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
Dear Gogetter girl,
I had one P son and I have one really great bio son and a wonderful adopted soon. All my kids, even the several foster kids I had, learned to help around the house—not for “pay” or allowance but because it is WHAT YOU DO, it is part of being in the family.
Once when they were feeling picked on because their friends didn’t have to do all these chores I told them.
Guys, the law says I have to feed you, give you a place to sleep, and to clothe you. Oatmeal is food, a blanket and a pillow is bedding, and two sets of clothes from the salvation army is clothing. ANYTHING ELSE you get is GRAVY…if you want to grouse about what I provide you with BECAUSE I LOVE YOU and want you to have nice things that you enjoy, I CAN go back to just giving you what the law REQUIRES. Kind of made them (well all but the P kid I guess) see that there was no ENTITLEMENT to all the things I did for them.
Some kids seem to think that they are ENTITLED to a car at 16, a motorcycle, a TV, computer, stereo and flashy fashionable clothing and all they have to do is breathe and it is their parent’s responsibility to provide them everything and they can do as they please when they please. Not all these kids are budding psychopaths either, just “spoiled” kids.
I learned by spending “quality time” with my grandparents in the cotton field with my hands wrapped around a hoe….I sure did NOT like that I would much rather have been off riding my horse (Which should have been named “Gravy”) but that cotton provided my grandparent’s living, and I didn’t like working in the garden either, I hated it, but I did it, because that was a good portion of their food.
My son who has just returned home to live about six months ago (after divorcing his P wife who tried to kill him) didn’t always like working in the garden either as a kid, or shoveling out the goat stall (which provided his milk) but since he has returned home, he is actually enjoying doing the things he used to grouse about when he was a kid. My other son, (never married) who has lived here and worked for my husband and me as well as at other jobs, is a great “roommate” because he doesn’t have to be asked to fulfill his responsibilities for the farm or the house. We all work together to take care of “family responsibilities” because they are OURS, not just “mommie’s.”
So hang in there. I too had taken care of others more than myself, but am LEARNING and fortunately, the work I did with my kids (well two of them anyway) has paid off in them as adults. I am no longer putting everyone else in the world first. I am learning to say “I’m too tired, I’m going to rest.” As well as, I am learning that some things can WAIT to be done! Or be skipped entirely. I’ve been a working single mom, I’ve been a working wife, and I know there seemed times that there was no way to take care of ME…but now that I am a bit older and I hope wiser, I am taking care of ME FIRST!
gogettergirl:
I have always been daddy to the world. I always took care of everybody instead of myself. And now I am paying the price.
The combined stresses of losing my job, the S, and a lifetime of doing for everybody else have finally caught up with me. My health has been a mess for weeks now. I ruptured three spinal disks. I’m being tested for rheumatoid arthritis. I feel positively wretched.
Still, I’ve finally learned the lesson about taking care of myself. One of the few indulgences I allow myself is a weekly massage. I’m getting better at saying “no” — to charities that want me on their boards, to friends and family who “need” something, the works.
I was reading “The Betrayal Bond” last night and the author recounts a client who was in a prolonged traumatic marriage and how it took him over a year to feel better physically. I’ve had a lifetime of this between an N mother and S father on through the S. I’m starting to realize that it is going to take me quite awhile to get back up to speed physically and mentally.
Bottom line? If I don’t take care of me, not only is nobody else is.
I”M SO MAD. I understand the “opportunity for healing” that the sociopath,etc. represents, but news coverage like this makes me so mad. The worst the guy is labeled is a sex addict and maybe a gambling addict and having a hidden life, but the woman is diagnosed as co-dependent and like she is the one with the real problem!!!!!!!!!!! ARGHHHHHHHHHHHH!
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2009/04/29/jvm.craigslist.fiance.cnn
No mention that perhaps she has been brainwashed, and not all of us clean under our beds (I don’t) , not to mention Stockholm syndrome, not to mention gas lighting….ARRRHHH. Instead make HER part of the problem!
Great post, don’t know how I missed it, thank you.
The news organizations are really uneducated about psychopathy, and their ignorance is showing.
Even the “experts” don’t really seem to have a handle on the disorder and how it manifests itself on innocent people.
Nobody understands the depravity, the ruthless predation of this disorder like its victims. That’s why I think Donna should win the Nobel Prize in medicine for this site.
But to do that, we’d have to ID ourselves. And by the level of communication here, there are a lot of serious professional reputations here that cannot be destroyed by our blunders.
I thought about sending a copy of Hare’s book to unemployment on the gal S, they need to know too. Maybe I will do that.
Open to suggestions.
Hello To all My Fellow Survivors:
I am new to the lovefraud blog and I will tell my story another time, but I wanted you all to know how much I appreciate the support I have already received just by reading the many insightful, caring and validating posts on this site. It’s so good to know I am not alone!!
As I begin my long slow recovery from the traumatic effects of a 10 year roller coaster ride at the hands of my own P/N/S…..through a tortuous world I have know come to think of as “psycholand”, the following post in particular struck me deeply and I would like to thank Allison for sharing it with us:
“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.”
No truer words were ever spoken. Once I accepted the fact that nothing I did or didn’t do could ever have changed this man; and that once the “host” had been drained completely dry financially, emotionally and spiritually the parasite would simply move on to his next victim, I knew I had finally found the key to my own survival. Being able to put a name to the pain I had endured, reaching the bone-chilling conclusion that I man I’d loved and agonized over for so long was actually a psychopath, was a huge epiphany for me….a watershed moment that set me free. And strangely enough, what should have been a hugely frightening and heart-wrenching discovery actually had the capacity to allow my heart to “breathe” and at long last relax. I knew I could truly let him go this time, free of that old sadness and yearning.
Although I too am deeply troubled at my inability to warn other vulnerable women about this charming predator, all I can do is silently pray that they will be smarter than I was and RUN THE OTHER WAY!!
With graditude and hope for a bright future, I am glad to be…..
Older But Wiser
olderbutwiser: Welcome to LF… but, of course, sorry you had to go through everything you went through. I think what you said about not taking it personally is what has helped me cope with everything also. There is a lot of support here and I have learned a great deal about P/N/S’s… but I think I have learned more about myself!
I went on anti depressants when the P solicitor took all my money and my home and my inheritance. I stayed on the anti depressants because everytime I went off them I would get depressed. I was on them when I was with the P dentist . He also was on antidepressants, along with sleeping pills and he was also an alcoholic.
I started to decrease the anti depressants EIGHT YEARS after i began them. I decreased them when the supreme court of appeal found me innocent on all charges that the solicictor had had me convicted on and my criminal record was dismissed. Thats when I started to go off my anti depressants.
Thats also when my P dentist called the police and tried to do the same thing to me all over again. The reason was because I wouldn’t stay and host one of his drunken parties with all his alcoholic friends. He called the police and lied to them.
The police laughed and told me I should leave this drunken jerk.
So I did. The P dentist has kept trying to get me into trouble with the law. So far he has failed. However, everytime I have had to go to police stations and be interrogated and i am totally triggered because of what happened eight years ago, with the solicitor – who got away with it.
The P knows all that. He will never stop trying to get me into trouble . That is another reason it has to be no contact and I can’t get my dog or my lap top and clothes and jewellery and all my household goods and all my art etc.
I kept remebering things about my daughter today. Things way before 15 years ofage that were not normal. I remember once I did some of her colouring -in, in homework book for her, she was running late and worried about getting into trouble. When she saw it, she hit the roof! She went mental and blew up and yelled and sceamed and said I was retarded . She was ten.