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
Eva:
You put it so well when you said “that strange pleasure we experienced when being with that strange creature.”
I still think I could have pulled it off Eve, if only he hadn’t started poisoning my food. My will was strong, but my body couldn’t take it. I’m grateful that he poisoned my food, because otherwise I would have stayed with him longer, I think.
Skylar,
How did you figure out he was poisoning your food? How did you find out with what he was doing it with? That’s just awful.
Ana, I was sick for about 20 years going from dr. to dr. and being diagnosed with so many things, but without much progress. Then I left him and I noticed within days that I no longer had to take my megadoses of magnesium and carnitine and cq10 to relieve the muscle pain from my neck and shoulders. There was simply no pain.
It occurred to me that he must be so toxic that my body was reacting to the relief.
But on the 2nd day after I left him, he called me and said, “please come back, I cleaned the house for you.” I waited til he was gone and went back to see what he’d done. The house was a disaster BUT the refrigerator was completely cleaned out. All the food was gone. I couldn’t figure out WHY he would do that. Then as the days passed and I kept feeling better and better, it dawned on me. He had told me so many times, how EASY it would be for someone to poison me. And he would also tell me that he suspected his friends of poisoning HIM – a socipathic tell. And over the years I remember, twice having an intrusive thought SUDDENLY POP into my head, while he was looking at me. The thought was that he was poisoning me, but i thought it was soooo ridiculous that it only proved that I was kinda nuts, so I dismissed it.
A few months later I asked him point blank, not IF but WHAT he had poisoned me with. he laughed and said it was mostly small amounts of strychnine and botulism toxins. He said he liked to tweak the amounts. I didn’t really believe he would tell me the truth, but when I went home and googled the symptoms, they fit perfectly.
skylar:
OMG!!! I cannot believe he admitted it. So can’t he go to jail??? Where are you with all this?
Skylar,
That is sad, really. You are correct; they like to waste our time/lives with stupid crap. So glad you stayed alive! I bet he’d be scared sh**tless now that you ARE the spathinator.!
and you’re still: WILLIN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNqv85coyTw&playnext=1&list=PLD4BD5EC8B94D06DA
92044,
the way he admitted it was like he was joking, but it was a sociopathic tell. There is no way he’ll ever admit it in court, he’ll just lie and say it never happened.
I’m ok with it. I’m just glad I know what it was. I thought it might be drugs and I had myself tested for a bunch, then I had my hair tested for drugs too. All came back clean.
Here’e the karma: he is sooo paranoid about being poisoned himself that he taught himself how to vomit on demand, without even putting his finger in his mouth.
He sits around thinking up ways to hurt and kill other people, which, in turns feeds his paranoia that it will be done to him. LOL!
That’s why he had panic-attacks for years and severe stomach acid. His disconnect from his emotions has created various psychosomatic reactions. That doesn’t mean they aren’t real, it just means they are caused from repressed emotions. Maybe it will develop into something serious… we can always hope, but meanwhile, he’s a miserable prick and that works for me!!
Skylar, you were what the Argentinian specialist in psychopathy Hugo Marietan called “a complementary of a psychopath” an enabler in English. This psychiatrist is interesting not just because he knows a lot about psychopathy but because he knows about the feelings of those complementaries or enables. He says the former victim that puts up with the abuse of the psycho is because s/he is getting something in exchange and he says that something is an irrational need that the psychopath satisfies. When i read it i had to admit to myself it’s true they give some strange pleasure.
I don’t regret to have had that “relationship” and maybe part of my suffering after abandoning him was due to my realization of being unable to pay for a long time such a high price (stress, drama, insecurity, fear, etc) in order to keep him and that strange irrational please he dispended from time to time.
i absolutely agree with this post!
sociopaths are not like us. they do not have the capacity to bond with us. they cannot feel or have the capacity to remember some of the beautiful moments we spent with them. thats how their brain functions unfortunately
since they are so different from us, we cannot really take this personally. if my ex bf could not feel those beautiful moments i spent with him because his brain is incapable of feeling them, i cant really take it personally, but accept it. i pity the person who cant feel the beautiful feelings life has to offer. thats a sad existence.
i still cherish those memories because they did mean something to me. and i feel lucky that i could feel them and that they gave me pleasure.
It is good to cherish those moments.