Finally, you realize what is wrong with your romantic partner: He or she is a sociopath.
Finally, the behavior that was so confusing makes sense. The person you loved, and who you thought loved you, has a personality disorder. Now you realize that anything your partner told you could have been a lie. Now you know why your partner could be so cruel, then tell you how much he or she loved you, practically in the same breath. Now you realize that there never was any love, that your entire relationship was exploitation, and nothing more.
Now what do you do? How do you move forward? How do you recover?
Many of your friends and family tell you, “Just put it behind you. Get over it. Move on.” You are particularly likely to hear this advice if you were “only” dating the person, not married.
The friends and family dispensing this pithy advice probably were never involved with a sociopath. They don’t understand the depth of the betrayal. When you split from a sociopath, it is not a normal breakup. The intensity of these relationships makes the end incredibly painful.
Here are five steps for true recovery. This process is not instant, and it will likely be painful, but a new, much healthier you is waiting on the other side.
1 . Understand that this relationship is an addiction
The sociopath initiated this intensity in the beginning of the relationship by showering you with attention, wanting to be with you all the time, claiming that you were soul mates, and painting a glimmering picture of your future together. You, never having experienced such adoration, believed that he or she was head over heels in love with you. Even if you felt misgivings, you suppressed them and focused on the promise of happily ever after.
Then, sooner or later, the sociopath did something to make you feel fear or anxiety. Perhaps you caught your partner lying or cheating. Perhaps he or she suddenly became enraged—you weren’t sure why—and threatened to end your relationship.
Whatever it was, the bliss that you felt in the beginning was shattered, and you wanted it back. You asked what was wrong, tried to work things out, perhaps even apologized for something that you didn’t do. Eventually the sociopath relented, and you kissed and made up.
Then, the whole cycle started again: Intense attraction. An incident causing fear and anxiety. Relief. Around and around it went.
This process has a profound psychological effect—it actually makes you addicted to the relationship. That’s why it’s so hard to break up with a sociopath. You’re not breaking off a relationship—you’re breaking an addiction.
2. Choose yourself
Addictions don’t just go away. Anyone who has quit smoking, drinking, drugs or any other addiction knows that it’s hard work. You must choose yourself, your health and wellbeing, over the addiction. Then you must work on your recovery, day in and day out.
A relationship with a sociopath is the same. You cannot simply “put it behind you.” You cannot fully recover by locking your internal devastation into a closet, never to be opened, while attempting to go through the motions of living. If you try to do this, you simply end up with an emotional cancer within you, eating away at your life force.
The solution is to choose yourself. Make a commitment to yourself that you will recover, and then work it, day by day.
3. No Contact
The first step is No Contact. Get the person out of your life. Stop seeing and talking to him or her. Block emails and text messages. Don’t visit his or her Facebook page.
This will be difficult in the beginning, because, remember, you are breaking an addiction. You’ll feel a compulsion to contact your former romantic partner. But if you do, it’s just like an alcoholic falling off the wagon. You’ll be back at square one, and you’ll have to start the recovery process all over again.
The secret to breaking the addiction, as they say in 12-step programs, is to take it one day at a time. So commit to yourself that you will not contact the sociopath today. Then you make the same commitment tomorrow, and then the next day.
The longer you stay away from the sociopath, the stronger you become.
4. Deeper healing
Getting the sociopath out of your life is only the first part of your recovery. The second, and most important, part, is healing whatever made you vulnerable to the sociopath in the first place.
We all have vulnerabilities—it’s part of being human. We have internal fears, doubts and injuries from our past. Or we have dreams and ambitions—these, too, in the practiced hands of a sociopath, can become vulnerabilities, when he or she promises to make them come true. But generally, the sociopaths target our weaknesses, because that’s the easiest and most effective way to hook us.
Usually the weaknesses boil down to a subconscious belief, deep within us, that we are not good enough.
We rationalize that our mother ignored us, or our father abused us, because we were not good enough. We assume that an earlier romantic involvement failed because we were not good enough. These ideas may have been deeply buried, but they still caused pain, and pain created vulnerability. Sociopaths can sense vulnerability like a shark senses blood in the water.
5. Releasing the pain
How do you recover from these deep wounds? You acknowledge that they exist. You look at them and allow yourself to feel the associated emotions—pain, disappointment, fear, anger, rage, numbness—and then you let the emotions go.
This is a process, and is best done in private, or with the help of a competent therapist. You’ll find that you have layers and layers of pain, and as you release one, another rises to take its place. You may find yourself crying, wailing or stomping to release anger. You work your way through the layers of emotions, acknowledging, feeling and releasing.
You can’t do this all at once—it’s too draining, and you still have to live your life. In fact, you should intersperse these sessions of releasing with times of treating yourself well, and feeling joy at whatever goodness you experience, no matter how small.
True recovery isn’t easy, fun or instant—it takes work and a commitment to yourself. But the rewards are so wonderful: Release from old traumas. Life lived with peace and lightness. The opportunity for true love and happiness.
It all begins with making a decision to recover.
Lovefraud originally published this article on July 30, 2012.
Hello Donna, this is the most use and insightful piece I’ve ever read on the subject. As a psychotherapist and former target, and survivor of a 20-year “marriage” to a disordered spouse, your words ring so true.
(Isn’t it interesting how many of us were married more or less 20 years before becoming free, one way or another?)
Thanks for posting this.
jlartin – thank you so much! I hope Lovefraud readers will choose themselves, and commit to recovering from the sociopath – and from whatever made them vulnerable to the sociopath. It is a bumpy process, but life is so much better on the other side!
i, too, was in a long-term marriage, almost 30 years. most, if not all the advice I’ve seen, is about short term marriages/relationships. Mine involved a farm, raising 3 sons and 29 years of marriage. I could no more leave him in the beginning, than lint can leave velcro. I had to ‘hit bottom’, to finally choose to end the pain of emotional/verbal abuses and GET OUT and never go back. i am still learning how to take care of myself. I have NOT had another relationship, dated at all. No thanks.
So very true…as hard as it is and Bless all who have kids with a sociopath…once I got rid of him and stood strong on NO CONTACT…then the real work could begin! I feel so much better today…The Good news is …you will be strong again. I’m not ready to date yet but I’m happy with myself and by myself!
lLittle52- good news!
For me, no contact occurred because the man I had a so-called relationship with extorted me and I had him arrested. I’m only three weeks into the incredibly painful and difficult process of recovery and will unfortunately continue to have to relive it through the criminal case.
For now I take pride in the fact that I was strong enough to report him to the police… And at the very least I can look myself in the mirror and know that I am strong and he did not get the best of me!
Hello Donna,
I honestly haven’t read anything so relatable and useful to my current situation, I couldn’t even express myself better in feelings and emotions than you have here. I’m really interested in your book about Red Flags of love fraud, does this book contain similar articles or include equally as relatable and helpful information in it? Is there any others you can recommend if not? I find your work so strengthening and gives me the closure that I need to try to understand all this and my experience with a sociopath. I want to learn as much as I possibly can about sociopaths and also about recovering and moving forward. I live in the UK so how can I purchase one of your books? Thank you so much for all your help so far!
harry1997 – I’m glad you’re finding Lovefraud to be helpful. Yes, the “REd Flags of Love Fraud” book expands upon the ideas in this article. It explains how sociopaths go about seducing their targets. You can buy them on Amazon, or in the Lovefraud Bookstore.
You might also want to check out our webinars. This one is a lot like the article:
https://education.lovefraud.com/courses/why-its-so-hard-to-get-over-loving-a-sociopath-and-how-you-can-recover/
Harry, I’m glad you’re finding Donna’s site useful. Ordering books from overseas is the easiest thing in the world these days! All you need is a credit card. Or if you don’t have one, there are other options.
Your question made me smile because it’s so SIMPLE to order Red Flags of Love Fraud compared with the enormous HASSLE I went through a couple of weeks ago when ordering a set of DVDs from an outfit in Canada. That’s right next door to me, country-wise at least. I’m in the U.S.–Phoenix, actually; closer to Mexico than Canada, I know, but that’s beside the point.
I was tempted to post that lengthy saga just to vent about it, but I manfully resisted the temptation. Suffice it to say I got those DVDs in the end. Still, I can’t believe the SH!T I went through trying to pay for them so they could be delivered!
Compared with this, Donna makes it simple to acquire her own works. But it also demonstrates that if we want something enough, we can usually get it, as long as we’re prepared to make the effort. And if you want a copy of Red Flags of Love Fraud. which I’m sure is an excellent book (I have another of Donna’s books myself), you have all kinds of options for getting it.
As a last resort, if there were no other way… while “letting my mind go for a walk” on this topic, I couldn’t help being reminded of an ad for Scotch whisky that used to appear right where you are in the UK; on the London Tube anyway. Whyte and Mackay, that was the brand. And they had a gimmick. Their bottle didn’t just have a stopper or an ordinary screw cap like other brands. Their screw top doubled as a measure cap to dole out one “wee dram” of “guid Scotch whisky.”
Whyte and Mackay’s ad said they charged forty-four shillings and sixpence for their little measure cap. That’s pretty expensive for a plastic measure cap perhaps half the size of what we call a “standard drink” here in the U.S.
Yet it wasn’t a bad deal in those days, because it came with a bonus! The slogan on their poster ads read: “With our 44s 6d measure cap you get a FREE bottle of Whyte & Mackay’s Scotch whisky!” That was quite an offer.
Now suppose you want a copy of Red Flags of Love Fraud and can’t get it any other way. You still have the option of booking a flight to the U.S. Donna lives somewhere in New Jersey, and although Newark is a lousy airport, you might get a return flight there for as little as £300 or so if you pick your dates. Hotel rooms and a rental car (or buses and taxis) will cost extra, of course. But I’ll bet if you showed up at Donna’s door she’d be so impressed with your pilgrimage that she’d be happy to give you a copy of Red Flags of Love Fraud for free! At worst she wouldn’t charge you more than her usual price of $15.95.
Now admittedly that little jaunt will cost you several hundred pounds, which is a lot of money to pay for a book, just as Whyte and Mackay charged a lot of money for their little measure cap. But I’ll guarantee the book is worth far more than a measure cap. And what’s more, even if nobody’s offering you a free bottle of whisky, you get a free American vacation along with it! Go see the Statue of Liberty! Scuba dive in the warm waters of Florida! Hang glide off Kitty Hawk, where the Wright Brothers first flew! Go out West and see a rodeo! Come here to Arizona and hike the Grand Canyon! Surf in California! Or in winter, ski anywhere from Vail to the White Mountains of New Hampshire!
Needless to say, all these side trips will cost extra, as they always do, but it’s not a bad offer anyway.
All this goes to prove my point that we can usually get what we want, as long as we’re prepared to pay for it. Still, I have to admit it is your most expensive option. There are cheaper choices.
One of your more economical options is to order the book from amazon.com.uk right where you are, where I see it’s available, complete with glowing reviews. The only drawback is that amazon.co.uk is charging upwards of £32 for it, much higher than Donna’s price. But they’re only charging £6 for delivery, a total of £38.
Surprisingly, it’s apparently cheaper to order from amazon.com in the U.S.! They’re offering the book for only $19.95, complete with even more glowing reviews. That’s only £15.79 sterling–half the price Amazon is asking in the UK! What surprised me further is that they seem to be offering transatlantic shipping to the UK for only $6.98, which is less than amazon.co.uk is charging for domestic shipping! If I’ve got this right, that’s only $25.93, or £20.50 in British currency.
But you can also order direct from Donna. That will only cost you a mere $15.95 for the book itself: that’s £12.62, the lowest price of all. All you have to do is click on the Bookstore heading, select the book you want and follow the instructions.
The only drawback I can see is that shipping charge to the UK is $34.95. That adds up to a total of $50.90 or £40.27, which is more than amazon.co.uk’s charge of £38.
Still, that doesn’t make it a bad option, because for that price you can order the book from anywhere in the world. From China, the Czech Republic, or the Congo. Both Congos, including what is laughably called the “Democratic” Republic of the Congo to distinguish it from the other one. (Somebody has observed that all the nations of the world with “Democratic” in their title… aren’t!) You can order from the Netherlands or Nepal, from the Faroes to the Falklands. Probably even from Dogger Bank, if the shipping forecast is good. From Kazakhstan to Kyrgyzstan to Kenya, from Latvia to Laos, from Myanmar to Micronesia. From Singapore to Senegal to “Saint Vincent and the Grenadines” (which sounds like a Fifties “doo-wop” group). Names of nations have a poetry of their own. From the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu to the halls of the Vatican. Anywhere from the Åland Islands out there in the Baltic, or the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan, all the way to Zambia and Zimbabwe. Even from North Korea. Though I wouldn’t try ordering from there if I were you. They’d probably shoot you on suspicion of importing “subversive” literature.
It’s a good price overall, considering the difficulty of getting to some of these places, which might require trekking through the jungles of the Amazon basin or the frozen wastes of Antarctica, dodging bullets and bombs in war-torn Syria or braving the headhunters of the New Guinea highlands. Besides, all of your money will be going to a good cause. And if you don’t have a credit card, Donna will even take a check, which few people do on the Web! Or a money order, I dare say, if you don’t have so much as a bank account.
Your choice. Happy reading!
Number 2, choosing yourself is important.
Choose yourself is important.
Choose yourself for sure.
CHOOSE YOURSELF.
Always choose yourself.
These are great.