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.
Schnoodles.
I wish there were in depth articles here too that address that fear. I’ve only seen a few come here that have NOT ruminated about whether or not he’s happier without you or with another woman. This is where learning about pathology, integrating and accepting that knowledge is so important. It takes a LONG time to accept. But that kind of ruminating and questions are part of what the spath slimes us with once he’s gone, as well as the presentations that he’s happier without us or with someone else, it’s all part and parcel of the many masks they wear, particularly in public. I really enjoy the research being done about brain differences in pathologicals as well. That helps tie in the science part of it, which I really enjoy, I’d like to find more articles about research that is recent being done on the brain differences of psychopaths. From what I’ve read so far, it’s very very interesting!
LL
LL & Candy ~ Thank you.
Once I heard the words “HE IS A PHSYCOPATH” by my current BF, I started to delve into everything I could about the topic with a vengence. First to figure out if I was crazy or not. Then finding out that he fit all the markers to a “T”, except physical abuse to me. He did get physical with ex-wife, but they are both beaters and psychopaths.
The more I read the more knowledge I gained, the more emotional solitude I felt, the more I became the witty and funny Schnoodle again and finally the more strength I mustered to take the SOB to court to get my money. (After he was served last week, he called me over the weekend and left a voicemail singing two love songs to me in a drunken state, then said in a devlish voice “I got an attorney. It’s going to court”. That made my skin crawl and all those feelings of craziness started to enter into my head. Not loving memories but fear. PISSED ME OFF! Then he had the nerve to text me several times that he loves me and that he will always love me and that I am still the greatest person he has ever met. MAKES ME SICK TO MY STOMACH. I have been NC since October of 2010 although he has texted me many times, I ignore him completely. I can’t believe I was so in love with such a childish a**hole.
I am attending agressive and intensive therapy to erase the bastard from my mind. These voicemails and texts are his phsycotic side coming out trying to intimidate me like he did for 7 years. But little does he know that I have the support of my family, counselor, BF and my friends at LF.
schnoodle64 – Yep. Everything falls into place once we have the ‘diagnosis’. I thought my spath was not physical. Then I found out he’d beat up his ex 6 times (police were involved)
I know the others here on LF will commend you on NC since Oct however while you read his texts and listen to his voicemails he is still ‘renting a room in your head’
Spaths swing between good things and bad things and that is what messes with our head.
I’m so pleased that your family/friends are supporting you and that you have a counsellor to help you through this.
This is a brilliant site with so much good advice and support.
Schnoodle ~ thank you for the great article links! It is truly enlightening to know that some of the “jerks” I dated in my past were really not “jerks” but P’s.
I’ve been looking, but have not found much information on the female side of this coin. My husband’s X is the reason that I found this site. We will only have to be dealing with her regularly for about another 2 years, stepson is nearly 16 now. X has been using him as a pawn in her control game with R (my husband) for all these years. My only hope is that stepson is not growing into a P himself.
Thanks to all who have found the need to be here. It is a wonderful safe place to share and learn and HEAL.
(((hugs)))
Hi LL,
I am not desperately looking for a man. yes, I did feel empty every now and then, but I was content with my life.
I went thru a major abdominal surgery in 2009, for my ovaries and uterus and there were some complications and a 1.5 hour surgery became a 6 hour surgery and I came out with six tubes jutting out of all my orifices.
I recovered well and this made me feel, life is short, if we meet someone nice and who clicks with my personality, that would made my life more complete.
3 months after my surgery, I went to Europe for a meeting and that is where I met him. he did not know about my surgery until much later in our emails, but he clicked with my personality so well, smart, surgeon in my field, witty, humor, etc etc and that is where I was lead in and invited denial after denial as i wanted to make it work so much with him.
no, I have no abandonment issues, grew up in a balanced family, had a divorce many years ago, no children, the divorce was on grounds of professional clash, differing interests and mutual and did not make me grieve much.
so, that is where the problem lies, I liked him so much becoz he was all that I was ever looking for in a man. he was my God sent gift, now I know – he was my self invited misery.
LL and all here – please convince me that he will have hell bounding for the next one also and she will not take my dream and my dream boy.
Schnoodle,
thanks for the advice and articles, ahve not read them before, thanks a lot. I do need it at this time.
petite
Petitie
UGH! I’m so frustrated! lol! I have typed out TWO responses on this blog and they disappeared into cyberspace!
**sigh**
Okay, thanks for clarifying about your past and all.
Petitie, you said you talked to him on the phone and were crying and told him you missed him. THIS MESSES YOU UP! each time you have contact with this man, even PROFESSIONALLY, it MESSES YOU UP!!!!
And this obsessing is the RESULT!
If you can avoid him at conferences by NOT appearing (good for you by the way and I’m assuming that they are NOT essential to YOUR career), why can you NOT avoid him altogether professionally?
Each contact, however MINIMAL, MESSES YOU UP!
Okay, secondly, …you KNOW what he is. You already KNOW, Petitie.
I got this off another site and it’s a MANTRA in my head now…it has helped me when I’m ruminating about “dream boy aka: BAD MAN)”…PATHOLOGY DOES NOT CHANGE. THEY ARE NOT ABLE TO TURN IT OFF AND ON LIKE A LIGHT SWITCH. HE WILL BE THE SAME WHEREVER HE GOES AND WHOMEVER HE”S WITH!!!
Petitie, I seriously think that contact with him of any kind is a very HUGE impediment to your healing. HUGE.
There MUST be something you can do here for yourself that ousts him out of your radar, including with email.
If not, please ask yourself, after all you know, WHY are you STILL obsessing? Is there something else that is UNDERLYING all of this? What in the WORLD makes you hold onto a “Dream” with a psychopath??? Just curious.
Another few questions for you to think about, that I got off this other site too that has helped me:
When you begin to OBSESS, STOP and ask yourself, “So..I want to spend the rest of my life with a psychopath”?
“so I want to have a career relationship with a PSYCHOPATH?”
“So I want to tell a PSYCHOPATH how much I MISS HIM?”
“So I want to marry a guy who CHEATS AND LIES, well, you know, A PSYCHOPATH?”
What would your answer to be to ANY of those questions Petitie?
I Hope to GOD the answer is NO NO NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LL
Hey everyone,
I can’t stick around long because I have Spanish homework to do. But I wanted to thank everyone for their heartfelt responses, and I loved the poem from Rumi. And Kim, I actually thought about you when I was mad at God. I thought “being mad at God is acknowledging he exists, isn’t it?”
I’ve been in a place where pain was literally pouring out of me, pouring out of ever pore in my body. I was like this after I got discarded by the spath and other spathetic types of men in my life. This is different. I don’t feel overwhelmed with pain. I just feel stuck. I don’t really know how to take the mask off it when I’m around people, and I’m not sure if I want to. I’m not really sure who or what I’m angry at because I just feel so stuck and dissociated from it. It sits like a band of tension in my head. If I really just let the anger come out around my co-workers, clients, and associates, it would not be very good. This is the borderline stuff I deal with. I either need to deal with it by myself or with a very skilled and trusted therapist who I’m beginning to think doesn’t exist.
To add to the stress, last night I started having mild cramping in the middle of the night. It felt like I was getting my period, which is due and usually comes like clockwork. But the period never arrived and the cramps went away. So I suppose the “change” has started, here in my 50th year. It makes me very sad. As much as I’ve griped about the monthly horror, it’s been like a friend for so many years. I will miss this part of womanhood.
When my co-workers are sad or upset, they usually share some of it with the rest of us. That’s because their reasons for being upset are socially acceptable. The stuff I go through would be very bizarre to them and they wouldn’t understand. So I just keep most of it to myself. I think that’s appropriate in a work setting.
A friend of mine who is in recovery gave me a helpful saying:
“Play the whole tape.”
Meaning don’t just obsess about the good times, and cause yourself pain. Consider all of the relationship. That will put each piece, the good and the bad, into perspective.
And once you do that, take that good, hard look, you will gain some peace.
Because in playing the whole tape, you will see how the bad just insinuates itself into the good so you are fooled.
Play the whole tape.
Hey, Petite,
I felt that way, too…don’t let some new woman take my dream and my dream boy.
Until I considered that what I was holding onto wasn’t so much a dream as a nightmare. That he caused far more pain than goodness. There was no dream and certainly no dream boy. Well, maybe a boy was there because he is very much a child in his impulsiveness and reactions.
So my dream boy is now someone else’s nightmare, no longer my own.
I was lucky in that the ‘honeymoon’ ended early with the new girl and he came back at me. I kinda figured no one else out there would put up with what I did. And that he would see that he had it good with me.
So now the struggle is not to give in to the onslaught of “I want you back, I want US. Yadda, yadda, yadda.”
You need to know that although it may be less painful to be on this end of things now, it is no less a struggle. It is hard to stay NC when it is under these circumstances.
You need to remember that what he found in you is attractive to other, more stable men, that they are out there.
He is not the only one. He is not THE one.
He was just one. Just one.
thanks trimama and LL,
yes, he caused far more pain than goodness and when I play the whole tape I remember all the red flags which I pushed into denial and made excuses for him. he would not want to discuss concerns betwen us and often would say -” lets address this after a few days and take a break”, after a few days, he would say – “I do not remember saying this, yes, your memory is good and i believe you that I may have said this or that, but i myself cannot remember saying it” and if i went on, he would say – “we did not have a tape recorder, so I we don’t know what was said ” and finally I would get so tired and drop the discussion, make some excuses to pacify myself into denial and it went on. This was finally building up within me.
yes, inspite of all this, I slip into thinking, I want “us”, and it would work.
I am getting stronger though – with advice from here.
LL,
yes, I must not talk to him on the phone and as I have decided not to show up at meetings I will do the same about other contact also.
All the questions you raised make a lot of sense and the answer logically should be NO to all. I should not want to marry a guy who lies and cheats. the only thing that gnaws into me, is that will he change. what if he finds a good looking woman, who is like a trophy, draws a good salary, no baggage, will not question any red flags (like how I did), obey him, adore him, cook and clean for him, be an ideal door mat, think he is a Greek God, then he will be so content with happinees at home 24/7 and change and not cheat and be loyal to her 24/7.
I am going to read the article Schnoodle had referenced and maybe I will get some healing from there.
petite