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 OxDrover:
As the mother of a ‘disordered’ person who has come to grips with the person your son is, how did you get to the place that you are able to see him for who he is, rather than avoiding it or making excuses or denying it?
Now that you are fully aware and have accepted who he is, what was it like prior to this ability to do so?
Dear R-babe,
Boy, there is no way to answer that question in “250 words or less!” LOL
As any “good” mother, I worried about my kids lives and did the best I could to be a nurturing mother, and spending time with them. LOTS of time. My kids were bright, so that in itself was achallenge to keep them occupied and my non-P son was also ADHD, so lots of challenges.
I first say P-behavior one time at age 11 in the P son. Then not again until puberty when he did a Dr. Jekly /Mr. Hyde change, and I assumed it was a bad case of “teenaged crap” but it escalated to criminal, and I was “bat chit” crazy trying to keep him from destroying his life and all the opportunities he had for success.
He was arrested at 17, again at 18, got 5 yrs, did 2, and out again, but at that time he was hateful to me except while he was in prison when he wrote me all these wonderful letters (mostly, SEND MONEY! LOL STill I hoped he would “reform.”
I believed him, what he wrote, but when push came to shove, he had NO intention of going straight after he got out, so instead of coming home to live and go back to school, he moved in with another relative who was conned by him, and thought “all he needed was a loving home” and of course I hadn’t given him that! He did come home for a visit and told me “the REASON I didn’t come home is I knew if I got in trouble with the law you would turn me in.” SOMETIMES THEY ACTUALLY SPEAK TRUTH AND TELL YOU WHAT THEY ARE THINKING. Still I didn’t give up the malignant hope which ate into my soul like a cancer.
Five months after he got out of prison ,he was back for MURDER. I melted down for 3 months TOTALLY non-functional.
He called (collect) to vouch for his innocence when it was a total lie. In going through one of the first letters he wrote me after the home invasion robbery he was first arrested for he “apologized” for disappointing me and my husband, but DENIED his guilt on that one too.
Even after I realized his denials were all BOGUS, I still let him convince me he had “reformed” until it became so obvious that he intended to have me killed in 2006. It was only by the grace of God that I found it out in time to prevent it.
He had my entire family except my adopted son D convinced I was NUTS, mean, insane, mean, etc. I hated to leave everything I have in the world in the way of material possessions and at the time, my “mother” in his grasp and the grasp of his ex-cellmate that he had sent to take over like a Trojan HOrse, but D and I fled for our lives.
Eventually when I was untouchable because they couldn’t find me,, the TH-P changed his tactics, started an affair with my P-DIL, they stole 24$K money from my mom, and tried to kill my son C (her husband) and make it look like suicide. By this time I had figured out what was going on and was NC with my P-son in prison.
Afterwards, (after my DIL and the TH-P were arrested) my egg donor would send him a few bucks, but lie about it, but after about a year, she started corresponding with him and supplying him with considerable money and money after her death in the 10s of thousands. My sons C, D and I are NC with her now because of her lying etc.
It was painful, very painful, but I realize how dysfunctional my egg donor is, she is ENABLING central, and isn’t going to change, and she is willing to persecute and punish those of us who don’t go along with her, and reward my P son for saying the things she WANTS to believe. I was there too for a long time, but I see NOW that I was never helping him, he was never sincere (he lied repeatedly and I let him get away with it because I WANTED TO BELIEVE, it was important to me to believe that this “son” (the man) was the same as the sweet little boy I had loved and had so much hope for. I had to give up my DREAM and FANTASY that my bright son would acheive his potential greatness. WOW!
I came to realize the BOY and the MAN are not the same individual. The boy is a memory, but the boy IS NO MORE. Even if the man was wonderful, the BOY is NO MORE, he is gone. The MAN is a stranger to me. So I ended up compartementalizing I guess you would say, and “buried” the boy who is NOMORE, I even had a little memorial service for him. I have his pictures, but have thrown away all those of the MAN, becausej the MAN is just another psychopathic convict that is dangerous to me and others. I have no love for the MAN, though I will always love the memory I have of the little boy. Just like I will always love the memory of my deceased husband and remember the fun times we had, and the things we enjoyed. Even if I were to remarry again, I will still have good memories of my late husband. It is the same with the BOY.
As I was going through the box of letters the MAN wrote to me, I can see what a CON he is, and I also found some photos of the boy and some other keepsakes, pictures of him at the fair with his duck when he was ab out 6-7, so proud of the ribbons the duck won. So proud his picture was in the newspaper. I can still smile and remember that day and how much fun it was and how I gushed with love for that proud little BOY. But my only memories of the MAN or the TEENAGER are bitter so I don’t think a lot about them.
I hope that makes some sense to you, I don’t know any other way to explain it, but like the break up with ANY psychopath, and I’ve had several, my sperm-donor, a BF, a boss, etc. it is always painful and there is a grieving process just like when my husband died. ALL losses that are “important” to us cause the grief cycle, but we can complete it and come to ACCEPTENCE of what IS. I think maybe this being forced to reread all his letters (in a different frame of mind) though it has been PAINFUL, I think is bringing me MORE CLOSURE than I had even after the “memorial service” for my Little BOY that I lost.
Ox-
Makes complete sense and in a way, can be related to my story. I can relate the ‘little boy’ whom you loved with everything you had to the ‘person’ I fell in love with. His generosity, his kind heart, his easy goin-ness, his fun, his care for me, his compassion, his awe, all of it. My ‘little boy’ so to speak was innocent in my mind as far as our relationship was concerned.
Your ‘man’ that you came to know was NOTHING like what you loved. He was evil, and impure, and mean, calculating, manipulative…NOT the little boy who gave you so much joy. My ‘man’ that I came to know was NOTHING like what I loved, either. So in a sense I understand how you have compartmentalized the two.
I struggle with understanding how I was allowed into his family, yet was given such minimal information…information that only said ‘wow, he was a real hell raiser as a kid’…or ‘yeah, he sure was a wild one, but LOOK AT HOW WONDERFUL HE’S BECOME’.
That is his mother, though trying STILL to keep him from himself…from destroying his life and all the opportunities he assumedly still has in life. I watched this from an outsiders view, but could never put my finger on it. Why was she so guarded with me, why so stand-offish? You have told me…she wants to badly to be convinced that he has “reformed” (as he was in prison for 2 years for attempted home invasion also), knows he hasn’t but for her own psychie to stay in tact, she lives in a fantasy…a dream, thus not even having the ABILITY to share his story with me…even after being asked!
She, on a couple occasions, wrote me emails that said something to the effect “Im so glad you’re in his life. I just love him so much, and although it hasnt always been easy, the rewards are worth the fight. Im glad, if I have to share him, that it’s with someone like you”.
She lied to me just like him! She isn’t and wasn’t able to see him for who he is NOW! She believes that he has become a ‘changed’ man through prison and is ‘so much better than he ever was.” Maybe he is better-TO HER- than he ever was before, but what about all of ‘him’ that she KNOWS is evil…that doesn’t go away through prison or a year and a half of LOOKING put together…
I’m glad this article has been resurrected, not taking things personally was crucial to me losing the depression and low self esteem that being with a sociopath creates (IMO).
I can’t emphasise how important it is!!
It seems pathetic now looking back, but he really had me thinking I was a useless boring person who only needed to work harder and be better to be good enough for him!
When I met him I had an exciting new job and looked good, my daughter had just turned 13 so I was on what I call ‘the home stretch’ parent-wise. Fastforward 2 years later I was a haggered (I looked sallow and had huge bags under my eyes, hair falling out) tired insecure woman breastfeeding our son and helping him with his business and his 2 daughters to his 1st marriage. None of this was any worth to him, he seemed to become bored with the breastfeeding gig and annoyed that I wasn’t ‘going out’ enough and forging ahead with life. No concept at all of how tired I was dealing with 4 kids.
I was always trying so hard to be enough for him, and nothing was ever good enough.
How lovely it is not living like that anymore! SO WHAT if he doesn’t think I’m up to scratch, who the hell is he?! Pot-bellied balding idiot who drinks to the point of blacking out. Pisses everyone off and doesn’t care. He’s not much better than the people he locks up, IMO.
Now it’s just me and my teenager and toddler who are great mates, and my handful of freinds who are genuine caring people. And I like it that way.
I really feel like a new person now and not a stupid naive girl anymore, a real woman and proud to be strong in myself and not a passive ‘turn-the-other-cheek-type’, waiting like a sitting duck for the next creep to come along.
Just remember you are awesome and have heaps offer, and you can make people in your life happy, people who appreciate you.
Dear R-Babe,
Maybe I can add something to this as well. Although I am not as far “along” in the process as Oxy is.
And I assume that you ask this in regards of trying to understand your exs mother and where she is at in the process? Because I know that you have mentioned this before.
Maybe where I am at in this process you can relate better to where your exs mother is at.
It is really next to impossible to even imagine having to accept that your child (regardless of their age) has a disorder that is not treatable.
As a mother is it also next to impossible to sort through what the “hell” happened.
Like Oxy I have many fond memories of my son as a child. I didn’t see any disturbing traits until puberty.
So it is a matter of being able to seperate this all and make sense of something that DOES NOT make sense. How can your child grow up and be a stranger to you?
How can you love and fear the same child? Lots of emotional turmoil is involved.
Denial is usually a part of this process in the begining. You still have alot of hope. It is very hard to give up that hope.
Some mothers never will. The mother child bond is the strongest of all bonds. It is the closest we can ever come to loving unconditionally.
Look at how hard it is for you to get past the “bond” you have with your ex. Look at all the emotions that you are going through. How hard it is. Your heart remembers the love bombing part of the relationship and your intelectual side remembers the “reality” of when the mask was down.
Think about trying to make sense and seperate the child from the man. That is what his mother is trying to do.
Now try to picture yourself, trying to break a bond with your own child? Could you do it? Because that is ultimately something that you would have to do in order to totally disengage.
I don’t know if I can do this…..I am certainly NOT there.
I am only in the stage of acceptance, that I believe he has a disorder. But I also still have my moments of……Well maybe…You know, the “hope”, springs alive again. So it is a process. And I strive for progress not perfection.
I think that you have to accept the fact that your exs mother might always be in denial about her son. My MIL is still in denial about her son. (my sons father) My MIL doesn’t even accept that her son was an alcoholic. And there is much PROOF of this fact. (past DUIS & police reports) Including that her son TOLD her that he was an alcoholic. Her sons police report when he died states that he had high alcohol content in his body. (he suicided) She still denies it, still 13 years later.
Denial is strong. And some people that refuse to be able to face the truth stay there. They don’t come out of it.
Sometimes the truth is really just to much to bear.
I don’t ever want to be in total denial about my son. But I can certainly relate that it would be esier to stay there than to deal with the reality of it all.
does any of this help to make sense of it?
Just as a side-note: I am jaw-droppingly amazed to find specific words and phrases that I have thought up on my own, during my countless hours musings over the past 10 months, I have come across other’s using on this site which I discovered only days ago;
– Emotional Vampire
– Emotional Rape
– Relationship was just an illusion
– Bad Man
I find this so uncanny and surely a sign of how remarkably similar my experiences have been to those of others on this site.
Another thing I have noticed is that people on here are seem nice and non-judgemental, and there is a distinct absense of kissy-kissy mwah-mwah sucking-up BS, just genuine empanty and encouragement
Rosie…..
MWAH-MWAH darlen! (had to do it…sorry)
🙂
I can so relate to the ‘terminology’ used….I still find ‘words’ that I thought were my own….
Situations that I used to brush off…..
Like….I would leave ‘piles’ at the bottom of the stairs ….stuff that needed to go UPSTAIRS….
S would either walk right past it for days….or take it down to garage….(where I had just brought it from).
I thought this was a lack of paying attention, or common sense defecit…..NO…..it was sabotage….
For years, in many different situations…..I’d say….”I do it….YOU undo it”.
Or…..You live as an island in this world.
Or….Do you really want to live a ‘fake’ life.
I never realized how very true and applicable those words are……TODAY!
I’;m really glad your here…..you will find so much info and revelations in you journey…..Lf is a wonderful community of support.
We got some straight shooters here……and we all mean well.
(caution….sometimes we do get a troll or two show up…..but we don’t give them the time of day….don’t engage….they are potted plants….and they go away) Just like real life….if something doesn’t feel right….back away. They show their colors real soon.
Dear R-babe,
There is a great deal of truth to what Witsend said, and what you observed in your X-‘s mother. It is SO DIFFICULT to reconcile and ingest the fact that the child you loved so much and had such GREAT dreams for, turned out to be a MONSTER of huge proportions. Of course she liked you, you were good and upright, better than she could hope for an X-con.
I’ve seen parents who would mortgage their houses to hire defense attorneys and since I never did that, I convinced myself I was NOT ENABLING HIM, even though I wrote him and sent money and sent money, over and over.
What I WAS doing was I felt that I was doing the best anyone could and that I was “setting limits” for him, because I wasn’t financially RUINING myself. I WASN”T though, I was fooling myself.
Our family has a little “motto” of sorts that I made up years ago. I t is called the “Eleventh Commandment” and it is THOU SHALT NOT FOOL THYSELF. In other words, don’t be in denial.
WOW! I have VIOLATED that “commandment” more than everyone else has violated the other 10! LOL Now, Ii am working REALLY HARD to not violate it any more.
Denial is a normal and actually (short term) a BENEFICIAL emotional state.
When someone comes and tells us something too horrible to “believe”—Your wife/son/friend is dead! You cannot accept it without falling apart, so you are instantly in “denial.” “Oh, that can’t be true!” It helps you cope with something that you CANNOT COPE WITH, however, if you keep on in DENIAL, the “body” will start to stink, you will not bury it.
I have seen people with a loved one on life support in DENIAL and because the body is WARM they cannot give up “hope that “susie in in there and will wake up.” It is a false hope, but it keeps them from having to accept that “Susie is gone.”
We do the same thing with many overpowering emotions. If you hear a horrible noise in your car, and it terrifies you because you don’t have the money to get it fixed, and you STAY in denial, saying “Oh, it’s nothing” you do NOT take the car to the shop, so the problem GETS WORSE and the car breaks down because it was out of oil which would have been cheap and easy to fix. So DENIAL keeps you from TAKING action.
Long term, NOT taking action because of denial results in greater problems and greater pain. Short term, it is helpful.
It is part of the grief process. Google “Elizabeth Kubler-Ross” for more information on this grief process. It does not move along 1-2-3-4-5, but 1,4, 3,2, 4, 1, etc. and there is a lot of flip- flopping back and forth. We also “bargain” with our grief, we pray “God, if you will let Susie get through this surgery, I will go to church every day” or “If I bail him out this time, he will not do criminal things again.” but that is part of the normal grief process leading to accepting what IS vs what we WANT. Some people never complete the process, they just go over and over the DENIAL, the SADNESS, the BARGTAINING, the ANGER and never get to the ACCEPTENCE of what IS. “Susie is gone” (or whatever the loss is)
We “lose” the person we “loved” because they were simply a fantasy, a hologram, an illusion, and it is painful for us to realize that and the grief is just as profound as if they had died.
My “little boy” DIED, he is no more. the MAN who took his organs is a STRANGER I never knew, but I wanted to believe he was my little BOY, but he is NOT. I had to give up that fantasy and illusion, and it was a painful and long process because I stayed in DENIAL of his actions and DENIAL of my own as well. I FEEL FOR your x’s mother, and for Wit’s MIL, but each ofus must come to our own path and make our own choices, and in the end, FOR ME, it was less painful to face the truth than to go on with the denial for ever.
Lots of people never are able to let go and accept the TRUTH. The truth WILL set you FREE, but first it will RIP OUT YOUR HEART!
Ox and Wits…
Yup….I get it 100 percent. You have both made more sense than anything Ive heard or read to this point.
Witsend…yes, I did write about this before, and Ive kept what you said, reminding myself that maybe my ex’s mothers intentions behind ‘hiding’ the truth were, in fact, her own denial and it is being used as a survival tool. Thank you…
Every day, the more questions I ask, the more I process I come to understand a little more the TOTAL dysfunction of not only HIM, but everything he touches or is a part of. His family, clearly being a HUGE component.
How DO you deal with FAMILY, a child, creating so much devistation…at the cost of everyone elses own mental well being. Certainly a parent (well, maybe not CERTAINLY) who loves their child will go to any length to ‘help’ that child. Given the shit he’s caused and created his ENTIRE life, this is par for course for them, although hurtful none the less. I cant imagine being the parent, knowing the potential your child has to do damage, WANTING it to be different, and the predicament the parent is in when an upstanding person (myself) enters the life of the devil.
Loyalty to your child is assumed. My thoughts on that though are this…is it loyalty or DENIAL that keeps our lips sealed? In her position I think its both. She IS loyal to her son, hands down. But her desire to want him to be ‘better’, though seeing he’s not, keeps her in this state of paralysis…she knows nothing, she sees nothing, she wants nothing.
I see this better now…THANK YOU TWO SO MUCH!
Dear R-babe,
Wit’s MIL who REFUSES to believe her son is a drunk, even when she pulled 50 FIFTY empty vodka bottles out of his room after he was gone, is not even HALF what my egg donor is doing with my P-son who is in PRISON FOR MURDER, and she KNOWS (saw the evidence in his own handwriting) that he was trying to have me KILLED—and still she sends him money and makes plans for his financial welfare after she is gone? Even if it means the rest of her family will not speak to her?
Wit’s MIL’s son is at least dead so he can’t damange anyone any more, but my egg donor is facilitating my would-be MURDERER, the would be murderer of the REST OF HER FAMILY and she no longer “believes” he was involved.
It TRULY AMAZES me the depth of DENIAL people (including ME!) can go to keep a fantasy alive in the face of all evidence.
Hey, look at the jury that let OJ off for killing Nichole! They didn’t want to believe so they didn’t, they decided on emotions, not logic or evidence.(IMHO)
When Witty first came here she was (and I say this with love) NUTSO trying to get HELP FOR HER SON, trying to find SOMEONE, anyone, any program, that would help SAVE her son. Her son sounds like a clone of mine ,and I kept telling her “give it up, he won’t get better he is a psychopath” I could see it, but she couldn’t, and it has taken her all this period of time to come to HER OWN TRUTH, IN HER OWN TIME. Still it hurts. It took me 25 ****T-W-E-N-T-Y-F-I-V-E *** years! So, let me say I was NUTSO FOR 25 YEARS, trying to find some way, any way, to “help” my son. I racked my brain, I spent so much of my energy trying to find some way, SOME WAY—and it was just as futile as pithing into the ocean to raise the wateer level. It ain’t happening baby!
There was a time after the murder when I wished I could trade places with that young woman’s mother, and my son be dead and people bringing caserole dishes and holding my hand. I “lost” a son that day too, and no one sympathized with ME over my loss, in fact, they blamed me cause I didn’t raise him right. You would have died if you could have heart the detective talking to me like I was someone else’s yard dog that tore into his trash. I can’t blame him, cause I can almost SEE the “smirk” on the Face as he sat there in front of that detective.
In some ways, I guess I am still in denial about that girl’s death and how her parents must have suffered. I know one thing, however bad it was, it was different than mine, maybe, but no worse. It couldn’t have been. Today I do wish it was the other way round. I wish her alive and him dead.
I saw a TV interview while I was in Texas with a woman cop who had turned her son in for murder and he went to prison, and he was of course mad at her, and the mother “reconciled” with her kid, “still loved him” etc. I felt for that mother, but the difference is, I can NO LONGER RECONCILE WITH MINE. If it gives her comfort to visit her son, okay, that is her truth, but NO LONGER MINE. They also interviewed the Uni-bomber’s brother who turned him in, but he has not “reconciled” with his brother, who hates him for turning him in. Mine hates me for turning him in that one time, and actually blames me for him being in prison for murder though I didn’t turn him in for that one. I would have though if I had known.
Even my attorney for protesting my son’s parole hearing is amazed that I would spend considerable money to hire an attorney to protest his parole! In fact, he said he had never even heard of a family member doing that.
Maybe I can get some press on that, what you think? Should I do that? Maybe AFTER the hearing is over but BEFORE the “decision is in.” I do know some reporters at the Dallas Morning News.