Lovefraud received the following e-mail from a reader; we’ll call her Lisa. In one short paragraph, Lisa conveyed the betrayal, rage, pain and hopelessness that we’ve all felt:
If a stranger broke into my house and stole all my valuables and then burned the rest. If I was left homeless and broke. I would be angry. I would be damaged. But I would recover. The person who did this slept in my bed and held me tight and told me he loved me every day. He told me that we were moving overseas and that everything should go. Stop paying the mortgage. Sell your furniture for cheap. Burn the rest. I did it. He disappeared with my jewelry and cash. I feel that I cannot recover. I am devastated. I am bitter. I am obsessed with my hatred and can’t smile or laugh. I need a psychiatrist. I dream of stabbing him. I am a loving and forgiving person that can’t find grace. I try to forgive and recognize my own fault. I fail. I need help with this.
Had an unknown criminal ransacked Lisa’s home, she would be justifiably outraged, and perhaps afraid for her safety. But the man who plotted and schemed to crush her was a man that she trusted, a lover who talked about their exciting future together in a faraway land.
It was cruelty beyond belief. It was the shattering of trust.
A few months back I wrote about a book called Legal Abuse Syndrome. The author, Karin Huffer, writes, “the most profound loss is loss of trust.”
That is what makes these experiences so painful. We trusted someone with our hopes, our dreams, our love. That person probably spoke eloquently about trust to us, in words full of shining promise. And it was all a lie.
Now we don’t know whom we can trust. And we’re pretty sure that we cannot trust ourselves.
So how do we recover?
8 steps for recovery
Huffer provides an outline for recovery in her book. Although the steps are geared to helping people recover from the outrages of the legal system, which has a tendency to make our bad situations even worse, I think the steps are useful for anyone recovering from the betrayal of a sociopath.
1. Debriefing. That means telling someone what happened, and that person listening without judgment. This is what we try to do at Lovefraud. We all listen to your stories, and we know what you’re talking about, because we’ve all been there.
2. Grieving. Grief is usually associated with the death of a loved one. But as Huffer points out, it is legitimate to grieve the loss of possessions, or our lifestyle, or our place in the community. Sometimes well-meaning friends or relatives say, “Oh, it’s only money.” This isn’t true. As Huffer writes, “Possessions are the outward manifestations of our inner identity.” We didn’t just lose things. We lost part of ourselves.
3. Obsession. Lisa is obsessed with her hatred of the guy who violated her. Her feelings are certainly justified. The problem with obsession, however, is that it wears you out, and interferes with your ability to regain control in your life. Huffer suggests coping with obsession by compartmentalizing it—only allowing yourself to dwell in it for specific periods of time. “Schedule your way out of it,” she says.
4. Blaming. This means putting blame where it belongs: on the perpetrator. We often feel guilty for allowing the situation to occur in our lives. But we have nothing to be guilty about. We were normal, caring, loving individuals who were deceived. The guilt, anger and rage needs to directed towards the person who deceived us.
5. Deshaming. Before our encounter with the predator, we had certain beliefs, such as “there’s good in everyone,” or “if someone asks me to marry him, he must really love me.” Unfortunately, the dreadful experience has taught us that some beliefs are false and need to be changed. When we do this, we also change our attitude, from “I was a fool” to “I’ve been wronged.”
6. Reframing. The first five steps of the process must be accomplished, Huffer writes, before a person can move on to reframing. At this stage, you can look at your experience, define it differently, and then articulate the wisdom you’ve gained.
7. Empowerment. At this point, you feel focused energy. You take ownership of your problems, determine how you are going to cope with them, and go into action.
8. Recovery. With recovery, you are able to move forward in your life. Sometimes recovery involves forgiveness, but Huffer says it is not necessary. It if far too early for Lisa, who wrote the e-mail quoted above, to attempt forgiveness.
The long journey
There is no expected timetable for moving through the recovery process. We all have different personal histories and face different circumstances. We’ve all had different levels of violation.
Anyone who has been targeted for destruction by a sociopath must understand that it was a profound assault, and it will take time to recover. You may slide back and forth among the stages. So be gentle on yourself, because the journey may be long. If you keep going, in the end you will find peace, built upon new depths of wisdom and understanding.
Oxy, people dont realise that abandonment, neglect, rejection and mind manipulation from one’s parents are all valid forms of abuse. I never saw myself as an abused child until recently, because neither of my parents smacked me. The more I have learnt from LF and reading about passive anger and abuse, I realise that I was not very clued up on things.
I just realised sitting here, that my father was treated similar to the exN – they were both beaten by their fathers, usually using a belt. My father and the N loved opera, that was what brought us together, because I knew from being lectured by my father about Opera, I knew the names of the singers, and when the N first met me, he was impressed I knew so much about Opera.
Year before last, when I was going out with the N and in the middle of the chaos, my father’s 3rd wife was dying of motor neurone disease and I was asked to go to her house to collect my (deceased) father’s things. There was no mistake in the synchronicity of these events.
Thank you for yesterdays response Ox. It must have been the beef ribs I was smelling. I padded around the house all day, lost with the exception of this computer. My 13 year old son is at the Lake of the Ozarks, but my exH (of 20 years) brought my 9 year old daughter back to me and we did girly stuff until midnight.
I usually enjoy being alone, but Ox, I have not got to the point where I’d rather be lonely in my bed than with “my” S snake. I know that’s pathetic. That’s why I’m here.
One thing I have learnt about Ns – is that they like ‘dark’ music.
[QUOTE] For anyone who has ever been enmeshed with another human being suffering a Cluster B Personality Disorder, it occurs to me that the suffering is greatest between the time we are devalued until we are indeed, thankfully discarded. For those fortunate enough to not know the meaning of a Cluster B Personality Disorder, it may be better to stop reading now. If you insist, then i will explain the characteristics of these people. A Personality Disorered human has a pattern of behavior that is other than the norm; that is ingrained, and rigidly part of the individual’s personality. The personality disorders in the cluster B family include the Histrionic, the borderline, the narcisssist and the antisocial individual. these are the dramatic and seductive people who can make the most rational person believe the most irrational things. They seem to make us feel more attractive, more important and more brilliant than we ever dared to believe. We have no idea that this is all a part of a dance repeated by these people over and over again. We are idealized. We are the most perfect ideal of our own self – image. These people have done the work of the make up artist. We are seeing ourselves in reflection, but in perfect form. How could we not fall in love? The idealization phase is heaven. Nothing could be better. It is a litle bit heady in experience. We feel off balance. We feel higher than we have ever felt before. . We are losing ourselves. It feels to good to be true. It feels to good to be true because it is. One day, for no reason something ugly happens. We find ourselves ignored, or deeply insulted, or the object of rage. There seems no reason for this. It hurts like the stab of a knife to the soul. We try to make amends for this unseen thing we did to become less wonderful to our partner. In the back of our minds I think we know that it is the beginning of something very different. We know, deep down inside that our partner is idealizing something or someone else. But we believe that it is a flash in the pan. They will surely see that what they have with us is so good, so pure and so real, that whatever is momentarily attractive will pass. We all become enamored with moments out side of our primary relationship. For most people, for people with solid boundaries, it passes likea movie and we return to real life without ever acting upon our fantasies. We assume that our partner will do the same. It lingers longer than we like, but things do get better. Life does not return to its previous perfection, but flickers of our dream return. We decide to become more attractive, more talented and more attentive so that we can insure that it doesnt happen again. But we have been devalued. We may be valued again, but never idealized. We do not understand because there is no reason why we should. So begins our loss of our own identity to try to recapture the love. We are living between devalue and discard. This is the common thread that binds the diagnosis to the patient with a cluster B disorder. These people lack a developed sense of “self” so theyborrowours. In doing so the become less enchanted with the image. We are now tainted with the horror they avoid. They see the phantom distorted image of their own inner world. This they cannot bear. We have lost our luster in binding to this partner. He or she must find a new specimen. They need fresh humanity that does not bear the mark of their own tortured soul. We cannot understand this at first. We have our physic wounds, but we can tolerate and even enjoy our own company. Imagine what it must be like to consider one’s own company to be either nothing at all or something vile. It must be terrifying. From this point of wiew, it is understandable that this human must try to do everything and anything possible not to look in the mirror. They run away. They project the vile parts of themselves onto us. For sometime, we acept the burden. We see they are in pain. We love them and so we take it on, hoping to ease the burden and help them feel better. Time after time, we take on their pain. It is confusing to us that it seems to make them hate us so much more. It makes no sense to a person with an identity of their own. They look at us and see themselves. They rage and run; they insult and beg; they find fault and ridicule. We love them. In the confusion, we become traumatized and distraught. We fall into an abyss. We cannot see ourselves any longer. We have reached the ultimate irony. For the Narcissist, the borderline, the histrionic, and the anti social, to not be able to see one’s self is a great victory. For us it is the ultmate loss. When we reach this point, it is hard for us to know that we really do still have the upper hand. We beleve that we are powerless and the disordered partner believes this as well. We become an annoyance to them, a reminder of their own tru nature. The partner leaves us at the side of the road, presumably to die, and moves to the fresh target. As hurtful as any rejection is, our ultimate salvation is this discard. We mourn the loss and re-evaluate our priorities. we begin to acknowledge our selves again. We have the gift of ourselves. When no one else is around we are keeping company with a human being with a soul, our own soul. Gradually we take our selves to work, to school, to the store. We rebuild bridges and construct new roads. We create ways to take our complete self to interact once again with others. We begin to heal. Healing from the dagger of a cluster B partner is a slippery journy. As we regain ourselves, we have not completely closed our heart to this person we loved. We are loving people by our nature. The disordered partner sees our new energy and thirst for it once again. From our past experience with non-disordered partners we welcome the oveture. It is quite surprising and disappointing when the disordered partner uses up our newly-acquired energy for life in short order and leaves us again by the side of the road. Again, we must recover on our own. This dance can repeat itself many times. Each time is shorter and thankfully, less painfull. We learn to protect ourselves from the disordered, from the predator that he/she is. In the end, the final discard belongs to us. We set the limit. We end the dance. They have no limits and are unable to do this. The abyss between devaluation by our partner and the ultimate disard is bridged when we relize that there is no going back in any way. No friendship, no enmity, there can be nothing at all. [end quote]
Oooh Henry, that was a big post. I posted to you earlier today, but it is disappearing off the bottom of the threads.
Yea, Bev, I knew what you meant about “high caliber”–some people equate “rich” with “high caliber” but one thing is for sure, I know here that the LF readers know that “high caliber” means in the head and the heart.
My XBF had plenty of money to spend, but that didn’t make him “high caliber” in any way, he was a “closet drunk” and a “serial cheater” and a “liar” and all the money in the world wouldn’t have “bought” him a “status” of “high caliber” because in his head and heart he was a piece of dog doo.
While “money” is not a primary thing with a man that would make me intersted in him, I am also sure I do not want someone who is so financially irresponsible that I have to support him totally. I am not looking for a financial dependent who can’t or won’t support himself and looks to me to provide for him. Neither am I looking for a “sugar daddy” to provide for me.
Bev, though my “abandoment” was not like yours, I too, didn’t realize how twisted my upbringing was until recently. My “abuse” was religious twisting, control, and emotional punishment for not going along with the enabling of the family “bad actors.” I’m suprised that I EVER caught on to what was going on with my relationship with my enabling mother. I think it was ONLY something so traumatic and upsetting, completely stripping me EMOTIONALLY NAKED that I finally “saw” what was obvious to anyone not involved in it. But I had lived in it so long, accepted it as “normal” somehow. Yet, even then, it was painful, but somehow I accepted “pain from those that say they love you ” as “normal” Sheesh! How twisted is that!?!!!
Henry, as you have quoted, it is a very complex subject and yes they suck us in and use us to bolster their false sense of self (their protection), but painfully, once they have captured us, they use us as a surrogate for their pain. A long while ago someone here wrote that their methodology of anti socials is CONQUER – DEVALUE – DESTROY – DISCARD
Henry, I don’t know where you got that quote you posted, but it is RIGHT ON! Absolutely right on! I hope you have a good day dear and stay out of the heat! It is awful here, all time record highs, 104 yesterday and supposed to hit 105 today. I’m staying inside with the air conditioning, it was 90 at 6 a.m. when I let the doggie out. Dig out the DVDs.
Oxy, that isnt twisted, I did much the same thing, I became the family dustbin, the black sheep, the rebel – I became a convenient pot for them to dump their anger. When it is your family, you just cant believe that those ‘caretakers’ who profess to love you on the one hand are silently beating you up on the other hand. Non physical abuse is one of the hardest forms of abuse to pin down and understand. I spent a couple of years in therapy because I felt so angry, I took the burden on myself, whilst those who play acted around me ‘in the name of love’ got off scott free. When we are younger, we do tend to take it all personally, especially from parents – we dont want to believe that our parents may not be right, they are authority figures at the time, until we grow up and learn the truth for ourselves.