Not long ago, Lovefraud received the following note from a reader:
Your articles have given me a lot of peace and the ability to see good in life again, though I’ll never go back into the mainstream of society because of the abuse and betrayal I’ve experienced. It’s sad that the vision and understanding one achieves after being victimized by a sociopath prevents you from ever being able to get close to anyone again. I’m working through that though, so I just take it one step at a time. Maybe you could write some more about that?
Yes, dear readers, we do need to take recovery one step at a time. But know that we can go back to the mainstream of society. We can recover to the point of allowing ourselves to open to love again.
For each of us, the experience of the sociopath was probably the most traumatic of our lives. The betrayal shakes us to our souls. But sometimes what gets shaken loose is the negative beliefs that enabled us to fall for the sociopath in the first place. Beliefs like “I’m not good enough.” “Nobody loves me.” “There’s something wrong with me.”
Those were my beliefs. They were buried deep in my psyche, hidden by my brains, writing talent and management ability. But my ex-husband, James Montgomery, plowed through my life, crushing the structures I’d built to present myself to the world—like my career, bank account and credit rating. With the structures gone, I came face to face with the beliefs.
The beliefs were wrong. It was the sociopathic upheaval that enabled me to realize that and let them go.
How did I do it? Quite honestly, it was painful. I cried. I raged. I released layers and layers of negative emotion. And finally, on April 19, 2001, I gave up the battle to make my ex pay me back.
Nine days later I met Terry Kelly. We dated. We fell in love. We married.
Friday was our fifth wedding anniversary. We still love each other as we did when our romance was new and fresh. Today, we exchanged mushy Valentines.
These have been the happiest years of my life. We enjoy each other’s company. We comfort each other in times of stress. We support each other in everything—in fact, without Terry, there would be no Lovefraud.
So yes, there can be life and love after the sociopath.
Please do not give up on life because of the terrible experience. If you do, then the predator will truly have won.
Instead, give yourself time and permission to heal. Find the blind spot within you that made it difficult for you to see the sociopath’s agenda. Recognize that you are now educated about this personality disorder, and you won’t be fooled again. Trust your intuition.
When we’re in the midst of the pain and trauma, it is difficult to believe that life can turn around. But we really do need to believe it, and allow ourselves to move, day by day, toward our own healing. Because healing can bring us love.
Ive just completed the survey of people who have been involvd witha female sociopath, the problem is that it only givesa time span of the disorder showing itself from 1 month to one year. My daughter didnt start to manifest these sociopath tendencies till she was 16. There was no place to put this, so I had to include it in another space. best, Love, Gem.XX
I am so grateful for this site. I literally don’t know if I would survive at this point without it. It has taught me so much. Valentines Day is a painful day for most people because it is supposed to be about love. Being with an spath is anything but. When I felt bad about not being with someone I love this Valentine’s Day, I realized that it was never that way with him. There wasn’t a single occasion after he “won” me that he ever gave me a card, a flower, a single sign that he cared because he didn’t have to, he knew he had hooked me and didn’t feel anything about it anyway. There were always the words but never substance behind the words. I remind myself of that. Someday maybe I will find someone who can feel or have real feelings period. I hope so. It gives me hope that someone has seen their way through this time, that the feeling of being kicked in the heart and stomach will pass. The pain is still too raw for me to believe that real love is possible but hope springs eternal.
Donna,
Thank you for beautiful gift you have given me….and us all with LF, and your Valentine message of love. It’s so inspiring and hopeful to see that you can have a loving, sane, healthy relationship after the S.
You both look sooooo happy.
Congratulations!
Jeltogether,
Foget the Romeos and Jullietts…..think of Valentine’s day as a day of giving all that love to your self, give yourself the roses, the chocolates the fine dinner, the cards and substance….because you are worth it!!!!!!
I know your pain. For the 3 1/2 years I was in the relationship with the S, he allways broke up with me in the weeks before V day, and I allways spent it alone, no cards, flowers nothing. I allways came to find out later that he was with other women….and like an idiot I ended getting sucked back in.
This year he was going in that path of devaluating, lying and cheating again, but I ended the sick relationship for the last time in January, just as he was telling me that he was traveling (yet again aorund V day) to visit his daughter in another state.
I have had NC, but just found out that he lied to me about his travel plans and he is in fact traveling to Europe on a trip he was going to take me on originally…most likely with another woman. I feel betrayed all over again! sick with pain and anger!
But….I decided to be my own valentine, love, nurture and accept me as I am, and so I treated myself to flowers, chocolates, and accepted an invitation to a dinner dance were I went by myself and had a great time.
The greatest gift I gave mysel is shutting the doors to my heart forever more to this sick induvidual
.
I am learning to love my self as I woudl want others to love me. and this feelf freeing.
SouthernMan – I am sure you will have no problems attracting Miss Right some day soon – you’re gorgeous!
And your home is … wow – takes my breath away. In fact – I am voting that you host the inaugral LoveFraud convention – I can truly see us all doing Tai Chi at sunrise on that beeee eautiful deck! Some stunning workmanship there. If you tell me you did it yourself … well that will be it – I’ll be hopping a plane to claim you for myself 😛
It’s good to take that time out after the P – I have been more than two yrs now single and it’s the first time I’ve ever consciously thought about what I would like to find in a partner – every other time I would just meet someone and we’d get on and go from there. This time I am thinking about values and disposition and outlook – what’s inside is the truly important part. I am also finding lots to value inside myself that I had forgotten about.
To all of us finding lovers that are worthy of our giving 🙂
Happy V Day everyone!
Great post, Donna! Yes! Yes! Yes! I found the love of my life and am now happily married to the most caring man I’ve ever known! I’m so glad that I found a good therapist and LF that helped me learn to better recognize the red flags or otherwise I might have fallen for the same type of man again. Now, that I’m with a “normal” man, it’s SO easy for me to see just how messed up my life was when I was with the S. Sometimes, I feel that my current husband is my reward for enduring all those years with the S. It was a rough road to travel but well worth the educational experience that allowed me to understand why I was such an easy target and the changes that I needed to make in myself to not allow myself to continue to be targeted by these people! I think our recovery depends so much on education and TIME. We have to allow ourselves time to absorb these personality disorders and time to heal and love ourselves again…then we’re able to make better choices, free to be ourselves and to trust and love again.
Three years ago, I woke up to the hideous reality that my life was infested with spaths and narcissists, – including my superiors at work, a housemate, my ‘best friend’, two out of my five brothers, and female colleagues who ‘specialize’ in hating and targeting women for public shame. It took a trip through hell with an narcissist lover and an spath stalker to open my eyes to this, and to shake me out of the self-hatred that had brought me to that relationship… and to all of the unhealthy relationships.
Both of my parents were/are narcissists, and I had learned to hide my physical beauty, talents, intelligence and goodness from a very early age (including from myself). I learned to define ‘good’ as whatever a spath or a narcissist wanted from me, to endure abuse with a smile or silent compliance, and the only real love I had ever known had come from my pets. There, I said it.
Now I’m 40, I’ve sent all of the spaths and narcissists packing, including my parents and two brothers. Of course, the minute I caught on to them and stopped giving what they wanted, they destroyed my career with smear campaigns and sabotage, which ruined my finances, friendships with people who have no idea how spaths operate, etc. My family is fractured too (obviously).
I’ve lost everything I ever worked for, and still have to deal with some vestiges of a life once given to evil incarnate. But, I am also building on the blessings of a life that’s been cleaned out from the roots, and realigned with the priorities that bring me closer to God, and all of the good things in life.
The Valentine’s Day posts here mean a lot to me, because they reinforce my hope that I can find a mainstream life, and fill it with people who are right for me. Thank you for sharing your experiences. Sometimes the worst part of waking up to what I have is being alone in the knowledge, being surrounded by people who don’t get it, who don’t have to get it, and who keep helping the spaths unwittingly.
But it’s all right, because now I’m getting myself what I need to feel okay, learning how to find some peace, making good progress on that, and, for the first time in my life, I had a real Valentine’s Day date this year. We had a really great time, too. So, I’m taking it as a good sign, and want to mention it in case it gives anyone else some hope.
I wish everyone here the best, and hope that, in time, all of our pain brings us to the health, peace and happiness that we earned by acting on all that we’ve learned. Thank you again for sharing your experiences.
Yes, you can find love again after your S/P/N-ex.
Two Valentine’s Day ago, my S-ex was steadily escalating his abusive behavior (the D&D had begun New Year’s Eve). I remember how I sent a dozen long-steam Oceana roses to his office (ka-ching), took him out to dinner at One If By Land, Two If By Sea (a very romantic restaurant here in NYC) (ka-ching, ka-ching) and bought him a piece of bling (ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching).
His response? Indifference at best. My response? I opened my finacial and emotional taps even further “to win back that wonderful man I fell in love with”.
Finally I sent that avaricious piece of sewage packing in November of tha year.
This Valentine’s Day? I’ve been seeing a wonderful man for the last 8 months. We spent the holiday(s) weekend together — Chinese New Year, Valentine’s Day and President’s Day. We went out to dinner at a very nice restaurant. The gift giving was minimal. His appreciation for what I did was genuine.
Ain’t love grand?
Dear Psyche,
TOWANDA and GOOD FOR YOU! Isn’t it amazing that one day we do wake up and see that we have been born into a nest of vipers and we thought sllithering and biting and poison was the way to live.
Remember the story of the “Ugly Duckling”—I think some of us are just humans who were “hatched” by a nest of vipers, and it takes us a while to realize where we are and what we are. Cleaning house includes getting rid of our “family” and in many cases most or all of our “friends” as well, and they do NOT go “quietly into the night” but kick and scream and bite and do their best to hurt us for kicking them out of our lives.
We are their source of supply and they don’t easily let it go, because then they have to find new supply, new victims, and they have worked so hard to keep us down.
I am proud of you and proud FOR you! KEEP ON GROWING!
Psyche:
I came from a home with an S father, malignant N (and probably S) mother and one out of two of my brothers is an S/conman.
Like you, I learned to operate in the shadows. In words that are indelibly burned on my brain, I can still hear my mother saying “your father always said your brother’s good looks and athletic prowess came from his side of the family and your brains came from mine. Obviously he was wrong about you.”
Yes, that wonderful family dynamic primed me for the S-ex which entered my life.
Friends of mine still laugh about last summer — a group of us were in a bar (including my boyfriend). Some guy was passing by and he said something to me. I didn’t hear and asked him to repeat it. He said it again. I still didn’t hear. Finally one of my friends said “He said you’re a very handsome man.” My boyfriend added (“You’re supposed to say thank you”).
It’s funny because I was so conditioned to never think of myself that way. I am finding, as I weed the Cluster-Bs out of my life that my perception of myself is steadily changing. What I wouldn’t give to go back in time before the Cluster-Bs destroyed me, to see what I could accomplish with some positive reinforcement.
Of course, there’s no going back. But, I am determined to make my remaining years on earth the best they can be.
Good luck in your journey.