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
Staying Sane, ITA — One step’s reccomendation of EB’s theme song always hits the right note when needed! 🙂
HP
Hecates path – ahh, I learned somehting new tonight – ITA!
Thanks one step & EB
I enjoyed the song very much. One step it’s heartening to know you are in this void somewhere to the right. Will we ever get out of here?
pollyannanomore
Yay great anthem. I will Not be Broken (limp limp)
Hecates path
what’s ITA? EB’s theme song is great. Kind of bored yawn response to evil! lol
lol Stayingsane … I am kind of limping along at the moment – it’s that time of the year for reflection and looking back and forward and I just seem to be filled with sighs and sadness tonight 🙁 Why are they so damned hard to get over???
Staying Sane:
A friend sent me a new link for a lily allen song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WxDrVUrSvI&NR=1
yes, we will get out of the void. and hey polyannanomore – lots of room over here in the void with SS and me. a burden shared is a burden halved. a joy shared is a joy doubled.
ITA – i totally agree – had to google it last night. I love google. Google has helped me keep my sanity in this last while.
Thanks for all the wonderful comments here. I am so grateful for this community.
StayingSane, you wrote: “Here is where I reside at the moment. Dark night of the soul. In a void. weighing up the light and dark and feeling like the light shines especially bright near the blackest parts.”
I love what you said about the light being brightest near the blackest parts. I really thinks these relationships with sociopaths bring a lot of our darker parts up to the surface. Things that drag us down, but are so old in us that we don’t think about them. And then, when we finally get a look at them, we start questioning why we’re living with this toxic, dysfunctional stuff.
In the thread on red flags, Oxy added her own list and one of the items was vengefulness, I think. It brought up a memory about my ex-S. He has a friend who is a wonderful photographer, and one of the pictures he’d taken of my ex showed him standing in front of a brick chimney on the flat roof of an apartment building, a cigar clamped between his teeth, his arms extended with a trumpet in his hands about to smash it into the chimney. The story behind that picture was that he had sublet his place to a musician who hadn’t paid the rent, and in retribution, he was destroying his instrument.
Nice guy, huh? But the more urgent question is why didn’t I see this as the red flag it was? I was horrified by the picture, couldn’t believe he would destroy the man’s means of livelihood, couldn’t believe he would destroy a musical instrument, couldn’t believe he would value this photograph as a portrait of who he was. The whole thing just turned my stomach. But I overlooked it, justifying it to myself by saying this was something about the focus on his own goals and refusal to be diverted that I admired in him. And that I had to give him the latitude to be himself.
There were so many red flags, and yet I was so romantically involved with my own idea that he was more advanced than me in some important way. Later, much later, in getting over it, I realized that idea was less about him than my own despair about being able accomplish anything I really cared about, protect myself, or deal effectively with the world at all. (This was childhood stuff affecting my thinking; the reality of my life at that time was that I was hugely successful in business, respected, surrounded by people who cared about me, and the only thing that created chaos in my life was my belief in my own incompetence.)
As I healed from this relationship, I learned first that he was not a nice person or admirable in any way, except for these traits that attracted me and even they were warped and uglied by his crappy values. And then I learned that he was an avatar of my own old damage. The whole relationship, including my view of him, was shaped by my despair about being able to take care of myself.
All this work, all these developing insights and my ultimately getting through healing of that old damage (which served to deal with him and his meaning in my live) was driven initially by pain I couldn’t turn away from. There was a part of me that knew, even from the beginning, that this couldn’t just be about him. Because even in the beginning, I was saying to myself, “Kathy, what is wrong with you? Are you just too stupid to live?” Especially as my attachment to him seemed unbreakable, even when it was clear that the relationship was destroying everything I cared about and everything I once thought about myself.
The pain, the “dark places,” demanded attention like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It wasn’t like I made a choice to focus on healing. I had no choice, and it was me that was giving me no choice. Whatever skills I had to ignore or bury these dark place faded away, and I just had to pay attention to them.
Thank heavens.
I think this is what the dark night of the soul is about. It is the part of us that wants to be clear, honest, healthy, aware and fully connected to our wise centers finally getting out attention. And not letting us divert ourselves with sex, relationships, obligations, work, shopping, drugs, booze, solitaire, other people’s problems or whatever. Until we realize it’s about us, everything reminds us of the avatar. We can’t date, we can’t look in our closets, we can’t see movies or read books, we can’t have conversations about ourselves, we can’t even look in the mirror without it being about them.
In my case, I finally started to see that he was a mask for my father, who had sexually abused me and traumatized me in other ways right back to my early childhood. But I couldn’t even hold my father’s face on that pain. Because that was a mask too. I ultimately realized that it was something about me. Yes, other people had mistreated and disrespected me as a human being, but the damage belonged to me. And no one could do anything about it, except me. I had to unlearn it, to untangle it and recover who I was really supposed to be.
This, I think, is what we all eventually come to, if we truly want to get well. And not keep living with the various forms of PSTD that come from incomplete processing of trauma.
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. And that we deserve comfort and support, that we can and will heal, and that both we and our lives can be shaped by light and love, if we take our own healing seriously. It’s not just that we’re worth it or deserve this from ourselves. It’s also the difference of what our lives become, the type of influence we become and the legacy we leave behind. Healing ourselves is a gift we give to the world, as well as ourselves.
I apologize for the long post, but the net of it all is that the dark night of the soul is just early learning. It may be driven by pain, but the pain is leading you toward truth. You sound like you’re living with it well, not afraid of it. And that’s great. Fear of our feeling is probably the most progress-retarding element in our healing. I hope your pain develops a clear voice, and leads you to its source. So you can get on to rebuilding soon.
Namaste.
Kathy
Kathy, no apologies! i read every word and hungered for more… really. At the risk of sounding repetitious, your words are amazing and thoughtprovoking. I continue to appreciate the “theoretical” and real world wisdom you so willingly share here. At times, I get frustrated with my progress, triggers, residual pain… and today your words served as a much needed reminder that while I have miles to go I have indeed come far in this journey, in this processing, and in my acknowledgement of the darkness in order to find the light. My words are nowhere near as clear and eloquent as yours but hopefully this makes sense… and hopefully my appreciation for you, your experience and wisdom is also evident. I needed this today and an so glad that I am off work and able to partake in some LF therapy.
Kathy’s words and insight reminded me of this quote:
“Though my soul may set in darkness,
It will rise in perfect light,
I have loved the stars too fondly
To be fearful of the night.”
– Sarah Williams
I’m starting to put together more pieces……
About my ‘parents’…..
Looking back over the past 10 years or so…..I see that I have been asked if there is something I need or want.
When I respond…..I get the opposite…..
The S did this too…..ALL THE TIME.
I guess because I chose to build a ‘life’ with this fraud, he had more ‘stock’ in me than my parents.
If he knew my birthday was important for me…..he’d ignore it…..or bring something trinkety a few days later…..saying he got it on sale…..with some sort of pride that he was ‘doing me a favor’….
Well…..it’s clear it’s the same as with the parents…..
About 6 years ago…..they were visiting and I was in the recliner with the afgan she had knitted years earlier…..it had a big hole in it and she asked why…..I told her because I like it to cover my feet and it has stretched over time and holes developed……she said it was awful I had such a holey blanket and she would knit me what I wanted…..she asked wat color I would like and I told her…..
I said, well if you do, here’s what I’d like…..I’d like it to cover my feet and a hole in the center, like a poncho so it’s long enougn to cover all of me…..my feet, arms, back and all….
We talked about it for some time and she fully understood what I was seeking…..
Fast forward, six years……she calls last week to tell me I should be getting a box in the mail, it was a long time coming and I would know what it was…..I figured…..the poncho afgan thing…… She also made comments abuot not having heat upstairs and this would keep me warm….blah, blah….
So…..at the risk of sounding like an ungrateful bitch……here goes…..
Christmas am….I opened the box…..
It’s a lap blanket……it’s much smaller than the old holed up one and no poncho style….it doesn’t cover a 1/4 of me……
WTF????
Oh, yeah…and with the extra wool….I have a matching scarf to keep the upper part of me warm as I sit in the cold upstairs….(i’m sure slippers are en route next).
I had the same feeling come over me……as I had for years with the S.
I DONT NEED A OVERSIZED SHAWL…..She asked me what I wanted……dumb me thought this is what I would receive…..
I don’t even know how to describe it…….it’s kinda like the crazy making behaviors…..it’s NOT like I can complain to her…..she’d pull the ungrateful card… Oh, how you don’t appreciate my efforts….etc…
To me….it’s just another example and brings up all the times she’s done the same fucking thing to me……
like going 1/2 way……
It’s like me saying how I’d really appreciate a scarf in this cold weather and really needing one……and getting tube sox.
Be thankful?????
I know it’s the thought that counts in a gift……and the thought I see in her doing this is another selfish malicious mind fuck.
It leads into so many other things…triggers…..
Like last week during this phone call she made to alert me of my package……she also made a comment on how THEY choose to spend their money on themselves…..traveling…..
Where the hell did that come from…..
Yes, we sit here trying to modify the mtg…..need to save money by not turning on the heat upstairs……and they are
unsolicited….i may say…..REMINDING me of HOW they choose to spend their money?????
She also, finally disclosed my father is ‘unwell’…..my only response I could muster up was……..”OH, SUCH AS LIFE”…..
This is the statement she has made to me over and over and over and over……so I back at’d her with it……
Looking back at how they responded with such envy when we purchased this house……my fathers response when he was being showed the home was……’wheres the money laundering room’……. I was pissed off…..I had worked my ASS off, finding my own career, saved like hell……and this is the ‘hey I’m proud of you kiddo……response from my father……
I now see……they are jelouse of me…..(WIERD) and when I am experienceing hardships……they couldn’t be happier……
Let’s never help EB……let’s keep her ‘off balance’……..let’s try and make her dependant on us…….
FUCK YOU…..i’d rather live under a bridge…..with my lap blanket shawl ugly colored thing with matching scarf!!!!!
I have never asked my parents for anything…..they loaned me 8K on my first house AND THEY PUT A SECOND ON THE HOUSE TO SECURE THE LOAN……
Reading this, it would seem as I had a track record of borrowing money and asking them for things…..NOT SO…..that 8K was the only money I borrowed AND I PAID IT BACK IN a year and a half!!!! Doubled up on payments etc….
They have given my molester brother tons of money over the years…..supported him, stored shit for him, paid his monthly bills and CONTINUE to babysit him…..I have always been independant and they HATE THIS!!!!
As a parent, this makes no sense to me……I want my kids to do much better than me……make more money, marry the perfect partner for them, have more happiness and take life by the balls…….I just can’t imagine wanting/wishing ill for my children……either consciously or subconsciously…….
I will be proud of them for THEIR achievements…..
Not so with my parents……
So…..I sit here wondering wht the hell to do with this damn scarf and lap throw……maybe I can use it as a sling to carry in the firewood thats’ really gonna keep me warm!!!!
Sorry……just a rant!
Nice rant, Erin. I liked what you wrote about anger in the other thread too.
You know, they are who they are. It has nothing to do with you. And likewise, you can’t make them — no matter how much you wish — anything else.
They’re jealous, stingy, insensitive, unable to give credit where it’s due, over-impressed with their own contributions, etc. etc. None of that is really what you’re suffering from. What’s hurting you is that you haven’t stopped wishing they were something else. That old Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football thing.
Part of this, in fact a lot of this, is the angry phase. You’re focusing on your disappointments or grievances with them. Which is okay. It helps you get clear about what’s meaningful to you, and who supports that and who doesn’t. There’s nothing wrong with recognizing that there is a whole set of your needs that they’re never going to meet.
But that’s who they are. And it’s like getting mad at a dog because it doesn’t sing opera. Would you take that personally?
Ah, but you say, they expect me to appreciate them and act like they’re my wonderful, loving parents.
I’d quibble with that one. I think you think they expect you to think that they’re perfect, and act like doting parents on them. Well, maybe they do, but that would make them a little loony. And let’s say they are a little loony, where does that leave you?
You’re dealing with two people whose grip on their own reality is flawed. And who have no grip whatsoever on your reality, and don’t even know the difference.
So beyond wanting them to be what they’re not (sorry, that’s not on the table), what do you want from this situation? What would be the best possible outcome you could imagine in dealing with them as they are? What would make you happy?
As long as you’re in the angry phase, what would make you happy is probably finding more reasons to be aggrieved. But let’s say you’re not in the angry phase. What are they good for in your life? Really? Is there anything that you’d like out of this relationship for you or your kids?
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.
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. 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.
Going through all this drama isn’t something we’d do with just anyone. It tends to be with family. And it requires us to be willing to live through all their resistance. (Which generally means staying away from them a lot more while they noodle it through. They’ll come back to us when they realize that they can talk to us in a way they can’t talk to anyone else.)
In the meantime, I’d find someone who needs a baby blanket and re-gift it. Tell your mom it was just so pretty but too small for what you needed that you didn’t want it to be wasted. And make sure your friend with the baby sends your mom a nice thank you note, telling her that she’s heard all about what a sensitive and generous person she is. There’s no time like the present to start reinforcing the right behavior.
Kathy