Lance Armstrong said, “Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.”
When I was in an abusive relationship with a sociopath, the pain was overwhelming. I quit trying to get through it and gave into it. I quit and felt like it would last forever.
“Nothing lasts forever – not even your troubles” so said psychologist, Arnold H. Glasgow.
Trouble is, when I’m in trouble I ‘always’ think in absolutes, like never and forever. When I’m in never and forever land, I tell myself tomorrow is too far away to even bother caring about what happens today. I tell myself to quit moving through the turmoil because it is a forever deal. I’m never going to get through it. I’m never going to get away from it. I’m never going to get away.
When I was with the sociopath, I couldn’t see the possibility of freedom when I was mired in my denial of what was happening in my life. I kept telling myself that because I said I loved him, I had to stay true to my love forever. I had to stay true to him, forever and could never leave. I never let myself think about the alternative, “What if I could leave? What if I didn’t love him? what if….?”
Because I told myself I could never leave him, I couldn’t see that I was the architect of my distress. Caught up in the despair of believing ‘the pain of loving him’ would last forever, I convinced myself to quit trying to do anything different, to think anything different. I told myself there was no freedom for me, just this ennui of dying more and more every day.
I work at a homeless shelter. Recently, I had a friend tell me he believes that many of the homeless in our city ‘receive with the expectation they should receive and see no merit in contributing to the very institution or the society that gives them succour’. While I understand his point of view, and on the surface acknowledge there is some ‘truth’ to what he says, I also understand what happens to an individual when they become so lost they see no hope of ever finding themselves again.
In all of us there is a dark-side to our psyches. That place where light cannot find a foothold in the quicksand of negative thinking that pulls us down. Some will never trip over their shadows, some will never fall so far from grace they lose sight of the light. For those who meet up with sociopaths or who lose their way on the road of life, however, darkness will fall as they plummet into the despair of believing they will always be lost to the light. Devoid of hope, they will not open their eyes to the possibility of letting go of never and forever being there.
My life with the sociopath was like that. I fell into the dark-side and quit trying to swim to the shores of sensibility. I gave up on me and gave into him. The pain of my existence, of being me, of having to walk around in my own body was overwhelming. I wanted to die and thus did everything I could to make it possible.
The sociopath became my escape from living. He was my own personal suicide mission.
I see it happening everyday at the shelter where I work. People on suicide missions with a destiny they fear will never come.
And yet, despite the bleakness of their outlooks their human spirit keeps struggling to survive. To rise above the cesspool of negative thinking that inexorably pulls them into the vortex of their despair.
There is no easy cure for pain. Yesterday my gallbladder flared up and for a moment I felt as if the pain would last forever. I knew it wouldn’t and so I breathed deeply. Let the tears flow and waited for it to subside. It did.
Like all pain, it disbursed, eased, backed-off and was replaced with something else. In my case, a refreshing sleep from which I awoke to a beautiful blue sky-day filled with love and laughter. A walk with the puppies and a wonderful friend. A shopping trip to one of my favourite stores to scope out storage solutions for my new home and a birthday dinner for one of my dearest friends.
It was a day that started with pain and ended with love and laughter. The pain subsided, its memory but a distant reminder I must watch more carefully what I eat. The love and laughter, they live on, forever and a day, to remind me to never give up on living my life on the light-side of my thinking.
I have thought about this a lot lately. This month I broke off a 6 month affair that I was having with a sociopath. The hardest part for me is knowing I will never have any closure. I’m not even sure what that would be. There will always be a part of me that wants to hear more of his lies. I realize I became addicted to them. I needed to believe them, I wanted to hear them, even if my intuition was telling me something completely different. I have been trying to understand what is so broken in me that I needed someone else to fix. Why was I vulnerable to him? I find myself reading over our e-mail correspondence trying to make sense out of what took place. Part of me wants to find him on-line, part of me is disappointed that he is never there. I realize that it is a blessing that he is not trying to manipulate me to keep it going. He is so charming and funny and I truly have a sense of loss over the friendship. That’s what is so pernicious about sociopaths: they are brilliant at telling us what we need to hear and being what we need them to be–they can be the perfect man really–at least as long as we serve their purpose and until their boredom kicks in. The person I was involved with is not the parasitic type–more the “Secret Monster” variety–concerned with being perceived as the “nice guy”. He found me at a weak point in my life and swooped in and turned everything upside down. The more time I spend here and in other forums on Sociopathy, the more I realize how the entire concept is very incompatable with my core beliefs on human nature. I always had the belief that people are inherently “good” that we are all “one” and that no one is beyond redemption. That everyone has the capacity for change. The challenge for me is to know that this is not always the case, but to not allow that to change me, to harden me, to stop seeing the glass as “half full”. I am trying to not allow this experience to ruin me. I have to believe there is a silver lining in all of this. I know it will be transformative in some way. I need to be patient with myself right now.
distraught: my experience was identical to yours. Part of my great pain is the loss of the friendship, laughter, closeness, special places and things that were ours to do. He, whether fake or not, was really the perfect man. He gave of himself to me and at least appeared to care and to be trying. There were several huge stumbles with that involving other woman and lying to me – but yes I yearn for all our conversations and for probably the things he did that were what I wanted and needed him to be, that he perfected on the surface so eloquently. And there were the many many times things didnt seem right or make sense, huge red flags and bad feeling intuition.
As for the pain being temporary, I have been in and out of this for 2 years, not yet once being able to get past the temporary pain, into freedom. This time, I am so determined to make it over the hurdle and see to the other side. Pain cant last forever, right?
What is so hard for me to understand about myself, is that all the struggles and the heartaches I went through with him… why are those not enough to send me running like the wind away from him??? But rather having to force myself to keep away, let it go and not reach out to him for one more nice evening together. He lets me be the one to break up and to come back. Like Secret Monster described, his control is in manipulating me to do the leaving and returning. I would be so angry at myself if I broke down and went back. But why is this even an option in my mind?
distraught and finding myself: i totally agree with you both. it ii harder to get over them i think because they were so perfect and there is not closure. i read on here somewhere it is not like getting over a normal relationship. you dont just get over a s path. i am two years not being with him but we are friends and like you he makes me do all the calling and getting together to catch up so still manipulated in this way. but i still miss all the perfect things he did he was very much the perfect partner in some ways too. but i think its more like a death or losing someone you love forever. i lost a brother when i was a little girl he died. and i saw my parents go thru hell of losing him. but the pain is still there i think you just learn to live with it, or without them. eventually it gets easier. i also am training my self not to think about him so much i distract my self, and try not to call him when i think of him its sooo hard but i am trying. we were incredibly close. i try to remind my self of all the bad things instead of the good times. when you recover i also think the best thing when you feel ready is to try to meet a good man who is not like the s paths and it helps not think about them so much. i think lonliness makes it easier to go back and to think about them more . i really want a relationship with a good person i want to feel that a gain and have that closeness without the doubts the second guessing and the distrust i felt with s path. so i am trying to meet someone special now i feel ready. anyone else feel this?
For me, “getting over” the sociopath was not something I chose to do. I chose instead, to move through my feelings, my fears, my angst, my anxiety, my sorrow by letting my emotions flow — and by consciously choosing to do what is loving and caring of me.
When thoughts of him invaded, I noticed them and said to myself, “Oh look. there’s a thought of him.” And I let it flow through. I didn’t judge myself of condemn myself for thinking of him. I didn’t try to hold onto the thoughts or to change them, I simply let them flow through without stopping in for a twisted visit in my mind.
I consciously reminded myself that I am worth more than he ever could or would have given me. I consciously chose to do, think and say only those things that supported me in my goal of healing.
I wrote and I wrote — about my feelings, my fears, my sorrow. I did not write about ‘him’ per se. About what he did. I did not remind myself of how ‘perfect’ he was and instead, chose to tell myself, He is the Lie. When those thoughts snuck in unawares about how ‘perfect’ he was, I reminded myself — He is the lie.
I reminded myself that thoughts pulling me back towards him were my ‘sick’ side. That diseased side that was hurt and wounded and so very, very sick in relationship to him.
I consciously thought about being ‘whole’. About what kind of person I wanted to be — and then I focused everything I about me on my wholeness. He was the hole — without him, I can live above ground, flying free.
I also chose to tell msyelf — being with him was the hard part. Healing is the joyous part — and when necessary, I acted my way into my feelings of joy.
Everyone writes about the loss of friendship, laughter, closeness — etc. that we had with the sociopath — truth is, we never had any of those things, because everything about him is the lie. Those feelings were simply the mirror images he reflected back to us to draw us into his web of deciet. They are also what he’s counting on that will keep us stuck in always wanting him.
The sociopath formerly in my life counted on my ‘need’ for him to keep me stuck. He counted on my never coming to my senses — and for a long time I obliged.
Falling into these relationships hurts. It’s up to each of us, however, to turn up for ourselves and be committed to do what it takes to have the life we want — without him.
Distraught, being patient with yourself right now is very important — treating yourself with tender loving care is imperative.
NO Contact is a critical part of healing from these relationships — that includes, No Contact in your mind. Put up STOP signs. Put up NO SOCIOPATH zones in your mind. Do not let him steal any more of your peace of mind — claim your right to be free and stay committed to your journey in love.
Is it possible, Finding Myself that you are fighting with what you know to be true and what you still don’t want to admit? In letting yourself yearn for the lie, are you denying your truth? You were abused by a man with evil intent — What if you don’t ‘force’ yourself to stay away, or be angry with yourself? What if you love yourself for all you’re worth and acknowledge that you deserve freedom — not the pain of being with him?
Jules — loneliness does make it easier to go back — but a new man does not fill the loneliness gap, you do. After almost five years away from the socoiopath, I am in love with an amazing man. He is kind, caring, funny. He loves me exactly the way I am — I still have voices in my head that whisper — don’t believe him. He’s lying. I’ve known him 3+ years — Trusting him is not about what he’s doing, it’s about the fears within me. I know I have triggers in relationship. It is up to me to stay conscious of my triggers and to do what is loving, kind and caring of me — and the world around me.
They were never perfect. Nothing they did was perfect. Nothing about that relationship was perfect. They only gave us a perfect reflection of our dreams — and then the mirror cracked. He is the cracked mirror. Staying in friendship with someone who is cracked up keeps me from ever seeing the beauty of my world without him.
For me, I had to be loving with myself. I had to bring my will to bear by consciously, knowingly, willingly letting all thought and interaction with him go. My life depended upon it.
ML
I’m really struggling to treat myself well in all this. I think we all go through phases, much like the ones involved in grieving any loss, only this loss is strangely profound because we know we participated in it. Like all of you, I’ve spent a lot of time desconstructing what happened and trying to figure out where I purposefully disconnected my brain and allowed all this to take place.
I know that in my case, I thought I could handle him. I knew he was coming on too strong and this couldn’t possibly be the real thing, but I was having fun. He was so insistent that I was his One True Love that I began to believe he thought I was, even though I was unsure yet if my own feelings matched his because it was too soon to tell. Yet here was this seemingly sincere, sweet, hurt man, who confessed ALL his past sins to me and said I was the one who could turn his life around and make him want to be faithful to someone for the rest of his life. It was an enormous amount of responsibility, and I shouldered it, thinking I could prove to him that goodness and kindness could prevail over his cold, dark anxiety. He wanted to believe they could, and who can blame him? We both wanted to have that dream, but it was HIS dream to begin with. I started going along to prove to him that the world is a good and kind place because I believed that. He had me hooked. He wanted something proven to him, and I was absolutely determined to prove it. True love never waivers, never falters, and is never jealous according to St. Paul. I set out to prove that my love was all of the things he feared it could never be. And no matter how hard I tried, it wasn’t EVER enough. My love didn’t falter. His did. He cheated, he lied, he took, and my love didn’t falter because I was trying to show him the path of decency and goodness. What hubris!
Why did I do this to myself? Why did I have to prove that I was all of those good, kind and virtuous things? Because I’m human, and I know it. I want to be a good person, it’s how I was raised. I’ve always accepted the fact that most people like me because I’m NICE, but I know that I’m not perfect. He played on my imperfections so beatifully! I had HURT his feelings when I was kind to others. I should only be kind to HIM. If I spoke to anyone else, I was opening my heart to someone else, and that was cheating! But I needed to prove I wasn’t jealous by allowing him to have his freedoms.
I had to engineer my own escape and make him so angry that he doesn’t contact me anymore. I still feel the loss sometimes. But I exposed him for exactly who and what he is to several of our mutual friends and a million other women on dontdatehimgirl.com as well as womansavers.com. He was furious. How could I do such a thing? Well, I’m tired of being nice. I’m ready to take care of me. Nice isn’t as important to me as it once was. I’m the only one I need to prove anything to. I do not need his approval. I am good enough. I was happy and fine when I met him, and now I’m broken, but I’ll recover. He never will. He has no conscience, no heart, and knows nothing at all of compassion. He wanted me to live his dream, and it became our dream, and it turned into an ugly nightmare. I’m so relieved to be awake again and able to see light!
I’m a good person. I have ethics. I have a sense of responsibility. I take care of my children and myself and my pets. I hold down a solid job. I am kind to others and am never needlessly hurtful. And most importantly, I can acknowledge that I am NOT perfect, and I don’t have to be. I am adequate, though. I am enough. I’m enough on my own without any man’s approval. I am living proof that we can get through this, and I’m self righteously angry as hell from time to time. Most of all, I’m done with him. I don’t answer his calls, I don’t read his emails or text messages. I try to forgive myself for having wistful thoughts about that dream that was supposed to come true. I’d rather be awake.
Notquitebroken — what a very profound, beautiful and powerful message.
Thank you.
On the note of not being ‘nice’. I just gave up renting a house I’ve rented since returning to this city after the sociopath debacle ended 4+ years ago. It was sold last year to a developer and his intent is to tear it down, along with the other three houses he purchased on the street, sometime this year.
The new landlord has on several occassions been very difficult — and quite the bully at times. I gave notice at the beginning of January and moved out at the end of the month. I haven’t been able to get the landlord to call me back all last week so that we could do a walk-through, I could return my keys and get my damage deposit back. I left 3 messages, decided that was enough and so this morning filed a complaint with the appropriate government body. They take damage deposit abuse very seriously.
In the past, I would have worried about causing the landlord trouble. I would have thought I need to phone and tell him what I’m doing. No more. He is accountable for himself. I am responsible for me. If he choses to act this way, that is not my responsibility. I need to stand up for me.
I caught myself this morning, however, thinking, I should call and let him know what I’m doing. Wrong. I’ve given him many chances to do the right thing. He’s choosing not to.
Enough. I can live without the $1200 (eventually, I know it will be returned) — I can’t live with compromising my principles to allow for the unacceptable to be acceptable in my life.
It is very freeing to be in a place where I find myself willing to do the tough thing because I know it’s the right thing to do.
Playing into a bully weakens me and gives him an advantage.
I never need to play with bully’s again.
Not quite broken — thank you again. Your post if very powerful.
ML
Wow notquitebroken,
You should, or maybe I should, read your post over and over again. (Sorry for saying “should”) :o) I love how you are standing up for yourself. I will admit that this is something I struggle with kind of… I mean I can be outspoken and in lots of ways, I do stand up for myself… yet I have noticed that whatever people say about me, I tend to take on and feel bad about it. Like if someone said, “You are stupid” I would have to go into a big explanation why that is not true.. instead of recognizing how abusive and inappropriate it was for that person to say that. And instead of seeing their flaw in that they would go there.
M.L. I love how you stand up for yourself too and walk away from the Bully’s game. You called him on his actions the best way… by not engaging in the game and going straight to the source that will handle this for you.
I learn from reading here and see how you all navigate life. I know I need to make some changes and standing up for myself in an effective way is one thing I need to work on.
I know this is an older thread but I just now read it.
M.L. Thank you. Between this essay, your replies back to the bloggers and what Aloha said yesterday, I feel quite a bit better and now I have a more distinct goal for myself. It might be a long bumpy road but I guess I will just have to dig out my 4-wheel drive.
Dear Perky,
Thanks for bringing up this thread, some how Imissed it and I thought ai had read every thread on here, and thank you M L for another profound and great post….a little late…but better that than …. (amile)
It sort of hit me too because I have been a person who wants PATIENCE NOW! And when I am in pain it is “never gonna stop”–I try to be conscious of using “Never” and “always” etc. and substitute for them with “frequently, sometimes, occasioally” etc. There really are so few absolutes I think.
Your comments about the unresponsive landlord with the failure to call you back, and your explinations of your feelings about “calling the supervisors” made me giggle, because it was a perfect description of what I would have done and THOUGHT as well, the “guilty” feeling of “I should tell him I called the heat on him” Laugh
BOUNDARIES! Setting boundaries. I try to hard to be “nice” and “reasonable” that sometimes i bend so far backwards that I stick my head between my knees from the back! What your friend said, M. L. about people “sometimes receive with the expectation they should receive and see no merit in contributing to the very institution or the society that gives them succor” made me think about a difficult boundary I had to reinforce yesterday.
A few months ago a torando hit about a mile north of my place and the girl who lives in (rents) my son’s house from us had her horses at her mother’s farm up the road a mile or so. The fences and barns were all knocked down and she asked if she could bring them here to my farm for a while to keep them. Since I have the pasture rented to another woman who raises “high dollar horses” I told the girl she could keep her 2 horses in my “hay pen” (a small pasture in which we stack baled hay until we feed it to the animals) I told her she would have to move her horses before we needed that space for hay storage.
Well, the hay is baled and it is sitting out because her horses are still there. It also turns out that she knows so little about horses that one which is 3 years old doesn’t even know how to lead and is so viscious that it bit her breast a while back and almost amputated it from her body. Turned out her horse (the wild and mean one) is now lame in both front feet. One from some injury that we can’t see, the other from hoof neglect and there is no way to treat the horse since it is wild. Anyway this girl is very attached to this horse and though it is possible to take and break the horse, she does NOT know how, does not have the money to hire it done, and is not interested in anything but “keeping possession” of her horse, but I had to go up yesterday and tell her that she MUST move her horses to other accommodations as we need to put the hay away in that space. The fence surrounding this area will have to be completely rebuilt because her horses have trashed it reaching over for bits of grass on the outside because quite frankly she hasn’t fed them enough, and when I started to as nicely as I could tell her that she must move her horses she started complaining that the horse’s one hoof must have been injured on a “stob” (tree root) in the pen.
Now, she has NOT been charged rental for this pen, nor am I insisting on repairs or even mentioned that her horses have ruined the fence, but now that she has received “succor” from me for FREE it doesn’t seem to have been good enough to suit her, and certainally not long enough to suit her. [Laugh] That quote just sort of struck me as very much an explination of her expectations.
Though I know it isn’t a “positve” thought, I sometimes feel like “no good deed goes unpunished.”
Excellent post as always 🙂 This phrase in particular stood out to me :
“Because I told myself I could never leave him, I couldn’t see that I was the architect of my distress. Caught up in the despair of believing ’the pain of loving him’ would last forever, I convinced myself to quit trying to do anything different, to think anything different. I told myself there was no freedom for me, just this ennui of dying more and more every day.”
That is exactly how it was for me – I gave up trying new things or trying to fight for some semblance of freedom and autonomy – thinking maybe things would calm down if I did that. Of course they didn’t – nothing I ever did was enough for him – not even killing my own spirit slowly over years. I really think there is some truth in thinking they want us to get so distraught that we kill ourselves or at least attempt it. I have seen several posters write about this very subject – I don’t think our despair is just an unfortunate side effect of their selfish actions … I am starting to think it is tactical on their part – that they like to see how low we can go. It’s so sick – especially the fact that they act normal in front of the rest of the world so if we try to raise any kind of alarm we come off as the ‘crazy lady’ or the person with mental health issues.
The pain of being stuck there was really unspeakable – I still can’t express it accurately no matter how hard I try. Like you, I have written lots since my enlightenment as to his true nature. The subject matter is ME though – it’s not about what he did, but rather my experience of living with a crazy, sick and toxic person.
I am so glad I took a chance on me and risked dying when leaving him. He had me convinced I couldn’t survive on my own and that leaving him would be the end of my life, my joy, my light and my vitality. I told him he was a liar and I didn’t believe him and took a chance on me. He was wrong – leaving him was the beginning of my life and although I still hurt over the betrayal, it is nothing compared to the endless pain of being with him and being deceived on a daily basis by someone who wished me constant harm.
I use what I have learned. When I recognise other women struggling in relationships that are abusive, I name what I see and validate their experience. I speak about the probable patterns they are going through and share some of my own thinking from when I was stuck in the darkness. I also encourage them to take a chance on themselves because they’re worth it and the other side is just a small jump compared to the marathons they’ve been running for the SPN. I hope in small ways I can help others by sharing my own experience and giving a little hope. Even just planting the seeds of independence in women who have lost hope lights up their eyes again and reconnects them with their wild woman who has gone underground to survive the assaults. I try to be the person I wish I had had when I was stuck there.
I also share with new friends what I have been through and why I am so careful of trusting new people. I clue them into personality disorders and the mammoth impact they have on relationships – especially when undiagnosed and unrecognised. I know the experience will fade in time and become less large in my life, but for now it is still big and I am still learning to integrate it into my history and current outlook. Telling the story in different versions helps me to normalise it, to accept it and to make it real. There have been many occasions where I have doubted my assessment of what he is ‘Maybe he was just depressed’ ‘Maybe there was something more I could have done’ You will know all these – we all do it after the relationship is over. Telling the story solidifies the reality in my memory and strengthens my resolve to stay far away from him. The memory can play tricks when away from him – make you remember only the good and sentimental times. When I pour through the couple of hundred pages I wrote about it, I realise there can never be any hope for him – he is very sick and the best I can do is stay away.
Thankyou for sharing your pain – you do for me what I do for others. Your pain has brought comfort, validation and understanding to countless people on this site. Thankyou for having the courage to share your pain and your triumph – it gives me hope as I move through the pain.