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.
one/joy_step_at_a_time
Hi Sky! I had a very engaging conversation with a rather precocious 5 year old yesterday. He has a BIG imagination and flowed fluidly back and forth between ‘reality’ and imaginative ideas, mixing and blending the two as we spoke.
The spath of my acquaintance has a very active imagination, she seems to revel in it – or perhaps what she revels is how effective her made up stories are.
I was thinking about the age of this child and the spath’s facility for weaving 98% fiction with 2% truth, and I came back to your assertion of them as 3 year olds. My experience yesterday/ with the spath is another arrow pointing directly at your hypothesis.
best,
one step
skylar
Hi One,
yeah, being around kids does give me an AHA! moment. I always think, “wow, this behavior is eerily familiar, where have I seen this before? Oh, yeah, the spath does that.”
Many of my experience with spaths and many stories that I hear about spaths in which we are left thinking, “WTF? who does that?”, could easily be explained and understood if we just substitute a child for the spath. Then it isn’t so crazy, it’s just childish. The only reason we are left with cognitive dissonance is because the spath appears grown up and we expect adult behavior. But it’s just a facade. LOL.
I’m so glad to hear that your spath is getting some of what she deserves via her other dupes.
kim frederick
Yeah, Sky and Onejoy. today, watching my toddlars, the boy, age two, is constantly creating conflict with the girl, age 3. He aggrivates me so much when he does this, but today I observed that he is intensly interested in her. She is the powerful one in the dynamic, because she is more self contained. She can do her own thing and not be fixated on what he is doing…but everything she does, he is right on her heals, doing it, too…soon, a conflict emerges, cause he wants to steal the glory, or the lime-light, or the toy, or the cookie, or the…whatever.
She is his teacher, I think, and he learns from her.
He fights against being in the subordinate position, but as long as he is so interested and dependant on her, he will be…Sigh. Oh the human condition!
Ox Drover
ONE/JOY, this is for you! I thought you might like this article. Especially on April fool’s day! (((hugs)))
http://www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/04/01/successful.imaginary.friends.mentalfloss/index.html?iref=obnetwork
Ox Drover
Kim, he’s TWO, that’s why they call it the TERRIBLE TWOS! LOL
skylar
Kim,
In Girard theory, the boy has memetic desire. The girl is the model that he wants to be like. He thinks that he wants the cookie or the toy, but he just wants whatever she happens to have because he thinks it will make him BE her.
Perhaps it’s time to encourage him to be interested in something else. I recall my sister was fixated on me in exactly the same way. And now she’s a spath.
Maybe I’m making too much of it. I’m just always on the look out for spaths – even potential spaths at age two. 🙂
kim frederick
Like Oxy said, they go through the terrible two’s, and they all look a little spath-like.
He is very sweet, though, and loves affection….
Ox Drover
Yea, at that age it is NORMAL for them to be narcissistic and selfish, because they are just now realizing that they are separate people. The problem is when they are 25 (or 50 or 75 years old) the psychopaths still have this same narcissistic mind set and the same selfish entitled attitude of ME FIRST….MEMEMEMEMEMEME ME ME!!!!
Looking back, it was funny, my P son was the BEST two year old I ever was around. Totally sweet and loving! I guess he just went into the terrible twos about age 15 and he’s still there at age 40.
DancingWarrior
Ox, LL, Skylar, EB, H2H–
I made a mistake. Too good to be true–and it was. I am sorry I involved my kid–but lesson learned.
I slept well last night–I thought, how long am I going to live in fear of husband’s — stbX-h’s — reactions and moods? I don’t need to deliberately seek to provoke him, but I don’t have to stop living my life and fearing retribution either.
I’d rather he didn’t know, but too late for that.
Now I have to focus on my kid–make sure she’s ok and not monkey in the middle, and not compromising her loyalties and integrity.
Thank you Ox, LL, EB, Sky, H2H for your caring kick in the pants.
What got me big time–and W-A-Y after it happened Saturday–is this b/f’s making a joke about keeping my keys. W-A-Y after the fact, I feel the wrongness of that “joke” and how much it says about him–what else it hides under the pleasant face and the cute dimples.
Ox, LL, Skylar, EB, H2H, thank you for listening.
lesson learned
DW,
I agree that the keys comment, disguised as a “joke” is also a fairly common abuse tactic. But remember, most of all the pity play is THE most important sign you will ever get from a potential spath. Even if it’s someone else someday, WATCH for that and I’m glad you shared your experience because it showed me that the pity play does not have to mean playing the victim of other women, but what that was, was playing a victim OF YOU.
Nice job!
LL