I subscribe to a service through which reporters who are looking for information for their stories can find sources. Not long ago, a reporter posted the following query:
A reporter at a national publication is writing about the hell of heartbreak and is looking for people to interview who have experienced a romantic breakup or divorce and who have creative/unusual advice on how to get through the day-to-day emotional turmoil of it. If you’ve been through a breakup (as an adult), how did you deal with the emotional pain, especially in the very beginning? How did you distract yourself from your heartache? How did you keep yourself from calling or texting your former beloved? What advice would you give to someone else in the middle of a heartbreak?
Most of us are here on Lovefraud because we experienced the most devastating, heartrending breakups of all—those involving sociopaths.
Ours were not run-of-the-mill relationships where the ending was, “he’s just not into you.” Ours were not situations in which two people “just grew apart.” Ours were false relationships from the very beginning, in which we were targeted, exploited and betrayed.
Advice? Yes, I have advice.
First of all, if you were involved with a sociopath, NORMAL ADVICE DOESN’T WORK. Even though self-help gurus have sold millions of books, and even if your friends have been through many, many relationships, unless they, too, have been targeted by sociopaths, THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT.
So, the first bit of advice is DON’T LISTEN TO PEOPLE WHO DON’T GET IT.
Back to positive advice. What is the one thing you need to understand if you’ve been involved with a sociopath? IT’S NOT YOU!
Oh, the sociopath certainly told you that you were the problem, told you that you had problems, and even blamed you for his or her atrocious behavior. But that was all part of the manipulation. Sociopaths intentionally make you doubt yourself. Sometimes it’s to make you malleable so they can take advantage of you, sometimes it’s just for their own entertainment. If you’re feeling nuts, you are having a rational reaction to an insane situation, and your ex is the one causing the insanity.
Next you need to know that the relationship NEVER WOULD HAVE WORKED. Although sociopaths lavishly proclaim their love, they’re lying. Sociopaths are incapable of love. But they have learned that if they mouth the words “I love you,” they can get what they want. And what they want is to exploit you.
If you’ve been involved with someone like this, there is nothing you could have done differently. Nothing would have made the situation better. The sociopath cannot be satisfied, and cannot change.
So how should you view your experience? DON’T TAKE IT PERSONALLY. Yes, really. The fact that you were mistreated had nothing to do with you or your behavior. It had everything to do with the fact that you were involved with a cruel, heartless sociopath.
If your ex didn’t do it to you, he or she would have done it to someone else. Why? Because that’s what they do.
Finally, YOU CAN RECOVER, BUT IT WILL TAKE TIME. This is not a normal breakup. It wasn’t only your heart that was broken. It was also your view of the world.
Give yourself time and permission to heal. Surround yourself with people who truly care about you, and embark on a program of NO CONTACT with the sociopath. Even though you pine for the individual, understand that you fell in love with a mirage, and what you’re feeling is residual addiction to the relationship.
Do not call. Do not text. Do not send email. The stronger your commitment to NO CONTACT, the faster you will mend.
Take positive steps. Find joy and happiness anywhere you can, and let them seep into the empty hole that was your heart. Eventually, your heart will fill up and you can try again—with much more wisdom than you had before.
Constantine
Oxy, Louise,
I suppose for me, being a “romantic” means never feeling altogether “at home” in the world. Not in a bad or painful way, just a vague, always-present sense of nostalgia and homesickness – and for nothing in particular!
Perhaps it was all those Sunday School lessons where they taught that ours is a hopelessly “fallen” and “broken” world? – I don’t know…. That idea, at any rate, has always stuck with me, and maybe it can account for all the “poetic idealizing” of relationships in my younger days: i.e., it was just my misguided attempt at finding a short-cut “back home.”
The only difference is that now I realize there really IS no way back home. (Not to THAT home, at least.) And that’s OK: one can still find much happiness and contentment living in a foreign country!
(And perhaps that’s also as close as I can get to answering your own question, Coping.)
Ox Drover
Constantine,
“living in a foreign county” LOL GREAT analogy. I sometimes can relate to that feeling! I’ve “lived” so many different “incarnations” (in this life time!) that I couldn’t possibly “come back” as something else! LOL I’ve been the “mother” incarnation, the “wife” incarnation, the “nurse” incarnation, the “adventurer” incarnation, etc etc. and a bunch of other ones!
I thought I could “come home” here to the farm, but I now realize that it isn’t sacred, it is just a piece of real estate like every other piece of dirt in the world…just holds the earth together. So home is where my heart is….and I no longer attach it to a place or a person outside myself. Not that I don’t love it here at the farm, or that I don’t love people (some people anyway) but I no longer put “all my eggs in one basket” outside myself.
Bogafile
Finding this site last winter by chance typing in psycopath and not missing a day of reading. I find the more I read the more confused I become. Like all here I have been introduced to the devil. Sadly, I’ve developed a habit of reading these pathetic accounts. Pathetic is my story too. I’m afraid I have met the enemy and he is me. My temper is short, bitterness,anger and a strong desire for redemption is what I crave. I always thought I was a good person. Now I’m not so sure. Little things set me off. I shouldn’t be amused by these sad accounts as mine is just as awful. I feel like the deer caught in the headlights unable to move forward. I hate what I allowed to happen to me yet feel totally helpless to change. I’ve read books and accept the conceps yet it comes back to redemption which is something I can’t see anytime in the future…I need to stop as I get myself worked up and angry. I literally want to go kill the person who has brought this out in me.
skylar
Bogafile,
your post is confusing to me and I don’t want to try and read between the lines or assume that I understand because that is a sure way of misunderstanding.
You said,
“My temper is short, bitterness,anger and a strong desire for redemption is what I crave.” Do you mean you desire to be forgiven? Or do you mean you desire to forgive?
One thing that I perceive is that the sociopaths seem to want to trade places with us. They want to be how they see us as being and they want us to feel what they feel.
Well they can never be us, they never had our redeeming qualities, but they certainly slime us with their own monstrous feelings of anger and despair.
If that is what you are talking about, then know this: it is a choice. He made you feel as if you have no choice but to feel this anger and despair, but he was lying (as usual). You have a choice because you are not a sociopath. You can choose an attitude of gratitude and humility and you can choose responsibility. The spaths will not ever choose these things because they are already so diminished in their own eyes that being grateful or humble or responsible scares them. In their minds, if they are not the center of the universe, what are they?
Revenge is meaningless, he wants you to desire it, because he does. The only appropriate emotion towards a sociopath is REVULSION.
MoonDancer
Wow – Bogafile, When reading your comment bell’s went off in my head..ding..ding..ding…. [ I have become the enemy ] oh how I relate with that…but I am 3 years away from it and there is no anger or redemption feeling, well maybe a moment now and then..But Skylar’s response to you was also a Wow….it is so sureal how this group of people here at LF speak from a place so deep, so deep that we can only climb up and regain the people we were, like DUPEY 🙂 says ”I am a betterand stronger person not because of it but despite of it…”
one/joy_step_at_a_time
here’s some great news http://ca.news.yahoo.com/online-gamers-crack-aids-enzyme-puzzle-175427367.html
one/joy_step_at_a_time
Bogafile: ‘pathetic accounts’ as in arousing sympathy or as in woefully inadequate?
coping
OK just logged back on and have seen the thread turn. I’m gonna let this flow..Thank you for those who answered me, many interesting points….I said I would clarify and will in time. However I’m not gonna change the current flow as I feel its more important….I’ll pick up a little later.
Bogafile, I’m concerned about your post. Do you mind clarifying a little?
Ox Drover
Bogafile,
Welcome to LF and I hope that this is a healing place for you.
Your post is somewhat confusing to me as well, but if you are saying that your experience with the psychopath has made you angry and bitter…I can relate to that..but it is not something that has to be a permanent state.
skylar
One Joy!
that is the most a-frickin’-mazing thing!!
“The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems.”
One of Foldit’s creators, Seth Cooper, explained why gamers had succeeded where computers had failed.
“People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at,” he said.