UPDATED FOR 2023: Lovefraud received this note from a reader; we’ll call her Allison. She offers excellent advice for recovering from your entanglement with a sociopath: Don’t take it personally.
I want to thank everyone involved with the Lovefraud website. It is truly a gift. To the brave survivors, I wish you peace. I am a survivor myself. In fact, I’m divorcing mine as we speak. I will write my story another time because this time I only want to give a piece of advice that has helped me the most. When I was able to do this, the rest was easier to get through. I stopped taking it personally. It was not an easy task. I read everything I could get my hands on and while I learned his actions were mostly textbook, it was easier for me to let go. Once I convinced myself that I was not the first nor will I be the last, I shut my heart off and stopped taking it personally. This was my key to survival. I offered a silent apology to the women of the world for throwing this one back into the dating pool and went on with my life. I stopped taking it personally and I slept better, dreamed better, laughed more and found that I’ll be just fine. If this helps even one person, it will have made it worth it. Take care.
Simple, effective advice
Allison’s advice is very simple, but it goes directly to the core of the sociopath’s manipulation, betrayal and abuse. The sociopath never cared about us one way or the other. We were convenient targets. We had something the sociopath wanted. Or we presented an opportunity for the sociopath’s amusement.
Sociopaths do what they do, because that’s what they do. We just happened to be there.
Of course, that’s not what the sociopath told us. First, he or she proclaimed love and devotion, or a sterling opportunity to succeed together — whatever the promise was. Then, when the promise started falling apart, the sociopath told us it was all our fault.
We, as normal human beings, believed the original promise — how could anyone say those words and not mean them? So, when the blame started flying from the person who made the promise, we believed that as well.
As we say here on Lovefraud, the sociopath is the lie. And the sociopath lied because that’s what they do. They are missing the parts — emotional connections to other people and conscience — that make us human.
Opportunity for healing
Still, there is a reason that we went along with the sociopath’s program, and that is something we do need to take personally, for our own recovery and growth.
Read more: Seduced by a sociopath — It’s not love, it’s love fraud
This does not at all excuse the sociopath’s heartless behavior, nor is it meant to blame the victim. But most of us engaged because we wanted to believe the original promise.
We have to ask ourselves, what was missing within us that allowed us to believe? Did we have experiences in our pasts that made us susceptible to the manipulation? If so, it’s time to look at these issues and heal ourselves.
So as we extricate ourselves from the sociopath, understand that this is how they are, their behavior is not our fault, and don’t take it personally.
But we should take very personally the opportunity to excavate the old, erroneous tapes in our heads, and create wonderful new lives for ourselves.
Learn more: Comprehensive 7-part recovery series presented by Mandy Friedman, LPCC-S
Lovefraud originally posted this article on April 6, 2009.
LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: Hyper vigilance and PTSD
Spanky: I think their brains remain twisted throughout their lives.
I’m not in Illinois, but I wonder about all the people who voted for Blagy, without realizing what a nut-case he was.
Spitzer intrigues me because he appeared to be such a “white knight” campaigner against “evil,” but my guess is that he went after an issue just to be able to grandstand, and his personal life was just as disorderly and eccentric and weird as any other highly disordered person.
I know that I dealt with at least one psychopathic judge in family court. I also had a major setback due to a lawyer who was supposed to handle something in a timely fashion who simply took the retainer and did nothing. Later, when I went after him for the damage, he produced “notes from our initial conversation” that purportedly directed him not to call me, not to write to me, not to communicate with me in any way — and he was “just following instructions.”
As if I would pay $2500 for a lawyer to DO NOTHING?????? By the time that conversation happened, I had read “Without Conscience” and knew what sort of two-headed monster I was dealing with!
Spanky:
No, lawyers and judges receive no training regarding spotting sociopaths. Hell, THIS lawyer was a criminal defense attorney and I got taken by a sociopath. You can read all about it in the December 2008 article “Criminal Defense Attorney Falls for a Sociopath.” Also, I have seen more than enough sociopaths in my profession.
When I met my S he had been released from prison 3 weeks earlier. No, I didn’t learn that until later. Funny thing was, he was lucky since he came in just under the age wire and was sent to a shock incarceration facility upstate.
I now see that he gamed the system every step of the way. He cried a river before the judge, blaming the theft of his employer’s paychecks on his drug addiction on his brain dead mother. On a 1-3 year sentence, he served on 10 months and was released early since he was considered a “low risk” felon and “rehabilitated” by the parole board.
He got out and promptly played the probation system for all it was worth — violating every rule from notifying his PO before he left the state to rigging his drug tests (he got rehabbed all right while he was in prison. He was back using within a month of getting out). And let’s not forget his stealing goods from his current employer, not paying the rent to his landlord and scamming me for a lot of money.
Bitter? You betcha. I want to be there when he is sent back to prison. Because I know he will end up back there. Sad to say it’s the best thing that could happen to him — because it’s the best thing that could happen to us — getting him off the street.
Spanky-“Tell me if any of you agree with this theory. I think that S’s “become” whoever they have attached themselves to. Since they are just hollow shells with no sense of self, they glomb on to the personality/character traits of the love interest (current target) in their life at the time. When Peanut was with me, he parroted my morality, personality, behavior etc. Now that he is with psycho woman, he actc just like her”..lying, breaking the rules, pushing the limits, doing illegal things etc. They are like androids that can be programmed. (If only they could be de-programmed!)
Spanky…I agree with your theory. They “mirror” the current target/victim. My daughter, 24, called a short time she spent with her mother and her current boyfriend “surreal”…not the mother she had known. My youngest daughter complains about the foul language her mother uses constantly and says her mother is an “alcoholic”. All new developments since the discard.
Gives a good indication of the character their latest “hook-up”, don’t you think?
Don’t forget Blago’s predecessor, Gov Ryan. He’s in prison for graft and corruption. We’re such a classy state we have our governors make our license plates 🙂
http://www.strangevehicles.com/images/content/145994.bmp
My divorce atty was also a criminal defense atty. He tried to tell me that sociopaths were rare and the lrbx probably wasn’t one…but he was a sicko who deserved to be in prison. I told him, in his line of work, nearly everyone he talked to all day was at least disordered, if not downright sociopathic. He started to dismiss me, but I started running down socio traits- he got interested and wanted to know where I had read that. LOL. I then jotted down Dr Hare’s name and told him to google sociopath. Good grief- we can’t lay our hopes of legal change on the everyday criminal defense atty…not without one of Oxy’s cast-iron skillets anyway…
Glinda:
Say what you will abou Ryan, at least he didn’t have that thing on his head that Blago did. On that basis alone, Blago deserves life without parole.
I had to think for a moment…thing on his head? bwaa haaa haaa. That HAIR! I get it now. Surely Trump was a childhood idol of Blago’s…and they have the same hairdresser. If there’s more stylists willing to “do” up that style, they should be prosecuted too!
I haven’t been on for awhile; it’s good to read this particular post. Meg: Hang in there. Your S is not worth your life! It will get better. I too have been questioning my faith, but I almost think that’s a normal part of the grieving process.
I finally put a block on my S’s number so he couldn’t call and leave threatning msgs anymore, so what does he do? Calls my daughter! I have made a police report so that if we need to get a no contact order it’s there. He’s 2,000 miles away, in another relationship and still doing this stuff. I find that quite interesting; not sure I understand why, but interesting nonetheless.
I have had some peace since the block on the phone and continue to just have NC no matter what. AND lots of therapy.
Dear Spanky,
At least you have a chance of getting out with a roof over your head! Too many of these people (psychopaths) leave too many victims financially maimed for life! BEtween the financial trauma and the emotional trauma, and the poor health brought on by stress over the “legal limit” getting out intact IN ANY WAY is a “victory.”
Dear Swehrli, Good for you, maybe your daughter can block his number too, or if you have to, go to the cops and put a restraining order on him for terroristic threatening. Enough is enough! Glad you are having some peace! Keep on the healing road!!! (((hugs)))))
Spanky-”Tell me if any of you agree with this theory. I think that S’s “become” whoever they have attached themselves to. Since they are just hollow shells with no sense of self, they glomb on to the personality/character traits of the love interest (current target) in their life at the time.
They do realy do that. Would think that with so many sponged up personalalities they’d build a better person in themselves. I think they only retain the bad traits. Bunch of cybils runninng around in a few years lol. Guess thats what makes them blend in so well they know a little about everything from all of us.
Foolish I know, But can’t help feel sad to think they’ll all be running around scared and alone one day. I don’t wanna miss her anymore.
GOOD ONE DONNA AND ALLISON!
:o)
Aloha