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
As if the sociopath was some kind of machine-human hybrid, capable of running only one programs, calculating new ways of getting results, ruminating, circulating; like some-kind of closed circuit internal dialogue going on inside their heads.
If their partners, children and friends do not run the same programs, it does not compute for them.
Does anyone remember Ash (synthetic human) in the movie Alien?
Sabine: Ugh, gives me the shivers to think about this guy out there with no oversight for his behavior–with his clients as vulnerable as they are. Still, I think your tactic sounds like a good one. Having this site to talk about all this is helping me to resist the temptation to talk about it to mutual acquaintances. It’s weird, feeling somehow shamed by what happened (why is that??), and apprehensive for others’ risk and about what these predators are saying about us to make us look bad, but realizing that it might be best in certain circumstances to just sit on what we know so we don’t play even more into their hands.
Yeah, the inability to apologize is a clear sign that they’re not really sorry. The SP in my life expected to have enough time go by and just start being “friendly” again to me and that of course, I was going to be so GRATEFUL that he wanted me back in his life. I’m really glad I didn’t fall for it. I’m glad you’re well-fortified at this point, too.
Dear Matt,
QUOTE: “I need to make new friends.”
I agree with that Matt, and in reality if those people believe what that piece of trash says about you, what does that say about THEM? So, how important are these people, really, in your life? I mean, come on Matt, a bartender gives you the cold shoulder? So you should care, WHY? ROTFLMAO
That kind of “friend” is no friend for sure. Of course he is making you the “bad guy” and keeping the DRAMA going! I think getting entirely out of his sphere is the best way to “win” in this one….since he has polluted that cesspool, let him live in it, move on to a nice, new clean lake away from these “creatures from the black lagoon” and all their spawn. LOL
I have lost many friends after the breakup with the s.
As some mentioned before, often people give more credit to the composed one, and less to the emotional one. And I was the emotional one, at the time I was beside myself.
As I started sorting myself out, I have also started realizing that I am more aware of my own needs and wants. It become clear that some of my previous friendships were not healthy. Some were actually dysfunctional. I often choose to be friends with people who were flaky, unreliable, nice, but not really there. You just could not count on them.
By opening my eyes to the s, my own issues of being with the s, also opened my eyes to other types of relationships. Basically I have lost some friends due to the s’s smear campaign or their unwillingness to see the s for what he really is. Then some friendships I have moved away from because they were exploitative or victimizing or simply negative and I no longer had the emotional strenght trying to fix them.
It is difficult to define for me what I want from a friendship. I have to constantly monitor myself when making friends because deep down I have a tendency to make connection to people who might use me or project on me later.
It weird, but lately I am encouraging myself to make friends with people who seem bland and uninteresting first. They are not drama prone or give me too much info too soon. In the past I have written these people off as boring, but I think perhaps these type of people might be good for me.
To get grasp on how an S likely perceives me:
I once did an exercise where I recalled all those times when healthy people from S’s most common temperament type (ESTP, ENTP) had told me their honest opinion of me.
These opinions had startled me at the time. I had seen myself (at worst), as socially cautious, a bit naïve, a little too outspokenly honest. But they saw me as “antisocial”, “boneheaded”, “porcupine”, and “over-reactive.” These guys hadn’t been enemies, but people I’d shared a few laughs with, and as far as I knew, had never pissed off. At the time I believed their honesty was well-meaning attempts to alert a friend to blind spot personal weaknesses. But now I see it differently. These opinions were far more a reflection of the way they think, and not me personally.
Back to S, I will remind myself, that the S sees me similarly (or likely worse), but with the dangerous addition of stronger exploitative/predatory, power and control drives which is intentionally well camouflaged. With healthy ESTPs or ENTPs who aren’t usually preying on others, their “camouflage” is excellent social skills which hides a coldly rational mind that’s not very sentimental or driven to emotional attachments. But an S or P is far more driven to use both skills and coldness for whatever it is they want to own.
With an S you have the camouflage (like hunting clothes and decoys) and then you have the reality (dead ducks). Hunters love ducks, but not the way that ducks want to be loved. Until ducks learn to unify like Hitchcock’s “The Birds”, their best bet is learning how to spot hunters in camouflage and NC.
One solution: The problem with camouflage is that one size or type does not fit all. Everybody adapts somewhat to the person or situation they’re dealing with at the time. But with S’s it’s more extreme. They may treat a ’loved one / buddy / family member’ like gold one-on-one, but very differently in groups. Or vice versa. They’ll kiss up and kick down. They may treat you like gold but their ’friends’ are looking at you funny. If I sense that somebody is ’wearing different camouflages’, or there’s ’weirdness’ surrounding an otherwise swave and polished person, I take note.
This is the last time I’ll use the word “camouflage”, but the concept is extremely important. Long story short, an S never liked you at all. But then, they don’t like anybody else either.
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Student Of Sociopathy
Get a grasp, S O S.
SOS… Your notes…..all your notes…Id love to get my hands on them… and I actually pity the S that perceives you as anything other than what you are and have become now! A STAR STUDENT OF SOCIOPATHY!! An S wouldnt last five minutes with you now!!! LOL
Cults use group criticism on their members. They are sessions where anyone can say whatever criticism they have. This can be devastating. Many cult members say that this was probably the most difficult to sit though.
SOS-
How is this exercise for temperament done?
I’ve gotten such a kick out of reading these posts ’cause all of your stories are just like mine!
I agree with greenfern: I too have to constantly monitor myself when making friends because I tend to pick the wrong kind of people to be friends with. I think a lot of it comes from growing up in a dysfunctional family. Since escaping from the s I’m afraid to make a new friend ’cause I don’t want to get hurt again.