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
Thanks, Ox.
I tried the counseling route but as noted in another topic on this blog, few therapists truly get how anyone could get into a relationship with someone like this. Not having been there, they are really clueless to the hook and the devastation.
And well-meaning friends try to be supportive. There is one who truly ‘gets’ my ex, mostly because he, too, was a target. Yes, ‘he’.
Honestly, I have done a few vengeful acts that have been cathartic. His welfare is cut off. His Social Security Disability application is nixed. That job he listed me as a reference for is no longer an option.
It feels good to have made his life a little more difficult for having made me a part of it. My puny efforts pale in comparison to what I have endured but they do bring me a small sense of justice.
I cannot dwell on that any longer because I will get stuck in it and in the anger.
So I focus on the blessings…that I was never arrested when he was in my car and no doubt carrying drugs, that many good people have come into my life in his wake, that I can sense the ‘hook’ a mile away now, that I was not the first nor the last of his targets and also, that he makes his own misery. As much as he tried to destroy me…because that is what he does…he also destroys his own life, day in and day out.
And, now, instead of feeling empathy for that tendency of his, I feel a sense of comfort. He suffers more than I do!
nola, she is in your dream as a symbol… not as the real neighbour. ((((((((((((((nola)))))))))))
Dear Trimama,
Well, good for you! That is justice, not revenge…if you can see that he is unable to get welfare he is not entitled to, or SSD etc. HE may see it as revenge, but I call it justice.
Yes, not all therapists get it…but some do and if we can find one that does, it helps.
Focusing on the blessings that you have—even if it is as simple as focusing that you have clean water to drink, a roof, enough food, etc. is beneficial too.
You are right HE IS THE ONE WHO WRECKS HIS LIFE not others. You cannot save someone from themselves, and he is his own worst enemy.
I am glad you didn’t get arrested when he was with you and carrying drugs…so you are fortunate to have missed the opportunity to have a criminal record yourself.
I’m glad too that you at least have one friend who “gets it”—many of us don’t have any.
what I’m trying to say is that the crying neighbour in your bed is a symbol for the stuff she mirrorred at you. You can take those things that she mirrorred for yourself. She would not have mirrorred it if those characteristics were not within you. I think the part of yourself (that she mirrorred) is what you need to love.
TobeCop,
I have a different take on your dream than Darwin, though her’s is certainly fascinating !!
I think that the subconscious sees things more clearly than we do. Your neighborlady is seen as an infant in diapers because emotionally that is exactly what she is. spaths are emotionally arrested. They stay emotional infants. Your own emotions react to her because you want to mother her. It’s your maternal instinct that is reacting to her emotional neediness.
But the spath is a dangerous creature. It is only infantile emotionally. Every other part is very adult. So it will try to force you to feed and nurture it, but it will be unable to benefit from your care. This will cause it to feed even harder on your emotions, demand more, create more drama.
It’s like a parasite that latches on and not only feeds on your blood but also injects an anti-coagulant so that the supply flows more rapidly.
Unfortunately, you have been injected with that anti-coagulant of your emotions, that’s why they are flowing. I don’t know how she did it, but she did. Don’t let her have anymore of your emotions. I’m worried that she is injecting you by looking at you. Maybe she does it with her eyes. I don’t know if it’s that or her words. You really have to avoid her, she is toxic to you. That much is obvious.
Sky and Darwinsmom-both of your takes on this are very interesting.Right now I am just so emotionally tired from feeling everything lately 10x stronger than I am used to feeling them. I am so tired of all the intensity-it’s too much. Initially when I was crushing on her I was trying to see her as much as I could. Now that I don’t want to see her, sometimes I feel like she is trying to see me and I’m tired of it. I am tired of feeling anything for her at all whatsoever. I’m tired of being concerned with her and I don’t know how to make it stop. She freaked me out that day when she told me that she heard me yelling in my sleep, and asked if I had a bad dream that night. She said that I sounded like somebody was chasing me and I was trying to get away. What if I have been hollering out other things in my sleep? I got scared when I had that dream that what if I was calling out to her in the dream and she heard it. I have never had anyone have this kind of hold on me before-seriously, not even ex spath.
nola – you have any 3rd party PROOF of you yelling out? didn’t think so. She was conning ya. IT was a TELL – of you needing to run….from HER
I really can’t wait to start this counseling. I’m hoping it will help me somewhat. One of my friends on FB has been telling me lately that she misses me and I miss her too. She lives here in town and I need some friends to hang with to distract me from HER and maybe keep me away from the house when she’s here. I just feel like I need to get a handle on this major issue first because I don’t want to start bringing drama into other peoples lives who I actually like and are good for me. I am just crying to start work too. If I could work nights then I would be gone at work when she’s here and would be sleeping during the day and I would hardly have any contact with her. I am just crying out for the job to take hold and for the full time one to hire me. It would be SO exciting to be training for that dispatch job and doing that and then I wouldn’t have time to feel her all the time.
well, when we talk about them we talk about mirroring and projecting. So I would agree that NL in dream is a projection of a split off part of self that is stunted in infancy, and it is this split off part of self that is so numinious and beguiling. It is seductive precisely because it is disowned but also longed for in the self.
I disagree that NL is necissarily evil. She is probably scared to death about getting involved with someone who seemed on the brink of suicide. What an enormous responsibility. Then add to that the confusing behavior of at one moment adoring her, and the next NCing her and ignoring and going gray rock. I wouldn’t know what to do with that either, and I would probably shut it out with one huge brick wall.
So, I’m sorry if this throws a monkey wrench into what makes you comfortable to believe, and you can continue to believe it if it works for you, but I think you are on the brink of some huge break throughs and this is dream is only the beginning of nurturing the part of you that you have denied for so long.
It’s not about NL. It’s about you. For some reason NL brought a lot of the stuff to the surface for you, possibly because she is a lot like you…or maybe you just think she is, I don’t know. Just want to assert that just because we get our feelings hurt, doesn’t mean we should automatically jump into spath fighter mode. Sometimes it’s our own issues at work and taking a little time to breath, relax and work through can have miraculious results. Just sayin’.
Well hell. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Not trying to re-traumatize anybody. It’s just been screaming in me for the last week that you need to calm down and quit going off half cocked. I don’t think that all the advise you are getting is doing you any good. Just stirring up your already chaotic emotions, and cusing you to leap before you look. You are alienating people everywhere you go. Why? To much reaction, too much emotion, too much impulsee, to much defensiveness. That’s not really what you want, is it?