Appreciate You!

It has been a few years since the death of my husband – who I now recognize as a sociopath. A friend told me about this site as I was describing my sham of a marriage. Wow – what an eye-opener! I now have names and concepts to match what I thought was my own inadequacies and anxieties. It is nice to know after all these years that it was not me. It was me trying to make sense of him and trying to survive. Thank you all you brave and wonderful posters. You have NO idea how this site has helped my ongoing recovery. My confusion about the abrupt change in how he treated me after the whirlwind romance and wedding – that was love-bombing. My feeling like I was losing my mind, like my reality did not match the worlds – that was gaslighting. My feeling like I could never do anything right and being so unbelievably grateful when he occasionally praised me – that was intermittent reinforcement. I was almost immediately isolated from my friends. My already somewhat estranged family believed his statements that I was neurotic and delusional. To this day they refuse to hear anything bad about him (“don’t speak ill of the dead”). Not sure if that has a name — but it sure fits the pattern! I think the only reason I didn’t go through the discard phase is he died. Reading story after story I SO recognize my previous life. And with every story there is an “aha”. So – thank you! I wanted you to know how incredibly helpful and supportive you all are.