Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, the turn of the year, the winter solstice and all the holidays of the “dark” time of the year are celebrations of the miracle of renewal. The harvest and colorful leaf fall of autumn is over, and the seasons are turning again to the beginning of the annual cycle of life. Our gifts, all our gatherings, the lights and candles are all expressions of joy in our shared warmth, and our faith and hope in our survival through the cold months to the blooming of spring again.
This morning, reading in bed (Richard Powers’ Prisoners Dilemma), I found this line: “Inside each of us is a script of the greater epic writ little, an atlas of politics so abundant it threats to fill us full to breaking.”
It made me want to write you about the “politics” of getting over a relationship with a sociopath. Sociopaths challenge our faith and hope. Our faith in ourselves, and the goodness of the world. And our hope that there are happy endings for us, or that anything we do will be enough to prevail over the forces of evil or the random destruction that appears in any life. In some ways, this is the biggest challenge of healing — to recover our easy belief that we are precious in the world and that what we need is here for us. Somewhere in our hearts, we remember feeling that way. But we are struggling with a terrible lesson that seems to prove otherwise.
As I write this today, I am looking out the windows behind my desk at a grey sky. Sleet is coming and dangerous roads. The snow is frozen hard on the ground, and dozens of finches, cardinals and jays are at the feeders. At dawn, deer came to nibble on the ears of corn my son scattered at the edge of the woods. My furnace died earlier this week, on a day where the temperature never climbed above 25, and it was 12 hours before the repairmen figured out how to get it going again. Now, with the heat turned up, and me wrapped in sweaters and fleece and woolen socks, my fingers and toes are chilled by the cold that falls through the storm windows.
Elsewhere in the house, my years-old Christmas cactus is blooming beside a wildly-sprigging rosemary bush that looks vaguely like a Christmas tree. Wrinkled but still sweet apples, picked months ago from a local orchard, wait to be peeled and mixed with mincemeat for a pie. A leg of lamb is in the refrigerator for Christmas dinner with a man who was an untrustworthy lover, but a loyal and delightful friend. After dinner, we will go to the movies with my son to see Robert Downey Jr. in Sherlock Holmes.
All of it stories of risk and survival, disaster and renewal, the fine edge we walk and the mysterious providence that brings us to each new day. Even the most blessed life encounters harsh weather, and sometimes we find ourselves in trouble that taxes us beyond our conventional wisdom. When our rules don’t work, and our usual insurance policies don’t suffice, we are challenged. And often, we don’t know what it means.
Does it mean that somehow we have fallen from grace, that our luck has changed and we are no longer loved by the world? Does it mean that we are broken in some fundamental way, and no longer dare to be comfortable with ourselves? Does it mean that the world is darker than we once imagined, and that we must struggle harder for less?
This is what a great philosopher called the “dark night of the soul.” In this midst of this challenge, there is something truly great happening. A kind of personal miracle that — depending on how we think about things — occurs in our intellect, emotions or spirit. When faced by something we do not understand and cannot manage with our usual tools, we are learning and growing. Like the germs of life stirring in the seeds buried in the cold earth, we are experiencing the birth of something new in ourselves.
Because the challenge is threatening, because it makes us question ourselves and what we know, the first part of the learning seems like recognition of evil in the world. Sociopaths seem to be dark messengers, informing us that our love, goodness and hope cannot triumph over their selfishness, greed and senseless destruction. But in time, we come to realize that this lesson is not really about evil at all, but despair.
This is about a war — profound and eternal — of belief. Are we, as sociopaths believe, essentially alone in an uncaring and untrustworthy world, forced by circumstance and entitled by the survival instinct to take whatever we can grab for ourselves? Or is there something about us that is blessed by connection to something larger — the love we share with other people, our dependence on the combined strength of our communities, our instinct that an infinite wisdom and strength exists beyond our imagining, larger than us, but also part of us? And that we are meant, by some birthright that we can hardly explain but that is clearly part of our deep character, to find lasting peace, understanding and gratitude.
What we ultimately learn from an intimate encounter with a sociopath is that this battle is not in the world, but in ourselves. The sociopath triggers our fears, our insecurities, our willingness to give up what we value for the illusion that the ultimate source of love or safety is outside of us. In their betrayals, in the brutal disappointments they return for our commitment to the gorgeous illusions they cast to draw us in, we are thrown back on ourselves. They prove to us, in a way that is a perfect mirror of however much we were willing to give them to make this illusion real, that the first source of our love, safety and greatest wisdom is inside of us. That, however important shared love and community may be, the foundation of everything good in our lives is inside us.
It is about what we believe. At base, under all the little rules we’ve picked up from parents and teachers, under all the little restrictions we’ve placed on ourselves as a result of old traumas, under all the lingering resentments or fears we’ve never resolved, is what we believe about ourselves and this life. It is what, under it all, we know to be the truth and the meaning of our stories.
Our lives, like the life of every other living thing, are about survival and growth and learning. Our lives are about understanding more as we age, an evolving wisdom that sometimes grows out of joy and triumph and sometimes out of pain and loss. Our lives are about trying, not waiting around for something to happen, but also believing that trying is not just us working at what we see. Trying also magically attracts new resources to us. Everyone here on LoveFraud knows how trying to get better brought us here, and here we found resources that simply zoomed toward us, challenging us in good ways to wake up to new ideas and use them. That is how the world works.
Our lives are also about seasons. Not just the season of age, but the seasons of mastery. We have little challenges to learn on a daily basis, and we have huge challenges that we inherited, and that are so much part of the fabric of our family’s history or the state of the entire world that a lifetime may not be enough to understand it all or master its opportunities. We learn the immediate things — how to change a diaper, work the e-mail, get along with a boss, drive in the snow. But our lifetimes are also about those immense inherited questions, and part of the meaning of our life is how much we do learn and how our learning affects the great whole.
Nothing, not one breath or molecule of these recoveries from grief and loss, is wasted. We are part of a great turning of seasons. What we do here is important. We are important. The world and the great spirit that gives it life force have given us a gift, an opportunity to learn something amazing. About ourselves. About the meaning of love and belonging, as well as solitary courage. About how to be whole in the face of adversity. About the great cycle of renewal in ourselves, and how truly dependable is the fact that we are meant to learn, grow, thrive, bloom again, and face new challenges as we feel strong enough for a thrilling new learning experience.
The earth is turning toward sunnier days. Seasons when we take the warmth and light for granted. So are we.
As Oxy likes to remind us, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Not just to endure. But to recover joy, confidence and belief that every bit of this is a gift, sent to us to help us clear our internal decks, get rid of fear and grief and anger, and open our minds to the bright spirit of faith and hope, peace and joy, understanding and gratitude that is our birthright, that lives in the center of our beings.
Namaste. The light in me salutes the light in you.
Kathy
yay, we’re back!
Kathleen – as I go back and read what you and others here say I see and learn completely different things from the way I understood it on the first reading (or 2nd or 4th or 10th!). Here you were talking about changing the dynamic of a relationship which has been based on dysfunction, in order to shape it into a more rewarding one:
“If you can figure that out, then you can go after it. Reinforce their good behavior. Ask for what you want. If you don’t get it, say thanks for the effort, but let’s focus on other things in the future. If they do something you hate, say “I hate it when you do that.” Teach them how to be good, by being what you want them to be, and ignoring what doesn’t match. It might take a year or two, but they’ll figure it out, if they really want a relationship with you.”
—————–
I first read this and thought, I have tried to do this but it hasn’t worked at all. If the other person doesn’t care than this change ain’t gonna happen no matter WHAT you do.
In coming through my catastrophizing fog I find I need to give myself some credit for actually working on developing a positive relationship with my mother. In dealing with the rest of my family I have been stuck like a little gerbil running in her exercise wheel while getting nowhere. There has to be some level of communication and trust, and even love and compassion, FROM them, to try to “retrain” people in your close relationships so that the interaction becomes more insightful, respectful, and kind.
Since she is now the “lightning rod” through which I experience the rest of my dysfunctional family, my anger with them has kind of piled up on her. I had to think about that a lot this week, and today I realize that my relationship with her HAS CHANGED for the better. I do know that our interactions have become more positive and our relationship has grown. She still drives me crazy much of the time, but she doesn’t lie to me.
Wow – if my expectations are so low that a good relationship is someone not lying to me, I need to reconsider that, don’t ya think?
I know that she loves me, trusts me, and that most of the time she RESPECTS me. She listens to me now, in a way she never could when I was a child. She will tell me what she really thinks and feels, in a way that she is afraid to do with my siblings or with anyone else. I can’t really expect her to change the dysfunction in how she relates to them, but maybe in some small way our changed relationship may influence their own insight and healing.
Kathleen:
“Honesty can be truly a weird element in a relationship that was formerly based on nice lies. People get shocked. They think you’re being rude or not playing by the rules. They accuse you of deliberately trying to be hurtful. They’re so accustomed to burying their own truth that they feel like they deserve payback by everyone else burying theirs. So when you inject authenticity into these relationships, it can take a while for them to get the hang of it and realize it’s a good thing.”
—————
I played these games with my mother for a long time. She was brought up in a very conservative small city in the deep south, where manners and appearance were everything. Being rude to others or saying what you really were thinking was just not an option. Upsetting the status quo by not being NICE was the most unforgivable sin. It is an environment that breeds perfectionism and hypocrisy.
But I realize that I am fortunate because she is an honest person. If she distorts information it is from her own denial or hurt. She is not the kind of manipulative person who plays people for fun, or is deliberately deceptive, although she can be passive-aggressive at times. As a woman raised in an era and culture where she was expected to be passive in relationships and to submerge her own ambitions in marriage and raising children this is to be expected. She was taught to put everyone else’s needs before her own. This did not prepare her for the difficulties she had to face in her life.
If she was dishonest then a relationship with her would be untenable. She accepts what I say now as coming from an equal (most of the time), and I realize that that is a long way from where we used to be. It is the one basic foundation that appears to be missing in transactions with my siblings. It is the most important element in having any kind of relationship with anyone, regardless of familial ties or love or other worldly obligations.
Kathleen wrote:
“You’ll notice them starting to divulge things with a kind of guilty pleasure long before they actually get a grip on the fact that you’ve changed the game in a good way.”
—————
I had to realize that she will be completely honest with me, and is not afraid to tell me anything. This IS a huge change. And also the fact that I do pretty much tell her how I feel about the dysfunctional doings of my siblings. I may not get the RESPONSE from her that I would like, but I have realized that it is enough that I am able to tell her what I think and how I feel. I had been feeling only the frustration and the failure of trying to get HER to change, when in fact the good news here is that I have changed, and that is something positive.
In fact, she has told me things recently that I know she has never told a living soul. That information is important, not only for her to be able to acknowledge her own thoughts and feelings, but for BOTH of us to bear witness to the actual truth of our shared history. It means something that she can say these things to me. I am only interested in the truth, and not some story to placate me and wrap me up in a giant cotton ball, shielded from harsh reality.
pollyanna you said:
“7 Steps – I am glad you and your mum are getting through some of the denial and pain as you work your own way through the labyrinth towards healing – I do believe if we are brave enough to go on this journey then 1) mighty forces will come to our aid and 2) our process of enlightenment will support others to reach for the light as well. I sense from your very insightful post that you are starting to understand why you were raised the way you were with your mum as you see her experience and pain by having experienced it yourself.”
——————
I realize that my anger is not so much with my mother any more. I had long ago decided that I needed to forgive her for her inadequacies as a parent, because she had been so terribly abused herself. I felt a lot more compassion for her as I began to learn the terrible things that she endured, and that a lot of what I had experienced as hostility and neglect was her reaction to events which had affected her, NOT because of inadequacies in me. She did not treat me that way because I was bad or unlovable or defective in some way. She cared for me in the best way she knew how, and some of it was good. She worked very hard, and tried her best to give us a nice home. She would make us wonderful meals and share her love of music and art and the good things in the world. She was responsible and loving TO THE BEST OF HER ABILITY. I had to ask myself if I could have done any better if I had been in her shoes.
pollyanna everything you say in your response to my post is so understanding and so close to my own experience. It gives me a whole other level of understanding, how life experience teaches compassion as you go forward, in sometimes horrifyingly painful ways. What you said to me was a gift, and even though these lessons put us through hell, we are better human beings for it. Some things are only understood when you have been tested and tried in the fire of your own life experiences. I would rather have this knowledge than go through my life as an endlessly consuming, emotionally voracious and destructive, empty person that is the sociopath, who is the embodiment of a life full of pain, without gain.
This goes back to what Kathleen said:
“The most difficult and hardest part of healing is getting through all the layers of self-blame, imagining that we might have done better, anger that things weren’t different, fear that we’ll never be whole or okay, struggling with the idea that we didn’t deserve better, to the simple knowledge that we’re carrying around an unhealed wound.”
————–
My learning curve over the past 20 years regarding my own co-dependence and dysfunction had to come first, before I could even begin to understand the way she had experienced the world, or how our relationship was shaped by those experiences. Many, many steps. Work on understanding myself, trying to heal and change myself, trying to understand her behavior, trying to understand the way in which her history affected the dynamic between us, and then trying to change the way in which we interact. Trying to think clearly about what it is that I want/need, and then developing the ability to SAY what it is that I want. Being attached to what I want to say, but detached from the result. Trying to become ACTIVE, not REACTIVE.
When you realize that this is what healthy people have learned to do instinctively, you are faced with quite a task.
I had to stop taking it personally, because I am not that bewildered child anymore. I had to imagine myself in those situations, and understand that I might have reacted to them in
my own confused and fearful way. My biggest, most difficult task has been seeing the disconnect between my thoughts and emotions, looking back to see how this happened and how it still happens. I have to perform a type of mental surgery in going back to re-attach the thoughts to the emotions, the context to the stark detached memories of experiences which are in a completely separate box from my emotional truth.
Only when you finally see the results of this work, can you understand the appropriateness of the emotions you have to the situations you experienced. It is like many many deaths in your soul, and you go through all the mental reactions to death again and again. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. You can easily get stuck at any stage, and for a very long time. You can be stuck at different stages with different people at the same time, according to where they are stuck.
This takes so much focus and energy, and mindfulness. You have to go through mental and emotional gymnastics in everything you do in the world, every personal interaction, every decision. And to gain the confidence that you can make the correct decisions takes a very long time. You have to go through a long time of being very hard on yourself when you did not make the right decision. You begin to see that the wrong decisions are based on a kind of blind impulse that takes over your brain like some kind of misguided avatar. It’s a loss of consciousness that completely overrides your own best interest.
I am the driver. Never, ever give the steering wheel of your own life to another. This is one of the biggest ways in which we become vulnerable to people who wreak havoc in our lives, because we want to be rescued, accepted, taken care of. We want to escape into a fantasy. We can give away the responsibility of thinking for ourselves to someone else. This becomes our addiction, because it feels good when we do this. We feel relief. Our fears are buried. Our needs are met for the moment, but the consequences can be horrendous.
BOY I SURE DO TALK A GOOD GAME DON’T I – WISH I COULD ACTUALLY APPLY IT TO MY LIFE!!
No wonder we are so exhausted! The work is difficult but the rewards are great. It is a long haul, and you have to stay the course to the best of your ability. Any action based on fear or addictive need will ALWAYS be a complete retrograde motion away from an action based on our long-term needs and goals, the actions which can truly lead to happiness or at least a feeling of acceptance in our lives.
SHORE WISH I COULD GET BETTER AT DOING THIS!
POLLYANNA
“are you in contact with your siblings still? Did you ever find the sibling who was adopted out? I just wonder how our mothers and grandmothers coped with all the pain they went through in bad relationships ” so much unresolved shame in pregnancy outside wedlock in those days.”
I have thought about the fact that I have an older sister out there somewhere and it has saddened me. The brief thoughts I have had about trying to find her have been tempered by the fact that my mother has absolutely no wish to do so, and that for this girl to find out that she was the product of rape could only be awful for her. Add to that how badly my siblings have behaved and I just can’t see anything positive coming of it.
It happened almost 60 years ago, and since she was adopted at birth she probably went to a family that wanted her. Is it too late for me to be Adopted Out??!!!
I have almost no contact with my siblings by choice, because they have basically scapegoated me. I remember reading a couple of years ago that if one sibling in a family gets ill, they are often scapegoated by their sibs, which is awful but appears to be close to my experience. I thought I had great relationships with all of them but then was entirely blindsided. If I had had any idea that this would happen I could have been better prepared for it, but when I was at my most vulnerable they pulled the rug right out from under me. The pain of this abandonment has been very difficult for me to get beyond, but like Kathleen has said, you can weep, wail and moan but it won’t change the facts.
It is not possible to contend with their distortions, lies, and betrayals. It might be possible to deal with my sisters one on one, but with one manipulating the other there is no chance for any meaningful communication. My brother is just selfish and irresponsible and if he thinks relaying any private information will give him some attention then he is all in. Discretion is a concept entirely foreign to him – except if it is within his own interest. Learned that one the hard way.
When I rarely speak to them it is very superficial and polite. It’s not worth exposing myself to that pain. I send holiday and birthday gifts to my niece and three nephews but have not seen or spoken to them in five years, and they are all practically teenagers now. It horrifies me now to think how my sisters have probably spoken about me in front of the kids without my knowledge or input. I know that I have no control over that and I haven’t done anything wrong. I just want the kids to know that their aunt loves them.
The last time I called to speak to the kids, my sister put the speakerphone on to monitor everything I said, like I suddenly had become untrustworthy or a loose cannon. The speakerphone event just sickened me. That their expectations are so low and so full of paranoia says a lot more about them than it does about me. That was just it for me. More stress than I could deal with anymore.
Thank you I do feel better today. Decided to bite the bullet and take the pain meds. I was going to spend some time with my mom but I called to let her know I was running late and she got all nasty and whiny that I wasn’t over there already – not the kind of attitude that makes you want to spend time with anyone. Took all the air right out of me. She is such a child sometimes. I decided under those circumstances I’d rather stay home and talk to you guys!
For all of the above scribblings that our relationship has improved, at times she can suck any compassion you may have had right out of you. She can get away with guilting her children, but I know she would not dare behave that way with anybody else. I just hate that horibble yucky feeling that immediately overtakes me when she does this. Wish I could just blow it off but that ain’t happenin’ anytime soon!
She’s probably on the phone now whining to my sister that I bailed on her. Some things will never change.
I loved the Lily Allen vid on youtube! That was pretty special!
That and the GaGa vid for Bad Romance – did not know that girl could dance. How the heck does she do it in those shoes?!
Oy! Cannot seem to make posts of reasonably short length! It’s just all the thinking y’all make me do!
Free at Last Calm down – BREATHE – Look at the shape our world is in, the corruption etc. We are out numbered. ..sorry you are having a bad day…….
Testing 123 – Beam me up scotty – is this yesterday? today? or tomorrow?
Pollyannanomore: don’t know if you will ever SEE this post – what IS wrong with the blog today?
i think part of your post re sibs etc. was meant for someone else. my sister wasn’t adopted out.
the spath and i were in hardcore phone/ email contact for most of this year. 2 hours a day for the last few weeks of ‘his life’.
and my heart can’t tell you the number of promised and failed ‘meetings’. i went to meet him once – but, oh, his plane was delayed, blah blah blah.
i also spoke to his sister when ‘he died’….. the spath is very talented with the accents and various voices. i know this cause i know a bit about – oh such a small amount compared to what i want to know – her spathing history.
but how she faked being him day in day out – well, there is a level of mastery there that has been absolutely WASTED ON A SPATHING CAREER! SHE SHOULDA’ BEEN ON STAGE, AND A WRITER – AND DROWNED AT BIRTH. Oops, sorry – did i say that last one aloud?
🙂
one step
and polly….i have a WHOLE new list of does and don’t for online connections.
this was only the second person I have met online. and i am a good person, and i can smell sh*t in real life – but obviously not online, cause the first one i met online and dated off and on for 2 years is an N, and now this one, is a spath.
I had been alone for 18 years when i met (and i did meet her within a few weeks of meeting her online. she lived in another city) the N. 18 years is a long time. It was that long ’cause – the last person i had been with was an alcoholic, and i scared the bejeezus out of myself and didn’t trust myself for a long long time.
then there is that thing of finding someone to date. i know the spath was supposed to be a boy – BUT WASN’T (SNORT!), but ‘he’ was an anomaly – my heart is with women, and the % is small in the population and even smaller in smaller places. I think it would be hard enough for me to find someone if i were str8t – but htis is just ridiculous – so i went online. and got me into some bit of trouble!
i don’t like big cities much – but it is either that or go live in the boonies by myself and just forget ever having a lover. period.
onestep – The boonies are full of lesbians. They have nice big homes, drive big butch trucks and drink beer and watch lots of football. They have lot’s of parties and friends. My gaydar is better with lesbians than gay men. So maybe moving to the boonies is not a bad idea? Have you ever gone to womens sports events like basketball or soccer? Seems to me lesbians are better with long term relationships than gay men. And lot’s of women become gay after being involved with a jerk husband or boyfriend.
I live in the boonies. I love my privacy. I am a hermit. I am left alone for the most part. I wouldnt trade my little modest humble home on my 5 acres for any big house in a big city. I can see the stars at nite and the moon is bright. I hear see and feel nature. I grow things. My little weiners love the freedom and adventure of patrolling their territory. I have so muh to be thankfull for.
I am sorry this internet, texting thing happened to you. But for me the only good thing I have found on the internet is lovefraud. I will have to meet someone eye to eye. The internet feeds our fantasys and waste too much of our lives. Sorry for rambling but I just watched Paranormal Activity and I am pumped up with adrenaline – sheesh that is a scary movie…..
Henry – I laughed when i read your post – ’cause what i edited out of mine was:
‘…and i don’t play pool, drink beer as a hobby, have no interest in the butch/ femme paradigm, not interested in people who never developed any politics around orientation or whose politics froze in the 80’s, don’t care about sports (of any kind) don’t have a rat tail or own a pair of ‘birks’….
one friend told me i was a fag. um, noooo, i think she actually meant, ‘artist’.
…and THAT’s why it is hard to meet a girl. 🙂
Butch trucks, however, ARE something I am very down with.
I can see the stars at nite and the moon is bright. – and this is worth it’s weight in gold.
and i wish it had only been an internet thing. that i didn’t spend precious hours every day, talking to the stupid spath.
Henry – are the RECENT COMMENTS on the side bar refreshing for you? they haven’t been working for most of the day for me.
one step – sorry you were having such a bad day yesterday. If you can be happy about one thing it seems to me that at least someone has a legal case against this predator. It’s probably not going to be you personally that gets the payback – but at least someone has the goods to take “it” down.
When you said “I know I will end up being the ’face’ of love’ to someone else when she uses MY pics to defraud someone.”
that just sent creepy chills down my spine. I know that the Internet is one big impersonal place, but using your face is like stealing your soul – like the aboriginals who wouldn’t let people take pictures of them. It’s identity theft in a way that could impact you personally if anyone recognizes you.
Probably pretty far-fetched but that would concern me. Maybe you could send the person who does have the legal case a letter that describes your experience with the spath, and that at least DOCUMENTS the facts with who when where and what your concerns are.
In case this ever comes back to haunt you you will have SOMETHING. It probably is too stressful and bad for your health to pursue your own grievance, but to have your experience on the record with the person who does have one may be a good idea. These people get away with murder, and the more smoke signals they leave behind could prove to be their undoing.
My stepfather was so devious that it wasn’t possible to pin him down. If he made any mistakes to mark his trail we will never know. He was always three steps ahead, and was smart enough to cover his tracks. By the time I began noticing anything fishy, he had spent 10 years in my family and was outtathere. His tentacles were everywhere. He’s still doing damage, because of the repercussions of all his crimes. The more we stand up and are willing to at least talk about it so we are no longer silent passive victims is very important.
My mother went to work for a psychiatrist after stepdemon left, and she read “The Mask of Sanity” way back then in 1977. In my family we have clearly understood what sociopaths are since then. He looked like a productive, socially acceptable, intelligent and charming person, not like some criminal monster. But monster he was.
It’s only AFTER coming here to LF that I realize the legacy of this can be inherited. 30 years after the man left our family the damage is still like fresh garbage. If there is any justice in the world I can only pray that my stepbrother never has children.
Erin nobody better mess with you girl!! You are FIERCE!
I have been watching “Lolita” this evening – this movie is teeming with psychopaths -almost too creepy to watch. Hard to figure out at times who are the victims and who are the predators. Lolita said this to Humbert when he was weeping over her infidelities “I’m sorry I cheated so much, but these things just happen!” Great sociopathic line – I am sure many of you may have also heard it!
One step at a time, one day at a time, into the new year….