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
Skippy…welcome. Every smear campaign is different and the same. It depends on what it is and what you know.
In my “crazy time” of 18 months after the “discard”, I said too much. Then, when the “not personal” kicked in, I stopped.
My only sane choice, for me, was to ignore it. To be myself. At first, people acted funny…looked at me funny. As time went on, they began to act normal again and were like before.
I guess, for me…I know who I am, and what I did, and didn’t do. If they can’t use their own minds to reconcile what they heard and what they see…I can’t help them.
That was just my personal, or “not personal”, way to do it.
Now I can laugh….with joy, and peace. Life is good!
Thanks for the welcome. My Nut Job flipped 18 months ago. His personality did a 180. After 10 months of hell and much urging by people who knew her, I got up the nerve to contact his second wife. It was chilling hearing her describe their 13 year marriage and divorce. I was hearing someone else tell my story! He pulled out a script and went at it again with me. At the end of our chat she said to me “you know, after all these years (18) it still hurts to talk about what he did to me but I have to tell you how much our conversation has meant to me. After all this time I FINALLY know that it was NEVER ABOUT ME!”
This is a guy who has had three marriages each of which he ended in the 13th year. He just can’t stay married longer than 13 years. He cheats with skanky women (fixer-upers) because I think it makes him feel like the “white knight.” We are still legally married (New York State is an at fault divorce law state and it takes forever). I was unable to get him out of our house so he lives upstairs in a guest room. But the best part is that he gave his current bimbo an engagement ring for Christmas! She is still married too.
This guy is a successful businessman. I have recently found out that he was the typical “hatchet man.” He would go in and CEO a company and before long, top level management would start dropping like flies. You don’t kiss his ass, you’re gone.
Fortunately for me, he put my name on everything so my sweet revenge is that I will kick his sorry butt in the settlement. And he is very intimidated by me. He can’t win in a verbal war because I speak to him like the baby he is and he just doesn’t know how to respond when he can’t get under my skin. He is a coward. What he has done has been painful but I will be damned if he will walk away with any of my self esteem. I own that…..it’s not marital property!
Hang on all of you. This web site is such a wonderful and helpful place to go. No one really understands unless they have been victimized by one of these turds.
Yes, that’s something to keep in mind for sure; don’t take it personally. Agreed.
I often step back from trying to understand in the relationship with the s. When I take a step back from my own feelings and look at the big picture more objectively, I realize that the whole relationship was NEVER about me, personally.
The woman that the s has lured in, seduced and controlled, put-down and discarded was not really me. No it was his idea of a woman. The woman he wanted me to be. He made tremendous effort to groom me into this “perfect woman mate” but it failed and he had to discard me because all he saw in me at the end is his failure to have this fantasy.
I am certain of this because I think about his girlfriends in the past and he was always looking for a certain look and behavior. When these woman (including me) refused to drop their individuality, it clashed with his “plan”. He always wanted to have a brooding pale, skinny, androgenous woman all dressed in black, enthusiastic about his interest, completely enmeshed with him. It’s like a personality cult of the s.
It’s funny, the ex-s has a blog online. It’s kinda frightening in a way. Its like he has married the architype of all the woman he has been looking for. He has posted photos of their house and her. Sadly I see the same thing happening to this woman he has married; she is slowly transforming into his image. In other words he is slowly influencing what he wants her to wear, I see the same haircut, clothing as he wanted me to wear. It’s so weird to see…their house is completely refurnished all black as he always wanted when we lived together. It’s like his new wife has no personality of her own. He speaks for her to in his blog. It’s funny he even met her the same way and said the same words to her when they first met.
This reminds me of reading about serial killers, it’s this particular image of the woman….
The s also head this huge disability fetish too, perhaps his next targeted prey will be an amputee brooding pale woman.
Anyways, when I think about these things it helps me to understand that he will repeat this over and over, he will keep looking for this particular weird fantasy woman, but he will always be disapointed.
Thank you, James. Yeah, that makes sense. And yeah, I think I did the same thing; when it first happened, I was so blindsided and confused, I said too much to two friends I thought were two of my best friends (who encouraged me to confide in them!), unaware that the SP had already approached them. Sigh. Yeah, so, all it did was make things worse.
And yes, I think ignoring the smearing is good advice. I’ll try my best to just be myself and not assume anything. I do have plenty of true friends left and the ones who would rather side with an SP (especially the ones who know what he did) are certainly not the best friends for me anyway.
Thanks again.
I wanted to add to the previous post.
The process of the s is never personal. He keeps looking for available prey that seems to have an openness for future grooming. If so, he will do everything within his power to create his magical reality where he has ultimate control over every detail, yet he is so powerless.
He discards when he cannot maintain this illusion of his arcihtype woman partner.
Each time he starts over, he goes into a metamorhposis. he discards everything from the previous life. What he keeps is the knowledge how to be a better pretender, better skills to con others. Then he chooses the next prey based on that new knowledge. He will have a new barage of info how to impress a woman, learned from the likes of the previous partner. For instance he used my favorite place in the woods, to propose to his new wife.
He will choose his new partner who is “nicer” and more “tolerant” than the one before.
Greenfern,
So interesting that you noted that the woman the S seduced was not you at all. I definitely can understand that. I was not myself at all, and I used to tell him that alot. He really wanted an extremely vulnerable quiet feminine girl to treat him like a God. I fell into the role – anything to please him. However, I would tell him over and over that “this is not really me; I am really a very strong and independant woman” etc. He always had a reassuring/patronizing response and would tell me every day that I was ‘perfect’ and we were ‘the same person’ so he understood all of me. he treated my depression/anxiety as if it had NOTHING to do with him or our relationship; even thoguh I told him this. he took the part of my therapist, further shifting the power away from me into his own hands. I didn’t have a leg to stand on with this guy.
His presence in my life made me so vulnerable and depressed; I was not eating, sleeping or being productive for months. My inner self was screaming at me to get away from him. I had this sick addiction to be with him but at the same time I feared him; even though he was not an a** until the very end. My instincts were so strong buit I ignored them Never again.
So he never knew me at all. However, it made life very sweet when I had my ‘baseball in the doorway’ moment let me tell you. We had a meeting after I filed a complaint against him at the Acup Association here. We all met and he and I had not seen each other for weeks. I was sooo nervous (but the ativan and St. John’s Wort, and Rescue Remedy helped!). I stood up to him and told him it was NOT OK to treat people like this, told him I thought he was a coward, he was weak, he had no integrity and that he reduced himself to a young toddler through his infantile behaviour. He was floored and speechless. I had never stood up to him before and he had never seem my confident side. It was sweet, and yes, I also slept like a baby that night for the first time in months.
What is the ‘smearing campaign’ by the way?
Welcome to all the new posters, Not taking it personally is really helping both my daughter and I to heal. As the fifth ex wife, can I really be surprised? He has 3 daughters that he abandoned. One he currently has custody of since her Mom is a Meth addict. But prior to using me and my friends to pad his pitiful resume, he had never even seen her. He got custody when she was 8. She just turned 11. I’m of course not allowed to see her. He of course doesn’t want to see my kids or me either. I know who he is and what he is. That is a fact that he can’t abide. He can’t pretend with me and he couldn’t control me in the ways that matter. He has found himself a much better toy. Ugly, poor, uncared for kids, and he is her boss so ultimate power to fire her and destroy her. But my part was to deny the evidence of his dysfunction and to believe that he just needed someone to love him into wholeness. I bought his lies about every bad thing being some evil woman’s fault, and I let him and his Mom convince me that he only needed a good honest woman and then he would be a Prince. He’s a Prince alright. The Prince of Darkness. LOL! Actually he joked at times that he was the son of Satan and that he had died a long time ago and that all that was left with was a body. I buy that now. But I don’t but any other part of his BS! He is using his daughter as bait for my Mom. Claiming that she can see her when ever she wants and thinking that I would never allow it. I told my Mom go ahead and call. You watch cause he won’t let you see her. Sure enough 2 requests and 2 denials. I told her see it is a game to him. He wants you to want something that he will never let you have. That is his game. That is his power. That is a game that I am done playing. It hurts my heart to lose contact with that child, but she is not my child and mine come first. She is in my prayers but she can’t be in my life. Not now nor ever. Sad but true. She is a pawn for him to play. Let some other woman think that she is going to be the Mommy. No woman will ever be her Mom for long. He won’t give up his power enough to risk a positive influence upon his daughter’s life.
Sabine: As I understand it now, the SP will go around either telling lies about you, once you’ve ended the relationship (or they’ve left after abusing you), or they will frame what happened between you in such a light that you look crazy or vindictive or whatever suits their purposes. They are terrific liars and often charismatic and very convincing–plus, they manage not to be emotional at all while talking about you this way (not hard for them, evidently, given their emotional makeup) while you, being devastated and deeply hurt, will often be very emotional when talking about it. Since, in our society, being emotional is equated with being not believable or stable, a lot of people will believe them and not you. Especially if they’ve been flattered by the SP or want something from them or are fooled/impressed by the cult followings these folks often have.
It does not cease to amaze me how similar these stories are.
Sabine-
It’s interesting eading your post you said:
“He really wanted an extremely vulnerable quiet feminine girl to treat him like a God. I fell into the role – anything to please him. However, I would tell him over and over that “this is not really me; I am really a very strong and independant woman” etc. He always had a reassuring/patronizing response and would tell me every day that I was ’perfect’ and we were ’the same person’ so he understood all of me.”
That sounds so familiar. He would alawys spew this pseudo feminist lingo, but in reality he wanted to dominate and control as a man. He would say “I support you in anything you want to do” but his actions, facial expression and body language told the opposite. He had subtle ways of making sure he had the final word in everthing. Since in his mind he was the ultimate expert on everything.
He used to say “we are a team” and jokingly added “we are a cult of two”. Makes me shutter now, back then I thought it was kinda cute, but now I realize the truth to it.