. I thought I was doing things the right way, and that is why this is so hard.
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 @ 5:57am
Ariadne says:
Greengirl,
I didn’t mean to suggest that you weren’t happy or were needy or something before the S came along, but I think if you have even a little bit of pain leftover from the past, they can sense it. After all, it only takes a drop of blood for the sharks to start circling. Ever since I was a child, people would always ask me what was wrong, when I thought I was fine and happy. I guess it showed in my face and I didn’t even realize it. Sometimes you can see it in children’s faces who have been abused. They are more aware and not as bubbly or cheerful as the others.
It is really good that you are going to counseling and dealing with your past. Sometimes I think that the relationship with the N kicked me in the butt just enough to realize I had to deal with some unresolved issues. Now, although it might hurt like hell, you have the life experience and the tools to identify another S when you see one. It doesn’t make it hurt any less, but it can be the start of a new life that you might not have been able to get any other way.
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 @ 6:36am
greengirl says:
Hi Ariadne,
No worries. I think you are bang-on about how if you even have a bit of issues, S’s can spot it. Mine used to talk about how he could size someone up within 30 seconds of meeting them. It’s true. We had a situation once where he met a good (male) friend of mine at a party. My S didn’t have any extensive conversations with this friend, but simply hung out with him in a group for a few hours. He did not know anything about this friend, but on the drive home he started telling me what issues he thought my friend had, and he was eerily, scarily accurate about all of them. He even guessed accurately at what some of the past experiences were that had led to these issues. All this just from meeting and observing someone for a few hours at a party – yikes!
The analogy that I’ve used is that, yes in many ways I was happy before this man came back in to my life. I think the emotional pain I was in, from when I was a kid, although no longer crippling, was something I’d lived with for so long that I didn’t even realize it was there anymore. Kinda like when people live with chronic physical pain for years – eventually it can become kind of “background”, you get so used to it being present that you don’t actively notice it anymore.
It’s funny. I had known for awhile that I should probably go to counselling and deal with some of this stuff, but I kept putting it off with “I don’t have time”, or “I can’t afford it” or some other excuse. I always had such a busy, intense life full of activities that I rarely slowed down enough to deal with my feelings or my past. I guess I felt like if I kept going forward and adding good things to my life, eventually the past would stop bothering me. Wouldn’t it be nice if it actually worked that way?
I’ve heard people say that, if you don’t “get the message” about something that is not working in your life (relationships, work, childhood issues, health wise, whatever) the first time, the universe will keep smacking you with a bigger and bigger (metaphorical) hammer until you are forced to deal with the issue. I thought for years that this concept sounded like hippie new-age nonsense.
But damned if I don’t think that sometimes things work that way now! This whole experience has forced me to deal with many things in my past much more quickly and intensely than I ever would have voluntarily chosen to do. Maybe in the end that will turn out to be a hidden blessing?
Even if there is no real reason WHY this happened, other than that my ex is probably an S and that this is what S’s do, I still think it is up to me to take what lessons and growth from it that I can. I am struggling mightily to do this, but I have come a long way in a couple of months, and I can’t wait to see where I am a year from now. It’s funny, isn’t it, how an experience with an S makes you question almost everything in life so intensely. Maybe later on this will be a hidden blessing too?
Thanks again everyone for all your kind comments. Reading this blog has helped me to stay sane over the last few months. I wish that not another person on the planet understood the kind of pain I’ve been going through, as obviously I wish no one had ever encountered a sociopath. However, since that is not the case, I can’t tell you how healing it has been for me to realize that I’m not the only one, I’m not crazy, and I wasn’t imagining things. To be able to finally understand that my ex is a sick, irreperably broken man, but that I can choose to heal and be healthy again, has been really good for me, and hearing everyone’s stories has helped convince me that there is hope.
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 @ 7:14am
STN says:
Hey Ladies,
I was thinking back on my past, before my N, and like you, I was feeling all right, pretty good in fact when I met my N. But I certainly had issues left-over from childhood. There was a hole in my heart where the love of my family was supposed to be, but wasn’t. Anyway, I thought I had this pretty well tucked away, and just learned to live with it, not knowing that I had any other choice. So my N and his SP picked up on it b/c it was embedded in every action and word somehow. Just in my attitude towards others – i think it was clear to the sharks that I didn’t put self-respect before the respect I had for others. I always aimed to please others, often at my own expense, thinking it was the right thing to do.
Anyway, I look back to the people in my life before the blowout relationship I had with my N, and I can see now that there were several ‘friendships’ and work relationships I had had with N’s and SP’s before, and that I just never quite learned what I needed to learn from those bad experiences. Now I think I have. I guess the real test will be to see if I attract good people into my life, and manage to keep the Ns and SPs out.
But here’s my question – can you ladies look back and see other Ns and SPs in your past, and can you also see how you never quite learned as much from them as you did from your ‘romantic’ relationshps with SPs and Ns? I look back and can see with 20-20 vision just how many there were in my life, and it’s pretty amazing. I feel like I was bounced from one to another until now. Now feels different, I feel like I know what’s what, and my N relationship taught it to me. I feel like I won’t make these mistakes (ignore the red flags) ever again. I sincerely hope I’m not fooling myself….
STN
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 @ 7:42am
LilOrphan says:
I see them, STN. Without going into huge detail, definitely there were more than one in the past in both romantic and work relationships. Not so much friend relationships, for whatever reason.
At the time the P returned, well, rather before he returned, things were very quiet for several years. Learned to enjoy my own life and being on my own, happy with my own company, no romantic relationships at all. BUT — I waited too long to even look for a partner, and then my family was all going their own ways (parents old and me caretaking for them, oldest child moving out) so life was flux. Felt like I was losing my center.
*That’s* when he came back, promising, I guess, to become the person to share this last phase of life. Which at first was just perfect, because here was the guy I’d loved for such a long, long time now wanting to step-up and reciprocate after a history of his disappearing if I dared ask for anything more than a cup of coffee. (What, slow learner – me?!?
) He was the person I always wanted to spend the rest of life with, both of us taking care of each other. But I guarded my heart and watched…until things seemed safe. Then I admitted my feelings. THEN HE CHANGED, drastically, almost overnight. As though he’d gotten what he wanted…
Reading SecretMonster’s blog reminded me exactly of this. He blogs of “intrigues” with various women where the entire goal is to see if he can trick them, win them over.
It took 7-8 months, but my own “secret monster” succeeded and then tried to break me.
Even though before he came back I was doing ok, overall, there was something missing and it was the future, my fears of the future in a life different than the one I’d known forever, without parents or young children – without being needed by anyone. I have that icky need to be needed and useful, from growing up in highly conditional love and sporadic abuse. And the prospect not of being alone but alone and unneeded, scared me at the time. Was still processing the changes and I think abandonment issues it raised.
But I wasn’t an easy mark for him. Not as easy as I once was. Not even as easy as I’d have previously thought. Something was “off.” He did not pass the sniff test. That to me is a sign of my own growing healthiness.
Please don’t think though that a sign of our health is WHO we attract into our lives. Think it’s more who we actually LET IN and keep in based on their actions. Everyone attracts the Bad Men, I suspect, but not everyone lets them stick around.
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 @ 8:32am
Ariadne says:
LilOrphan,
I agree that the Bad Men (and Women) size up everyone looking for weaknesses to exploit because that is how they function. Everyone has weaknesses so if we let them in, they will find out a way to take advantage of those weaknesses and get what they want from us.
But I think that the sociopath with half a brain and some experience can size us up and tell who will let them in and who wont. I dont think they are any more intuitive than anyone else, but they spend a lot more time breaking down someone’s personality and looking for flaws and weak points than we do. And people always give a lot more information about themselves than they realize.
I once read that the biggest factor in determining how dysfunctional a family is isn’t how messed up and broken the family is, it’s the level of denial operating in the family. So whether the rule (unspoken or not) is “don’t let the neighbors find out” or “we don’t talk about such things in this family” the denial is there. As kids in a family like that, we learn to adapt to the situation and play along with the denial, even though we know something is wrong. This screws up our sense of reality. We stop listening to our inner voices and ignore red flags(!) because the adults in our lives are telling us that everything is okay, nothing is wrong.
I think most sociopaths know that, on some level, the little bit of pain that is still visible in us shows that we went through that in the past. So when the honeymoon period with them is over and they start to show their true colors, we go into denial mode automatically like we were used to. I don’t know if that explains every situation but it seems to be a trend. I know I had to retrain myself to trust my perception of reality because it was so skewed from childhood I couldn’t tell what was what.
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 @ 10:38am
OxDrover says:
I always go oback to what I know, and that is a lot of it animal behavior.
When the predator, lion, tiger, wolf, whatever (like the P) sees a large herd of animals go by, maybe a 1000 or more, almost in a glance that predator can spot the ONE animal in that herd that has SOME disability–maybe only a tiny one, but one that will make it move slower, or be more vulnerable to an attack. The predator HOMES IN on that one animal out of the herd, because instinctively the predator animal knows that he has the best chance of catching that one, slightly more vunerable animal than all the others.
Ps are just like other predators, some way they have some 6th sense, or are keenly observant enough, SOMETHING that makes us a bit more vulnerable to their attack than others in our “herd”—
Maybe it is some childhood abuse, or we are enablers, and whatever it is it doesn’t have to be “big” and we don’t even ahve to be consciously aware of that little thing we haven’t “dealt with” that makes us more likely to be “caught” and not have the “will or strength” to fight the predator before he has totally over come us.
In real life animal predation, the prey animal once caught, though still able to fight many times doesn’t fight back, but just “gives up” to lie there while the predator animal finishes the kill. Some do fight back, but many just accept their fate, and as one wild life biologist says “self pacify.” That tendency in prey animals is used today very successfully to calm domestic cattle while they are being vaccinated or other procedures with a “squeeze chute” in which the animal is held securely and immediately “self pacifies” and quits struggling.
I realize that there were times I “continued to struggle” against the Ps, and other times that I literally just lay down and accepted my “fate”—and the people who totally lie down and don’t fight are NOT on this site, it is WE who have continued to struggle, in spite of our “disabilities” or earlier history or previous injuries, or injuries from the most recent predator attack—I think the people here, on this site, prove that they ARE STRONGER than the P thought when he first chose us because s/he detected some “limp” in our psyche, but we have risen up and fought back, and escaped the clutches of the predator—wounded maybe, scarred maybe, bleeding maybe, but we are healing our wounds, and growing stronger and have become much wiser in watching for predators in the grass or among the trees, and we are the ones who will be HELL for the next predator to catch.
I had an old cow once, who was very old and very wise, and she was heck to catch, and she taught her daughters to be just like her, when the entire herd went together to the corral, driven by men and dogs, the old cow would take her calf and “run for the hills”—she had “seen that trick before” and as soon as she saw the trucks, men and dogs drive up, she was GONE. There were five years when I gave up chasing her and she never got any vaccinations or wormings but she still thrived and did well. Plus, if you did get her “cornered” she would turn her long-horned head at you and dare you to fight, with the “you’re not going to take me alive” look in her eye!
I want to be just like that old cow, and at the first sign of them I am going to run for the hills. LOL
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 @ 10:42am
LilOrphan says:
“So when the honeymoon period with them is over and they start to show their true colors, we go into denial mode automatically like we were used to. I don’t know if that explains every situation but it seems to be a trend.”
That is perfect, Ariadne!! Been dancing around trying to understand why so many S’s get involved with women who’ve had scary, Dickensian childhoods…and that MUST be it. They know we’ve got the ability to “split” — to love someone despite their behavior, because our earliest training was to love people who hurt us.
They’re not “more intuitive.” They’re predatory. Where you and I would look at someone’s flaws and see that these flaws make them distinct, give them shadings and richness of experience, the P or S only sees holes or entryways. But the fact that they have to LIE their way in, to pretend, shows me they are just cowards.
It takes everything some of us have to just be ourselves in the world, to be honest even when its scary. We even falter and fail at it, but we keep trying. They never did try and they never do.
I think for me, maybe for others, part of the key to healing is accepting ourselves like we accept others, and that means the big, scary angry emotions, the rights and privileges that we extend to others because we love them have to be extended to ourselves because we love ourselves.
My problem comes in sticking up for myself assertively, not waiting too long and acting out of a place of extreme anger. In day to day stuff, years ago I wasn’t sure I had the right to expect good things and treatment. Now the expectation is there but the ability to trust and speak out kindly for what I want, rather than wait until my boundaries are pushed over the edge, is the next step towards walking in total integrity, even when it means being human, frail, angry or extremely flawed.
What courage does it take to live behind multiple, completely illusory masks like the P does?
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 @ 10:51am
Beverly says:
Thank you all – for your good wishes and prayers. Tomorrow morning I have the cancer lump removed from my right breast, then radiotherapy. It has been one blow after another for me during the last year. After the last six months of feeling like I lived through the nightmare of fallout from the exN, and menopausal and struggling with other stresses my energy is very fragile at the moment and I feel very unwell too. However, I move forward and hope that I can weather the onslaught that my body is about to endure. I am going to have the surgery feeling very very depleted. But I have some good friends who will be rooting for me and hope that you can all ‘mentally’ join the circle with them in sending me strength and prayers. Thank you. As Southernman said ‘I am sick and tired of feeling sick and tired’! Healing and (((hugs))) to you all.
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 @ 11:38am
OxDrover says:
Orphan, you are so right on—especially about speaking out when your boundaries are FIRST pushed, not waiting until someone has pushed and pushed and then redlined. That is something that I am working on very much.
I have NEVER expected as much of others as I have of my own self. I would never ever be as hard on anyone else as I was on myself. I expected perfection of me, but not of others. It was like if I wasn’t perfect, how could I expect others to even be “nice.”
Now that I am not “in chaos” no longer “crazy” and no longer “Stressed to the max” I am so much more able to see past experiences more logically and less emotionally, even ones that were painful at the time. I can do a “post mortem” on these things, and see where I was not handling things in a healthy way, and resolve to do better in the future.
Beverly,
There has been some research on prayer for patients. Patients were picked at random and assigned to a group to be prayed for or not. None of the patients had any idea they were in a “study.” So there was no “bias” of the patient thought they might be prayed for or not and a placebo effect take over, but you know what, the “prayed for” patients had a statistically better recovery than those that were not prayed for.
I have a strong religious faith, but you know, I don’t know how it worked, it wasn’t a “miracle” but I do believe that somehow, some way, positive energy is transferred to the patient. I had some classes on the healing of touch when I was in nursing school as well and I have seen it work, even in unconscious patients. In my experiences with Hospice I have seen amazing things that boggle the “scientific” mind,, not because they are not real, but because we can’t explain them scientifically.
Please know that I have put your name on my prayer chain and there are hundreds of people praying for your recovery and your strength as you go through this episode in your life.
A lot of the “old wives tales” about medicine are being proven scientifically to be true. One for example is removing warts. Physicians discovered that warts are caused by viruses. OK, I accept that, but I know too, that you can “witch” a wart off a child by any number of “made up” ways, as long as the child BELIEVES (it is more difficult to make an adult believe in magic) but it worked. A few years ago a scientific study was made and BINGO it proved that there IS a psychological component to treating warts. I knew it all along, and had used various things to “treat” warts that had no MEDICAL reason to work, but only that the person BELIEVED they would, and presto, 99% of the time the placebo worked. LOL
The power of the MIND to heal the body is profound is my point, so KEEP UP YOUR POSITIVE THOUGHTS. God bless.
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 @ 11:57am
neverneverland says:
I think I would like to read the book mentioned, and maybe even look into attending the program. Ladies, I really feel like I need help that I am not getting in counseling or from my medical providers.
I was talking to a good friend this morning, and I told him — this is my best friend, BTW — that there was something “different” about this relationship that has torqued my perspective. I’m trying to get a handle on why that is — why it is different. It goes past heartbreak, because I’ve been down that road, and yes, heartbreak is hard, but there is also a sense of resolution. Even in my divorce, which, oh GOD, that was just awful, I felt like we finally arrived at the point where we understood that it had to end.
I think that in most *healthy* relationships — when they end, that is — one person doesn’t end up feeling conned, lied to, taken advantage of, filled with lack of resolution, or truth. Not with people like my ex — sociopaths. They seem to drop the bomb, suddenly, without warning; there are copious lies involved, and from what I’ve read, the scamming of money. Monetary gain from the victim seems to be a big thing for the sociopath. You never really know what happened in the relationship, where things went wrong, until you look back on it carefully. That’s what I have found out for myself. There were a lot of tiny red flags that I didn’t pay attention to that all added up to a big warning sign.
I think these factors are what makes all of us here feel so ashamed and tortured by these relationships. I don’t know, I’m not a professional. But I sense a lot of lack of resolution from people posting. I know this to be true for me. And I wish that I could let go of it.
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 @ 12:42pm
STN says:
Hi Beverly,
I know you’re about to go through something very difficult tomorrow, and I’m glad you’re facing it by trying to consolidate your energy -this tells me that you’re stronger than you may feel. And it is definitely an onslaught, definitely. But if you can think of surgery as your chance to rid yourself/your body of something that would just drag you down and make you weaker, something that was prob. caused by the stress your relationship put you through, it might seem like a relief to go through this and get it OUT. At least on some level, it could feel to you like you’re removing the last of the garbage that this man brought to your life. I like the idea of rooting out evil and completely chucking it, as you might have noticed:). And I like the idea that when you recover, you can be like Oxdrover’s cow, and be strong enough to challenge anyone who would ever dare to try to hurt you again.
And thanks lilOrphan for trying to answer my question. It helps. I’m sure that I was conditioned by my family to put their happiness before my own. And if I had a conflicting idea/opinion, etc., or if I saw the truth in a bad situation, I was effectively silenced – they taught me to keep the peace at the expense of the truth (denial denial denial). I think this is what my N saw in me, he knew he could bully me into putting his interests ahead of my own. He knew I believed in love and wanted it enough from someone to let him get away with the unspeakable things he did. I
I don’t do that anymore. NO WAY. Not for anyone. And it feels GREAT. And I thank heaven that I can deliver to my N the most tormented year of his life. I take great pleasure in ignoring him day in and day out while we work side by side. It challenges his idea that he’s the center of the universe in a way that suits me just fine. And I take great pleasure in showing him that none of the weaknesses he exposed in me exist anymore. There are no more chinks in my armor that he can exploit. This as made life better all around, on every level. Even he goes around telling people that I am “tough” – this is his idea of a criticism, and a way for him to complain that I’m being to hard on him (poooor him). I take it as the highest compliment and a sign of victory! Anyway, I really think I attracted people like him into my life since I was 15 years old (I’m 38 now), I can see them in hindsight, one after another, with periods of relative peace in between. I really hope I have ended the cycle for good.
Okay Beverly, you take good care, and my thoughts and prayers are with you. You’ll be able to make yourself stronger after this, I’m sure of it.
xoxo, STN
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 @ 1:20pm
OxDrover says:
Neverneverland,
I tried to post and my internet server cut me off. So will try again.
To me, the letting go of it all started when I went for treatment for my PTSD for the plane crash that killed my husband and burned one of my sons and two friends. The therapist used a “rapid eye movement” therapy where he would have me FEEL the physical sensations from the associated emotions, while I moved my eyes back and forth following a moving pointer.
I do NOT know how this works, but it has to do with the left brain and right brain connectons. I can now look back at the terrible day when I ran up to the burning plane, saw my husband, knew he would not survive, and though I was within 3 feet of my son, I literally could not see him my FEARS were so great. I remember thinking “I can’t stand it if I lost them ALL”
After the crash, my wonderful step father died a few months later, and then I met the P BF and that threw me back to square one, then last year my P-son tried to have me killed….so it was one thing right after another. I was barely able to breathe much less function.
The therapy for the PTSD of the plane crash now lets me look back at the other things that were so stressful, not just the crash, and to see them without the assciated fear, pain and grief. I can examine them without the emotions that were tied to them. I am a medical professional, and have several years of psych experience and I still can’t tell you how it worked, but it did for me.
I am still in the stage where I am examining my own part in allowing this to go on for my entire life—and waht it is about ME that made me allow abuse from anyone. That is the only part I can change, ME.
Even the anger and saddness is passing. The grief process always includes both of these aspects of emotion before acceptence can be reached.
My materanl grandfather was very close to me and I was about 30 when he died in a car wreck. It took me several years before I could think about him without missing him, or crying, and when the anger part of the grief process, I didn’t even know then what the “grief” process was, I got to where I could think about him without excess or painful emotions and remember him in a positive light, not a sad light.
I’m even working my way toward the P relationships that way. It helps to have good therapy, very much, and validation that we are “human” and under these circumstances that a “normal” response would be ABnormal.
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 @ 1:37pm
greengirl says:
STN,
Well, I can see that I’ve had some friendships and relationships in the past (all ended now) with some rather unhealthy people. I worked with a woman once years ago who I am absolutely positive was a P. She bullied myself and another employee (she was a supervisor) mercilessly, tried to have the other employee fired by lying about her to our boss (and the other employee was a single mother with 2 children to support), was involved in some shady business practices, etc. She also falsely claimed to have breast cancer so that people would give her sympathy/attention – and I mean, sobbed in front of clients about undergoing cancer treatment – and it was later discovered it was all a lie, she just did it for attention. It was also discovered (after I’d moved on and gotten another job, partially to get away from this woman), that she had stolen tens of thousands of dollars from the company.
It’s funny, because when all this was happening I did a ton of reading about workplace bullying, and I did make the connection that she was a sociopath then. But I didn’t really investigate in-depth was sociopathy was all about. And since then, in work situations, when someone even seems slightly dodgy, or I see even a small red flag, immediately I am on my guard that it could be another person like my former supervisor. Unfortunately, although I feel like I can now spot S’s a mile away in a work or friend environment, when it came to romantic relationships my guard was much more down, and I was willing to overlook red flags.
Ariadne,
What you said about childhood abuse teaching you to disconnect from your intuition – very, very bang on.
Neverneverland,
You will be able to let go of it, eventually. It is very hard, and I’m also finding that this is nothing (NOTHING) like a “normal” break up. But you will get there.
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Thursday, 27 March 2008 @ 3:57am
peggywhoever says:
neverneverland:
I think what is so different about the break-up with a Sociopath is the deep sense of betrayal. I told him, “I would rather have a hurtful truth than a sugar-coated lie”. But of course we only get lies, lies, lies. And it’s difficult for a kind and respectful person to grasp that anyone could treat us with such disdain. So we try to “figure it out” and ruminate on “what did we do wrong” until we figure out we were just a game piece, and they’re on to a new game. They are defective, not us.
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Thursday, 27 March 2008 @ 8:02am
STN says:
Hey Greengirl,
I had people like that in my past too. So many of them, and I never really caught on to the true nature of the dynamic until I fell in love with an N (at least on my end it was real love). Now I see them all around me, I can spot them in an instant.
I think my best defense is never letting weaknesses show in public. I used to wonder why people kept themselves protected that way. Now I know. Ns and SPs sense weaknesses a mile away, know exactly where they’re coming from, and exactly how to exploit them. I used to wonder why people put on a happy, strong, etc. face in public, no matter what. Now it’s my habit. It drives the Ns absolutely bonkers not to be able to find a chink in my armor, so that they can weasel their way in. I’m stronger than anyone I know…now (it’s a bit late, but better late than never). Of course, I reveal my vulnerabilities with people who are close to me, but that’s the whole point of a close relationship (selectivity). What I mean is that I used to be open in front of just about anyone, never really getting why or how I needed to protect those vulnerabilities.
Did you ever see these behaviors in yourself too (excessive openness/lack of boundaries)?
STN
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Monday, 31 March 2008 @ 11:56am
OxDrover says:
STN–
Just kind of flashed on something about your question about excessive openness/lack of boundaries.
In dogs, when one dog rolls over and exposes it’s throat to another the other dog is by “custom” supposed to QUIT biting.
In human terms the same way, when you “give up” the winner in the aggression contest is supposed to quit “aggressiing” but the Ps don’t do that—they keep on with the aggression and the biting. The “kicking you when you are down” script. WITHOUT MERCY. In fact, they seem to enjoy inflicting NO MERCY on you.
Like you, I am very selective who I display my vulnerabilities to NOW. I wasn’t always that way and I paid the price for it. But I think in retrospect it was “tuition money” well spent because I have learned from it. AT LAST, at least. LOL
I won’t say I can always spot the N or P, but I know I can spot many of them now, because I am vigilent in looking for RED FLAGS and I will NOT ignore a red flag ever again.
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Monday, 31 March 2008 @ 12:34pm
lesley says:
For anyone who’s looking for a shrink, I just learned that if you google “Psychology Today,” they have a webpage where you can put in your zip code and find shrinks in your area listed according to interests and specialities. There’s no category for “help in getting over a sociopath,” but there is a listing, “Trauma.”
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Monday, 7 April 2008 @ 4:56pm
LilOrphan says:
STN
Obviously I’m not greengirl, but definitely does this describe me…
“Did you ever see these behaviors in yourself too (excessive openness/lack of boundaries)?”
Much moreso many years ago, when the S and I first met, but even to this day, I tend to be way too open. Boundaries are better, particularly with most social situations, but not in love situations. You know, I still must have an idea that love means not having boundaries. Maybe over time it does, with a good partner. It doesn’t with kids, though (they just tapdance all over you!) or work. You have to have them in both those situations.
It sort of goes against my romanticized notion that there is one person in this world with whom you can be completely unguarded, who you can trust that much.
Like I said to my youngest this weekend: I’m not in the business of training people to be fully-actualized human beings who care about others. By her age, she should have that part down…and even though I’m her mom, at some point she needs to nurture her own heart and spine and not wait to be told to be a good human being — just be one because it’s the right thing to be.
Felt that way about the S and feel it about any guy: I refuse now to try to lead a horse to think. Or something.
If they can’t behave like adults with character, morals and heart, I don’t want ‘em.
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Monday, 7 April 2008 @ 9:00pm
Genevieve79 says:
OMG Glinda I met my ex speed dating when I didn’t really want to go. Says it all really lol!!
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Saturday, 16 May 2009 @ 8:02pm
Glinda says:
Yeah, Genevieve, speed dating is to a s/n is probably what a henhouse is to a fox!
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Saturday, 16 May 2009 @ 10:43pm
justabouthealed says:
LilOrphan …me too! I had my facebook page set up so anyone could see it and then I noticed NO ONE else that I could find had their page that way. I couldn’t see any reason to hide it. I’m real on it, nothing I’m ashamed of. Our home is IMPOSSIBLE to find, it really is, we don’t have a physical address, and I don’t talk about trips until I’m back from them, etc. etc. But I guess I shouldn’t be so willing to let anyone look at my stuff! Well, and if they did, they’d see I have so many big dogs and a big husband, so I doubt anyone would bother me. But yes, I’m a very open book. Learning not to be so open now. Love the point you made to your youngest and how you feel about any guy. PERFECTO! And even with the right man in a long term relationship, you have some boundaries, because some things you just don’t want to share. Like when I’m sick in the bathroom, leave me alone!
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Saturday, 16 May 2009 @ 10:45pm
sabrina says:
lilorphan-I think what you are saying is like i used to say to my x n/P when he tried to excuse his uncaring/bad behavior is that “I dont have time to wait until you become human.”
Boy- would I have been waiting…
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Sunday, 17 May 2009 @ 12:40am
akitameg says:
I can so relate to what you are all writing about.
it really pisses me off that my ex PRETENDED to be “just friends” with me the first year. Therefore– my boundaries went down b/c I GAINED TRUST WITH HIM. He never made a move or anything. He did this for a year. of course he learned of my depression and being adopted, etc.
I woke up at 5:30 jolted from yet another realistic dream about him. I can’t stand this. I feel thereis no hope of getting on with life. My life is nothing of what I have worked towards. I have lost everything.
I started some major antidepressants Mon and I can so feel them working. One horrible side effect though– one is making my TMJ- nighttime clenching worse.
Got my thyroid tested cuz this weight loss– even though I am eating the same is ridiculous. Got note from doc’s– saying it is normal– How can that be?
I send love to you all even though I am in a horrible place AGAIN. First day on job tomorrow. WEnt to training last week although I did not need it cuz I have done this for 11 years.
I feel I will never be happy or get over this.
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Sunday, 17 May 2009 @ 10:15am
James says:
“Got my thyroid tested cuz this weight loss– even though I am eating the same is ridiculous. Got note from doc’s– saying it is normal– How can that be?”
akitameg,
Many of us lost weight, well I know I did. drop almost 30 lbs in less then a month. I never lost weight so quick before so it did scare me as well. My weight is now back to normal but this does happen to some of us. No doubt due to depression and stress. If you got a good report back from the doctor I wouldn’t sorry about it. I sure your normal weight will return after awhile…
“I feel I will never be happy or get over this.”
Yes, you will but it will take both time and effort on your part. Stay strong stay brave stay healthy and it will happen!
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Sunday, 17 May 2009 @ 10:36am
James says:
“I wouldn’t sorry about it. I sure your normal weight will return after awhile… ”
sorry update: “I wouldn’t worry about it”…
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Sunday, 17 May 2009 @ 10:37am
ErinBrockovich says:
Akitameg:
Dreams are great! Write them down….it your body’s way of processing and working through it and out of your subconscience. I know they are not pleasant and haunt you through the day…..but they are GOOD! Embrace the healing.
You WILL feel normal….You will feel better than normal….but first you need to go through the healing….it takes time, sometimes years….it’s not a scraped knee that scabs over and goes away….in a few weeks…..take it moment by moment, soon day by day, then week by week…………
It could be adrenal fatigue….hyperthyroid symptoms usually come with a rapid heartrate…..your body’s furnice is turned up to high, hence weight loss…..
Look up symptoms of thyroid disorders AND adrenal fatigue.
AF is associated with long term stress.
HEY…..I remember when I first got sick….dang, I lost a ton of weight in 3 weeks…..my weight has gone up and down immensly since my recovery, HUGE fluctuations….it’s crazy…unfortunately I am Hypo thyroid and keep ballooning up…..even though I am not eating….I have gained 40lbs and HATE IT….but really, for now it’s the least of my worries.
You will be happy….continue to walk the path and not give creedance and don’t emphasize each stressor so much. You will find a balance.
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Sunday, 17 May 2009 @ 12:39pm
akitameg says:
James and ErinB–
thank you for your support.
when will I stop missing him? and why do I if I found out he was an S? I have been in NC since Oct. 4th.
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Sunday, 17 May 2009 @ 2:15pm
shabbychic2 says:
akitameg: I struggled for a long time, as you have. It seems like you have let your mind convince you that you will never be happy and you will never get over it. You need to look in the mirror and say “I am going to be happy and I am going to get over this!” Then you need to repeat that in your mind all day, it takes practice to control your thoughts, I know because I struggle with it on a daily basis, but I am a firm believer in what you put out there to the universe in energy and thoughts is what you get back. It has helped me a lot to talk back to those bad thoughts, to tell my ego (which does nothing but lie) that I am ok and that I am going to control my thoughts, it’s like there are 2 of me inside and I’m going to win (the part of me that loves me, that knows I’m worthwhile, that wants to have a good life). I refuse to give in to all the bad thoughts my ego manufactures constantly. I say to myself “No bad thougts, I will control my thoughts, my positive thoughts are strong and my negative thoughts are weak”. Please, even if you don’t feel like doing it, start practicing saying good things to yourself, write them down, buy a little postitive affirmations book by Louise Hay or Google “positive affirmations” an write down the ones that speak to you, keep them in your purse, say them to yourself over and over, it helps, YOU AND I are stronger than that damn voice in our heads.
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Sunday, 17 May 2009 @ 2:25pm
justabouthealed says:
shabbychic2: great advice. I went through some deputy training, and they show a deputy who survived getting shot numerous times at very close range, who still managed to get out a call for help. She survived. They stress the will to live and the determination to live can make the difference in so many situations. They taught to say an affirmation every time we looked at a clock. “I will survive”. To this day, I still say that every time I see a clock. Each person finds the message they most need to say to themselves. But it is a powerful tool.
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Sunday, 17 May 2009 @ 3:15pm
justabouthealed says:
Another technique….our brain is searching for an answer about our encounter. That is part of our pain. Accepting the reality of who the P/S/N was and is.
But we can give our brain another puzzle to work on. Just say a question to yourself a couple of times a day, then forget it. Keep doing it every day. Soon you brain will start delivering answers to you, without you thinking about it. THAT will become an “intrusive thought”. Lately I’ve been asking “Why am I so happy?” ….because I was feeling a bit down. And you know what? Intrusive thoughts are popping into my head every now and then about why I AM happy! I love my pets, I love the lilacs, I love the hugs I get, etc…..
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Sunday, 17 May 2009 @ 3:19pm
learnthelesson says:
Akitameg –
Ok …the good news….CONGRATULATIONS YOUR THYROID TEST CAME BACK NORMAL. THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN ONE MORE THING TO PUT YOU OVER THE EDGE…I ASSUME MAYBE HE DID OTHER BLOODWORK AS WELL? AND IF SO THAT ALL CAME BACK NORMAL TOO?! THIS IS GREAT REASON TO CELEBRATE..OUR HEALTH IS FIRST AND FOREMOST AND ITS ONE LESS THING FOR YOU TO HAVE TO DEAL WITH ON YOUR SHOULDERS…We have to get you to a better place soon though, or this will start to take a toll on your health…and we wont be able to point to the S!!!! It falls on us to make sure we stay healthy, eat healthy, regain our strength and our way AGAIN.
Secondly, NEW JOB TOMORROW! Way to go! I know the amount of pay was a concern for you, but for right now I personally think this IS THE BEST STEP AND DIRECTION FOR YOU. IM PROUD OF THIS MOVE!!!! Its so hard for us to get back on our feet and get even one foot in the door let alone what you have accomplished with two feet in the door, and training is always a drag, but somehow theres always something new to learn or refresh ourselves with.
The new meds…TOWANDA…you feel improvement…TRIPLETOWANDA… Can your dentist make a mouth guard for TMJ??
Much love and positive thoughts and continued strength to you from me…sometimes its traumatic for us to step out of the comfort of the hell we are in…that sounds so messed up…but it makes sense…often when we try to get out of it…move on…we are subconsiously drawn back to it (the place/stage/state of mind of “cant believe what he did, or simply reliving it everyday stuck in it unknowingly “comfortably numb” for us… its the point where it now becomes 100 percent up to us to cut the cord from the past and start taking breaths of fresh air in our future…your cord is so close to being cut….new meds…clean bill of health…new job…unknown…. or staying in the “comfort” of grief and solace and hurt and pain…when you are ready to cut and leap forward you are going to blow us all away leaps and bounds….I just know it!!! Your journey has been long and god awful…your healing and learning and growing has been a challenge… your future is going to be skys the limit…its truly in your hands, when you are ready to get back to being YOU at your best!
YOU ARE DOING IT! Just have to make the choices now, to choose the future not the past…when you are ready!! xoxo
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Sunday, 17 May 2009 @ 3:38pm
Tilly says:
James”:
I lost a stone in 6 weeks when we first split up. Than I went back to normal after three months. Now I’m piling it on!
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Sunday, 17 May 2009 @ 4:14pm
akitameg says:
Shabby– thanks Any chance you saw Larry King last night? If not– they may reply it tonight and it was AWESOME. About Karma and thoughts and ego and all of what you have mentioned.
or see if you can find it on internet.
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Sunday, 17 May 2009 @ 6:19pm
akitameg says:
Learn the Lesson–
what a great post to me from you. Thank you.
I hate that it feels that when I have these nightmares/dreams about him at night, that I am back to ground zero. But maybe the is not true.
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Sunday, 17 May 2009 @ 6:23pm
shabbychic2 says:
akitameg: no, I missed seeing that Larry King show, dang it!
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Sunday, 17 May 2009 @ 8:08pm
Stargazer says:
Akitameg,
Stay strong! Congratulations on starting a new job! I think you’ll find the distraction very welcome. I believe, as everyone else says, that you will get through this if you can just stick it out.
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Monday, 18 May 2009 @ 1:14am
ErinBrockovich says:
Dear Learned:
I am very proud of you for ’shaking it up’ with the new job!
It will be a great change for you, that will lead you down a path of new discovery.
A good excuse to meet new people and be in a new environment.
REMEMBER>…..You can be whoever you want to be….show them your best self and keep that smile on your face. Soon it will be contagious!
Good luck, have a wonderful first real day and you will feel great after your accomplishment!!!!
HAVE A GREAT MONDAY!!!!
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Monday, 18 May 2009 @ 3:04am
ErinBrockovich says:
OOOPPPSS…AKITAMEG:
I must be tired….It’s YOU that’s starting the new job….
The above post is for you dear…..
Sorry…..
Also…keep embracing the dreams….it’s processing!
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Monday, 18 May 2009 @ 3:07am
akitameg says:
ERinB
Thank you so much!
thanks also to STARGAZER.
I did not have any nightmares last night. Wow. I had taken a mg of Ativan before bed– maybe that helps?
bless you all and please think of me as I am at my new little job!
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Monday, 18 May 2009 @ 5:44am