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
can I rephrase that as if you are wondering what your life’s goals should be? your calling? why you are here and what you’re supposed to do with your life?
no. 🙂
i think it is a series ‘smaller’ answers than what you propose darwinsmom (but no less profound). what i want to know may be the building blocks that could possibly lead to the questions that you propose.
I need to figure out what matters to me. and i need a process for doing that. when i say my world went off axis, i mean it literally – all of my internal emotional, mental and psychological systems that were at 18 degrees most of my life all of a sudden went into a wobble and I don’t know what matters anymore. i don’t really know where i am, who i am.
If that is what you are wondering, your life’s purpose… tough nut to crack.
I found my appropriate path in life after discovering my talents that were a blind spot to me.
Because of some stupid teacher in the first year of elementary and how he split classes, which were reunified into one class the schoolyear after that, I ended up being the outcast of the class. Not really or heavily bullied, but just ignored. And I was unable to overcome it. While I was known to be friendly, I had only outsider status in group settings. Made me believe I was socially defunct. This lasted until my 15. 8 years of peer neglect.
My loving parents tried to empower me by telling me I was a kind, good natured child, but that didn’t help me to solve the question “what is wrong with me that I never have any friends much in my class?” My mom tried to get me to summer camps, but I hated them. It was just a bigger group that I did not seem to fit in. At least I’m grateful they never sent me to scouts or something. Would just have made me feel more of a social failure.
Anyway, when I was 15, 2 girls of a year more senior than mine, showed interest in befriending me, and they invited me to go out with them. I was totally surprised. My parents hadn’t intended me to let me go out so soon and that regular (weekly), but they knew the girls were decent and trustful, so they allowed me to go out. I bloomed. I discovered I was actually able to make plenty of friends and be liked. By the time I was 18, and if I told people of my youth outsider status, they simply could not believe this of me. I seemed so outgoing, social, pleasant and easy company.
Fast forward past my student years, past my 5.5 year relationship with a guy who was too young, too inexperienced and too much of an opposite to ever comprehend me, and I ended up with an ID-crisis I was treated for in therapy, because of a combination of the outsider-past as well as the relationship.
I had a masters degree in Industrial Design. Never regretted my studies. It was so diverse and such a challenge on intellectual and creative levels that it was a good thing for me. But working in an office, behind a computer screen was plain boring. I altered companies a few times, but each time it was the same thing. After 3 months I’d know what I was to do, whichever new thing I needed to learn, and after 6 months on the job I’d get utterly bored with it, ending up inventing hot water. After 3-4 years even trying a new company hardly seemed an option for me. I knew I’d end up feeling the same again. Plus, an office felt like a prison to me, where they had locked the door and threw away the key. And the planted industrial office areas made me feel as if I was outside of life.
I went on an adventure trip in Mexico with Trek America. We’d be a small group of max 10-11 people from all over the world along with a tourleader. I kinda predicted for myself that I probably would befriend some people, but somehow remain the loner within the group. The trip was awesome. I always had gone camping in my youth with my parents, and did some of that with my first long term bf as well. But he preferred all in settings. And he was a worrywart, so I never did much daring activities while with him. One of the first things I discovered about myself in that trip was how adventurous I was. There was at the same time a growing attraction between my tourleader and myself (he’s my Inspiring Soul). He was the one who removed a blind spot about myself. He said at some point, “You know, you have the ability and personality to do this.” And then the picture started to fit. The reason why I never was a groups-person was because I’m actually a natural leader type, an alpha who takes initiative and a natural motivator. However, I never craved for power over people, which was the reason I never was a leader in my schoolyears. And of course, being the loner in group settings all those years, it never even occurred to me what my status is.
So basically it took me until my late teens to know for myself that I was a very social outgoing person. And it took me another decade to realize I was a leader, as well as to realize that I need daily challenges as well as variety and a bit of adventure. The problem was of course finding a job. It took me a catharsic and sabbatical year to come to the conclusion I would best be a teacher, or a trainer. Though my first teaching hour was an horrid hour of being ignored by 7 HS pupils, I still went home after my first teaching day as if I had found my calling.
So, after that long story… I don’t know how to make this into a purposeful process, but it is possible that you don’t know your life purpose yet, because you have beliefs about yourself that are far from the truth: blind spots. Most often, people around you who know you for a long time, know you have a certain talent, while you’re blind for it yourself. I think the only way to uncover your blind spots about yourself, is by putting yourself in situations that are unknown to you, stuff you have not done yet at all in your life, and then get feedback from others about it.
Might that answer your question, one/joy?
hi darwinsmom – thanks for sharing your experience.
i actually know quite a bit my skills and talents. I bloomed later in life, traveled a lot, lived in other countries, started my own business, went to art school, did a range of different things from organic gardening to business development. i have spent a lot of time learning things about myself that might have been ‘blind spots’ as you describe.
Skylar,
Thanks for delving into the particulars. I did ask what I could have done/or what I did that made her feel unloved. At the earliest time, when she was 12, she said didn’t know. In later years, she responded with anger that she wasn’t going to go there and I was just guilt tripping her. To ask it NOW, she just goes NC on me with any such question.
I should have been more honest with my answer to LL, yes of course in hindsight I made mistakes but not abusive ones, many based on childhood traumas. For ex: My mother headtripped me into thinking I was stupid. So I made sure to encourage my daughter’s intelligence, and she is quite intelligent… only she came to think she was smarter than I was and I didn’t assert myself. I thought that would seem as if I were competing or jealous and that was ridiculous to me so I didn’t tell her that her mama was smart too. But the fact is, I helped my daughter with her physics and calculus and statistics homework in highschool. Yet, the contempt from my daughter and the put downs of my stupidity… as I say, not knowing is not the same as not being able to learn…
I have twisted myself into a pretzel trying to solve the riddle b/c I wanted the relationship, but it keeps going back to a power play. She knows she means everything to me and she with holds, secretive, and at one time, I found out she was scamming people and I came down on that like a ton of bricks. She doesn’t want my love, she wants to scapegoat and punish me, treating me in ways she could NEVER get away with in her career or with her collegues and friends, most of whom hate me for being a prostitute and forcing her to earn her money for food…. (she had a car, cell phone, tv/dvd, stereo, clothes, and full ride to undergrad school… and they think a min wage part time job bought that? where is THEIR logic?)
I wrote that before your previous reply…. Hmmmm, if it’s more about who you are, and you feel confused, then I think it’s important to start with the beginning again.
Find out your temperament profile, or personality test.
If you haven’t done it already here’s a link to the Keirsey personlity test
http://www.keirsey.com/sorte/instruments2.aspx?partid=0
It would also be important to learn your natural learning type according to Kolb. It gives you insight on more than just how to “study”, but about your natural approach and view in life as you grow. You’ll find more explanation here:
http://www.businessballs.com/kolblearningstyles.htm
Here’s a link to a Kolb learning style test.
http://www.dentistry.bham.ac.uk/ecourse/pages/page.asp?pid=1518
Both info you learn about yourself from those tests might at least help you what kind of method you need to develop to learn your values and find your center self again.
What my ID-therapy thought me, was that I tended to dissociate fro my emotions. I would talk about emotions, but not feel them as I talked. This would be in accordance with my learning style. I start my learning cycles as a divergent. So I feel and watch others. Then I intellectualize it and make it into theoretic models. That is what I did when I dissociated and talked about emotions. As an extravert type I know I get my energy by socialising.
Right after the break-up I had my mom and later my best friend come over for a visit, after first feeling and observing. At first the social contact and the talking did me good. But after a few hours I became aware that if I would keep on talking, I’d end up theorizing, and move away from my feelings. That’s not always a problem, but I could feel my emotions building inside of me, and through the therapy I learned to attend to them. So, at some point I told them I needed to be by myself again to allow myself to feel what I feel, instead of talking and thereby risk to dissociate.
I think in order to find a method to get to know your true self, you must be able to get into contact with your emotional self. You will find what is your best chance of coming to yourself by realizing your fundamental temperament as well as the angle in which you can start to learn about yourself.
Hope that helps
the great lf post over! thanks, i will take a look at these. i have done a number of personality tests over the last 5 years – all part of learning about my style in business. learned lots about myself and my temperament, where i am on the introvert/ extravert scale, my learning style, my innate skills, my developed skills and my communication style. I read the long post you did the other day about feeling betrayed by your own temperament; and we share a similar temperament.
i think the last thing you said about emotions is key…which brings me back to finding a process, but it needs to be one i can work through by myself.
One joy,
You sound like me. my value system is in flux. I really didn’t get one from my parents. Got some of one from school and our culture, but it isn’t STUCK in me, like a value system that parents ingrain in you.
A large part of the reason, I’ve come to realize, is that narcisist parents don’t have consistent rules. They have different rules for different people. Their behavior is arbitrary.
I was treated very differently from my spath bro and spath sis. My parents are concerned with what is good for them more than they are with what is good.
If you make any progress on that, let me know. I’ve not made too much at all.
Skylar,
I have my theory on why diff people were treated differently. In the whole, I don’t think they were. I think spaths are opportunistic, they behave in the moment. So they look for weaknesses, and they respond according to what gets results. What bothers my sibling may not bother me, so spath parent couldn’t dominate me with the same method that dominated my sibling. Therefore I think spaths alter their METHOD but not their goal of domination/control. Thus it may not SEEM consistent to you, but I see that it is the GOAL that is consistent, to use and maniplate others togain whatever they want IN THE MOMENT.
Something to think about? or too simplistic?
ps I was dismissed as uncontrollable and ostracized/shunned. Painful to me, but ultimately freeing b/c I gravitated towards people who were commonsensical and had structure and purpose in their lives. Chaos stopped and life made sense to me, until the spath!!!!
sky – i used to try to treat everyone the same way. we both know how stupid a proposition that is.
i was taught by my parents to respect authority (aka take shit from them) – so my sense of relating to authority is quite skewed. i rebelled at an early age – i didn’t strike against my folks, i took it inside and ran away. i now take too much crap from some people (like the spath) and am not able to mitigate BS from employers, although i am getting a bit wiser and more strategic about how i relate to their games. but i find it all very ‘not right’ – it’s not nourishing or fun or good. i was taught to be a ‘good kid’ – i always tried very hard to do well, and consequently my boundaries are messed up – i can say they are messed up, BECAUSE they don’t bring me any happiness.
i think you hit on something important when you said’ concerned with what is good for them more than they are with what is good’. I thought i was about ‘what is good’ – not sure i was. was i? don’t know. and maybe i/ we should be more about ‘what is good for us’ than we have been. I think this dichotomy is a big part of my confusion – i have to be more FOR myself, not just be more myself. and what does that mean to the good girl? she will be going against what she has been taught., and what she has believed to be important. how do i be ‘less good’ and at peace? do i have to struggle to get back to a goodness that i value? (and it will be different than what I was before – it HAS to be or it will kill me) is that the road to peace for me?