Last Friday Robin Hoffman interviewed me again on her radio show, The Feminine Soul. We discussed recovering from a relationship with a sociopath. She asked two very important questions, “How do we avoid picking another sociopath in the future?” and “How can we ever trust our instincts again?”
Coincidentally, yesterday I received this letter from a reader:
I got involved recently with a man who seemed to be the opposite of my previous psychopath. All the traits I like, strong, dominant, etc but seemed to have a good heart, and importantly a good history. I checked him out, he had a long service in the police force and a voluntary youth organization, was widely respected and successful.
Recognizing my vulnerability, I kept my eyes and ears open, and my heart guarded.
After 3 weeks I started to spot inconsistencies, tested a bit, and noticed the feeling of cognitive dissonance and didn’t ignore it.
After 6 weeks I ended the relationship, even though part of me was screaming inside “no, don’t do it”. Only afterwards did I discover that not only was he cheating on a wife who had cancer, but he was also cheating on a long term girlfriend, who genuinely loved him and is devastated. He was playing with fire by putting us both on the same webpage and we got chatting without having any idea of the relationships involved and it all came out. I’ve given her a link to saferelationships.com and can only hope she learns from the experience.
I SO proud of myself. I got out before getting involved, so it didn’t hurt. The experience was positive in that I made a different choice, for me. My stop light is starting to work and I’m learning I can trust my instincts again.
There are three parts of ourselves that are “taken” by the sociopath. The first part is the conscious mind. The sociopath fools the conscious mind by lies. It can be very difficult to detect these lies because skilled sociopaths use willing and unknowing accomplices to back up their lies. (This is why it is important for family members to distance themselves from the sociopath and his/her relationships.)
Sociopaths know to pick on trusting people. In general trusting people are loyal and trustworthy. These are good qualities so when your conscious mind is taken, you can be left with a lot of self-doubts. The strategy of carefully checking out people’s claims is a good one but it often takes time to uncover a sociopath’s lies.
Our unconscious minds also get “taken” in the sociopath’s con. Sociopaths are dominant and seductive. These traits may be arousing and attractive. I think that this may be in born. We may be attracted to these traits instinctively just like certain body parts are arousing for some.
Even though the attraction to the dominance and seductiveness of sociopaths may be instinctual, I don’t think we are stuck with it. I was able to train myself to be different and I want to share with you how I did it.
I am somewhat ashamed to say it took me too long to understand that I was drawn to sociopaths because of their dominance behavior. Once I understood this, I set out to find a way to feel differently about them. I wanted to like them less. I had always observed that there were some mental health professionals who were instinctively repulsed by sociopaths and I wanted to know what was different about them.
In studying the literature on dominance behavior and personality I discovered that dominance and empathy are opposed to each other. When dominance motives are in play empathy is turned off. The hormones of dominance also turn off empathy. The opposite is also true empathy and affection also suppress dominance motives.
Armed with this knowledge I set out to study men I knew who had long track records of loving empathetic behavior. I spent hours talking with them about their views of love, life and life’s purpose. I did this until the lesson had sunk in emotionally not just intellectually. A fully human person, male or female is loving and devoted. He or she is able to control dominance motives and express them only when appropriate.
Since this emotional lesson sunk in, I have found myself actually repulsed by dominant people. I no longer admire them or find them entertaining. Instead, I emotionally experience them as they are, shallow and lacking in important qualities.
Sociopaths also “take us” on another level. They manipulate us into forming bonds with them. These bonds are unconscious and chemical- whether the sociopath is a family member or lover. Breaking a bond with a sociopath is very painful. We do not have to be enslaved by our human bonds, we can acknowledge them and realize that at times these bonds have to be broken even though doing so is painful and difficult.
To sum it up then your new wiser mindset may have many aspects to it. Wisdom is a practice as well as a state of mind.
I was going to say THE POSITIVE ENERGY was keeping the PSY/SOC away but I think maybe I spoke to soon. To go read there site is disturbing to me but I feel this site would anger them !
Dear all, thanks to the “new mindset” and your help I got saved before having a very bad experience (again!). I have read the blog intensely last week and made the right move by NOT contacting the man after a very nice first evening. He is a very handsome investment banker my age, we “met” on a dating site in the internet, and he lives in the neighborhood and has exellent manners. We chatted along quite nicely, first on the internet, and we had a very pleasant evening at an informal restaurant. I first wanted to mail him and thank him for the nice evening but thanks to you guys I refrained. It was very painful the first two days not contacting him, but once I was over this period I started to getting amused at which point he might call/mail/snailmail me what he did not do for 9 days now. Seems that he is a coward who has not the guts to say it to me in my face that he is not so much into me. OR he is just trying to hook me.
In retrospect I am very lucky! Thinking again about the evening and having a closer look at the conversation, he was not so funny but sarcastic, and sometimes I had some “déja-vue-feelings” of being judged (he commented on my handbag and my purse) and somehow “hooked”. He has a great self esteem and perceives himself as VERY clever, what he might be without a doubt, but I AM TOO. The conversation was mostly about his accomplishments, and he made some weird comments too. I mentioned a man we both knew (Google be praised for the information I got, they were in the same working group at the business university. I went prepared to the “Interview”!) The first remark after mentioning this common aquaintance was whether this colleague had gotten fat by now, HE could sense when people will get fat in the future. The aforementioned friend by the way is the Godfather of my niece and one of my brothers best friends, he is a very nice funny man, and I have helped moving his appartment and he is very easy going. And he IS a little vertically challenged but I would not even have noticed it. I did not tell him this. I am not cannibalistic and I do not count adipocytes in my friends, and I found it very rude to be honest. When I asked him what he would think of MY future in this respect he said “wrong question” and did not answer it. He also mentioned being “double virgo”, seems quite odd.
I just want to thank you all, and I really got a new “mind set”, and NC gives power to ME, and not being at HIS hands. He could simply have ignored me further after my mail, and I would have been in ever growing, greater doubt about myself again, being “back in the game” with a new player! I think I got it! Thanks to you all great people, and have a VERY nice weekend.
libille
I find my self being somewhat suspect of everyone now ! Not to the extreem , I am still my ” normal” way that I am
But I analyze whats said and for what purpose , virgos over analyz everything but Now when it comes to My heart I find this is a Quality trait !
Plus I found a SOUL mate already !:)~ and She knows who She is and She’s Not affraid of Anything or Any Man!
LOVE JERE
Dear Libelle,
Good for you sweetie! I do not even go read on dating sites any more, there are too many Ps out there for my taste. I don’t need a relationship that is a downer and I know there are some really clever Ps.
I am glad that you spotted the RED FLAGS waving in the first encounter and that you TOOK CONTROL OF YOURSELF AND YOUR LIFE and didn’t let the guy in. That is a BIG step for us all.
I know I am vulnerable to being hooked, but at the same time, I also know that I am MORE AWARE OF THE RED FLAGS so am “less likely” to get hooked, but I do think a very cleaver one could snag me even now. I am not as “needy” for a relationship any more, so that is a big + and am more sure about setting boundaries. So that’s another big + but I am still ME, and even the “new” me isn’t 100% safe from the Ps.
While I still would WANT a relationship, I am not CRAVING one like an addict, but I think I could “relapse” if a really tempting P came along, so I will be VERY careful and slow with any potential relationship.
In regards to yesterday’s comments…
My xx-s birthday was in the beginning of the month too. What sign is that? Last month I remembered that his birthday was coming up, but then it came and went, and i totally forgot. How funny 🙂 I’m gonna stay away from guys with an October b-day. On my birthday one year, we fought the day before, and he WOULD NOT call me, I called him dozen of times, begging him to call me jsut to day happy b-day (it was pathetic looking back) and he didn’t call til about 9 pm. It was horrible. What nasty human beings.
LG, good for you for NOT calling. the reason you are sad is because you cared for someone other than yourself who didn’t appreciate it. We are naturally givers, and that was abused and thrown in our face, and so you are sad that you would naturally want to say happy b-day, but we simply should not. It’s sad ONLY when we are being the people we naturally are, and we have to refrain from giving love. But…there are people out there that need your happy b-dy wishes. The next person you know that has a b-day, how ever you know them, give them a simple card, just to brighten their day (and yours). The s’s & p’s already got enough of us brightening their LIVES! It makes me happy to know YOUR x, and MY x, did not get one more ounce of satisfaction from me on their birthday. They don’t deserve anything from us ever again!!!
In regards to a few of you saying he would sexually abuse you, and ‘mark his territory,’ it is because they are ANIMALS. Nothing but disgusting animals.
Letgo,
It’s true they’re Animals. It disgusts me now to type it but mine actually made noises similar to an animal while he was doing it. God I feel sick!
Gemini: HAAA!!! LOL! You just made me laugh so hard with that last comment. Mine would say stuff during the “event” like, “Whose ___ is this?” I was supposed to respond, ‘It’s yours baby.” Even my ___ was a possession. LOL!
Letgo: That was my comment about marking territory.
You know when you think about it, the bedroom stuff was about control. Nothing real sensual, tender & loving. When I didn’t want to do certain things, he would say, “It’s in the Bible that the woman has to submit to the man.” Sometimes I was degraded beyond belief. My ex is a pig.
Today, I went grocery shopping at the store instead of avoiding it. I reclaimed my right to go where ever I want whenever I want. I’m not afraid to look at him anymore. Nor am I afraid of running into him and the OW (victim/sucker.)
Wow. When I look back at how hurt I felt the day I found out about the OW and kicked him out and really wanted him to stay I realize I would have been asking for more abuse. He would have turned it up to a new level if I would accept his cheating & lying. However, the OW knew about the cheating and lying and accepts him. I’ll bet she’s getting a double-dose of mental games and abuse.
My ex-s B-day is Monday. It will be just another day. The OW can try all she wants to make his day special but it will not be good enough. Last year I got him tickets to a football game but the game did not fall on his B-Day. The game was a few weeks later. I did get him a card and the tickets but he complained that I did nothing for him on his B-Day. Mind you, that morning, he had said to me, “i want to spend my B-Day this year with my daughter.” I thought it was his special day to do that if he wanted so I did not make any dinner plans or anything. Her turned that back at me and complained I didn’t plan something. He really didn’t have plans with the daughter. He just said that because my reaction was supposed to be, “but don’t do that…i made plans for us.” It was his way of manipulating me. Saying things that were not true in order to get a reaction.
Iwonder-Exactly. A Pig, an AMIMAL as I said! LOL
There was nothing about them at all that could show tenderness, especially in the bedroom where their pure anumal instincts take over. Both of my x-s are animals. My recent x-s would watch dirty hard-core porn ALL the time. His sexual appetite was like that of an addicts. ALWAYS. He was like a dirty little boy. he is now 31. its really crazy the way I look at it. My brother, who is the most amazing man I have ever known is 31 also. He is (cancer0 doctor in dallas, so mature, and loving and just an amazing intelligent MAN. My x-s is so immature but pretends to be competent. He runs his father’s catering business,(and hooks up with all the little waitresses he hires), bought a huge house from his rich father (his dad got it cheap years ago). He is so spoiled its unreal. So, luckily, i was never used for money from him like other sociopaths. one little thing that always bothered me was that he has a beautiful house, but junk everywhere. its not dirty at all, but sloppy and unorganized and unused STUFF. I always looked at that like, “he doesn’t appreciate anything, and just has stuff that means nothing to him. So sure, he has a huge house and a pool cleaner and gardener that money pays for, but HE didn’t take care of ANY of it. Just like the people in his life, etc.
On his b-day (JULY 4th no less, I’ll always remeber), he told me he didn’t want to hang out with me and that “I will be happier without you LGLG” WHO SAYS THAT! How mean, cruel and nasty!
Good for you LG to go where you want! If you do run into him, turn the other way, pretend you didn’t notice, and just disappear. That way, you will be in his head and he will be DYING by thinking about you, but he will get NO satisfaction!
Oops! I meant Good for you Iwonder!! Sorry :p
Iwonder – They all went to the same school. Same exact thing I heard. Between that and wanting to be called “daddy” I think I just threw up in my mouth a little. And that is definitely marking territory. Mine would even go so far as to say, “Even if we aren’t together this __is mine.”
Yea for you standing up and going about your routine. I, alas, am not there yet. Mostly not bc I will feel all sappy and boo hoo but bc I’d be scared I’d try to physically hurt him. Don’t want anyone reading or seeing me on the news. LOL!!!!
My ex’s B-day is in December. I hope that by then I’ll be a little bit better. It’s weird to me that in a few short months it will be a new year. He came to stay with me at the beginning of this year. It’s just crazy the amount of time that has past.