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
Greenfern-
Wow, you nailed it for me. My psycho also said he supported me in anything I wanted to do, yet when I would take steps towards that it was his body language etc. that spoke louder. He suggested I quit working after we got married “so I could be available to travel with him.” Whatta guy. His MO was to make me totally dependent on him and also to keep me home so he would know where I was. That way he was free to have his “nooners” with little risk that I would spot his car etc. He always said I was his “soul mate.” My God, how could that be? He has no soul!
Sabine…smear campaign….well…
In my case, apparently she pity-played the “new” married-to-someone-else boyfriend at work with tales of how I hit her, beat her, and threatened her at gunpoint. When I caught them together in his truck at a local park…he ran to his wife with the same stories of my ex’s (poor woman at his work) “crazy husband” who might show up with the pictures….found that out a year later.
I imagine there was a whole lot more….I was mean, controlling, abusive…etc., ad infinitum.
Who knows what else? And at this point, I don’t care. I haven’t had a traumatic brain injury, don’t get drunk, don’t do drugs…don’t live in a fantasy world.
I have an excellent memory…my “ex” complained often, when we were married, that I “never forgot anything”…often in a good way, then.
It was all lies on her part. Some people realize it now, some don’t. The ones that “caught on” to the lies are the ones I trust and deal with in my teenage daughter’s life. The one’s that don’t catch on….I don’t deal with.
Peace. No chaos. The smears don’t affect me now…my life isn’t based on lies.
Spanky-
Vocabulary of the s
– soul mate
– you and I are one
– you are the perfect woman for me
– the world does not appreciate you enough (I do)
– you are my best friend
– you are the only one for me (immediately followed up by: “am I the only one for you?)
– I love you, do you love me (about 100x a day, and would get pissed if I did not come back with an i love you fast enough)
– am I the ONE for you?
Oh, god…..sigh…how did I live with this bs?
My S was also a successful business man and a LAWYER. Had his own law firm, president or trustee of every big organization in our area. He was a REAL MANIPULATOR. Everybody looked up to him and believed every word he said. when I got away from him, he told people that HE was the victim and gave the “don’t you feel sorry for me” kind of BS. It was disgusting the way he behaved but even more so because everybody believed his lies.
He tried to completely define what and who I would be, first by force, and then after I started fighting back, he became really nasty, trying to shove me back into his box. I got away from him but not without becoming suicidal and hating myself for years.
I’ve dealt with so much pain and betrayal but I thank you all for being here now and helping me to remember that it was HIM not me.
I’m certainly stronger for it.
It is so heartening to me to see so many NEW POSTERS here in one spot in one day!!! It gives me satisfaction that there are more and more people out there GETTING IT. Getting it and moving on down the road to healing. You are all so welcome here!!!! Glad you are here! It is by sharing, and supporting each other, then reaching out to others with empathy for what they have endured, that we can REALLY make a difference in people’s lives. Those of us who have been here “a while” realize what a wonderful venue Donna has created here and how the healing has spread like ripples on a pond. Glad you are all here.
The s was with is a college professor, tenured, all his students admire him and eat up anything he says.
If a student is not admiring him or dares to question him, he rakes them over hot coals.
He always has a group of pale, brooding and anorexic group of young woman students following him around.
In private he is a drug user, grower, he pees in soda bottles and hoards these bottles, he has a disability fetish, he hoards garabge, he collects toy guns and paints them to look like real guns, he talks garbage about EVERYBODY behind their backs. He puts people on pedestals for 5 seconds, then discards them mercilessly. He told me laughing once “I punched my mom in the boobies, that was great”. He was also obsessed with serial killers and crime scene photos, which are ok in normal situations, but given his other behaviour, it was scary. He was also severly abused and in foster care as a child. He was expelled from high school for stalking some girl and writing a letter to her in his own blood.
One word: FREAKSHOW!
Greenfern,
I like your summary quotes of what the Sociopath would say to you. here I some I heard frequently:
You and I are the SAME person
I can feel what you’re feeling
I know you love me but you just can’t say it yet
We are soulmates
I feel you even when you are not there
You’re Perfect (heard that one every day)
We will be together until eternity
…I can see why you shudder when he said you were a ‘cult of two’ – since it was probably true in a sense!
Jim – thanks for the smear campaign explanation. Wow. What an awful situation for you. I would love to create a smear campaign of my own for her! maybe we should start settting these folks up together -eh? Give them a taste of their own medicine!
Skippy – you are so right about how the S will try to play the ‘crazy card’ with me. I think he already is. My tactic has been to tell my story with facts only and hide as much emotion as possible. I talk to his Acupuncture Association regularily but they cannot do anything aboout him as he is not liscenced in this province (they are unregulated in most of Canada). They are trying to make him ‘clean up his act’ as he admits to ‘having relations’ with clients in the past (and probably exploiting them too). I told the President he was a Sociopath but of course he was not altogether convinced.
However, I hear your advice to tread lightly as he can turn the story around to anyone. I know that. He is soooo charismatic; I think ebven right now he could probably convince me that he was truly sorry for everything (except this will never happen as he would never apologize; only makes him look worse to the Assoc).
Thanks so much, OxDrover. It’s very comforting and reassuring to have the support the compassionate people offer on this site. And yes, thank you, Donna!
Spanky:
Having had the pleasure of a New York divorce (before I came out), I have one word of advice for you. DO NOT agree to the divorce BEFORE every QDRO, every property transfer, every piece of business between you and your S has taken place.
I made that mistake and spent untold dollars and 3 years battling my ex after the divorce, in order to get her to sign over and release the assets that were assigned to me in the divorce settlement.
The judge got so fed up, she finally ordered my ex to sign the QDROs or be held in contempt of court and spend XMAS in the county lock-up. As an XMAS gift to me, the judge actually awarded me legal fees and ordered my ex to write a check on the spot.
I also noticed that your S is still living under your roof because, insanity that New York divorce law is, if he leaves, then it’s called abandonnment. Personally, I am surprised that New York’s homicide rate isn’t sky-high among divorcing couples. Every where else in the world, when things fall apart, somebody moves out. Instead, in New York, you have two people who hate each other forced to live under the same roof. Talk about legal insanity.
Bottom line, tell your attorney no divorce unless all the QDROs and property settlements take place before or immediately at the time of the decree.
All:
I’m currently going through the smear-campaign. I’ll bump into somebody on the street who knew me when I was with the S, and I’m persona non grata. I go into a bar in my neighbohood and get the cold shoulder from the bartenders. I am really tired of being made the bad guy in all this.
Between S and losing my job, my life has been pretty much upended. I’m beginning to realize that I need to make new friends.
Also, regardng the comments about their S trying to redefine who they were, I think sociopaths do that as a means to further their objective of using you as a source of supply. My therapist says one of the consequences of living an inauthentic life is that when you lose your sense of self, you become a better victim because you don’t have the internal resources to defend yourself because you’re too busy trying to figure out who you are under somebody else’s guidelines.
Lord knows, I was so busy trying to redine myself to keep S happy, that I made it easy for him to bleed me dry. It wasn’t until I started to get in touch with my former self that I was finally able to find the strength to drive S out of my life.