Imagine a book, a novel, that begins with an explosion on the first page. The explosion disintegrates big things into fragments moving away faster than the eye can follow. There is no way to understand what it means, or know what the world is becoming. The people in the book are either immobilized, their stunned brains on autopilot, trying to gather information. Or they are rushing everywhere, trying to find something to save before the dust even settles. In the background, other people may be fainting or crying. But this book is about the people who are alert, struggling to maintain their identities in a falling-apart world.
This is where traumatic healing begins. The trajectory of healing begins at the point of trauma.
The essence of trauma is loss. We may not understand our trauma as a loss at first. It may feel like a painful blow. Or an experience of confusion or disorientation. Or possibly being stretched beyond our comfort zone, and then beyond. Or we may perceive one type of loss, and then discover a more important loss that only becomes clear later. These reasons are hints of why it takes so long to process certain types of trauma.
The personal stories at Lovefraud give evidence of many types of losses. We have lost money and possessions, jobs and careers, family and friends, years of our lives, physical and mental health. And we are the survivors of relationships with sociopaths. Many of us know someone or know of someone who cannot be here with us, because they gave up on their lives through suicide or got lost in depressions, psychotic breaks or self-destructive behavior.
In some ways, what happened to us is like a situation of unrequited love. We loved someone. They didn’t love us back. It’s a sad, but everyday occurrence. In some ways, it is like an investment that did not work out. Another everyday occurrence. There are certain types of losses that are considered “normal,” expected, and things that people just get over, preferably sooner rather than later. Because they are just part of the randomness of the world that sometimes gives us what we want and sometimes does not. And we are expected to have the everyday skills of dealing with losses and moving on.
But this is not what happened to us, and we know it. We may not know what exactly happened, but we know it was momentous. To us. Because we can’t snap back. Our everyday strategies to minimize losses — saying it didn’t matter, turning our attention to something more positive, making a joke about it, finding some quick fix of our favorite “little drug” to make ourselves feel better — don’t work. We are destabilized at a fundamental level.
What happened?
If asked about what happened to us in a love relationship with a sociopath, most of us would probably sooner or later use the term “betrayal.” Or being conned. Or being used by someone who didn’t care about us. Or being led to believe in a love or partnership that never really existed. Or being targeted for exploitation.
But all of these descriptions of what happened emerge from later thought, after we try to figure it out. To understand what happened at the time, it might be easier to just work with the terms “shock” and “disappointment.”
Like the people in the first chapter of the imaginary book, something happened that simply astonished us. In a bad way. The explosion took place in beliefs that are fundamental to our identity. A destruction of the most basic source of our emotional security — our ideas about ourselves and our world that we take for granted.
Reactions to trauma
Whether or not we consciously grasp the fundamental nature of this trauma, our primitive survival system does. And it reacts instantaneously to restore a semblance of stability so that we can go on. Instantaneous emotional responses fall into two basic categories — expansion and contraction.
Anyone who has ever been attacked by verbal or physical violence is familiar with the “contraction” reaction. There is a feeling of retreating inward and condensing our consciousness to a small, tight, still, watchful point inside us. We shut down emotionally and separate from what is happening to us.
If this state continues, we become split inside ourselves, often at war with ourselves because part of our experience is not acknowledged as part of us. The parts that “don’t count” or “aren’t real” can become internal restrictions on what is safe to remember or feel. The fear of experiencing the trauma becomes converted to alienation, anger and aggressive defense.
The “expansion” reaction is related to awareness that our previous boundaries of identity have been breached and partly demolished. Our relationship to the rest of the world, in we were defined by our boundaries as separate and “owned” by ourselves, becomes diffused. We may initially feel euphoric, “spacy” feelings as endorphins flood our brain to counteract pain. Our sudden difficulty in determining where we end and the outside world begins may be perceived as ”˜destiny” feelings of being chosen or that we belong in the abusive drama.
If this goes on, our separate feelings, values and desires may become increasingly difficult to identify, articulate or defend. In our dealings with external reality we may becoming increasingly ungrounded, “fleeing to higher ground” where we cling to high moral or spiritual principles with a diminished ability to recognize or integrate information that does not match our view of life as it should be. Except for these principles, we may become increasingly dependent on others for information about who we are or our role in relationships or the world at large.
One of the reasons that relationship experts strongly suggest terminating a relationship in which we are shocked and disappointed more than once, is that each time this happens, a trauma occurs. They may be relatively small traumas, and we may think we are managing them. But these little explosions can do more than hurt our feelings. If we internalize their implications about who we are or our role in the world, they literally undermine the structure of our identity. Whether we expand or contract in response, we are slipping farther away from an open, healthy understanding of ourselves as separate, self-governed beings with full use of our emotional resources.
These instantaneous reactions occur at a deep layer of consciousness, where we may not be aware of them. Even though we are adults who, in reality, are free to act on our circumstances and to choose the meaning we ultimately assign to a trauma, these first reactions are the equivalent of the emergency workers who rush to the scene of a fire, extinguishing it no matter what kind of damage they do to the structure in order to stop the blaze. They provide temporary re-wiring to help us get through the immediate disorientation. Later comes the clean-up and rebuilding.
Why we are vulnerable
If we have early history of trauma, as many victims of sociopaths do, that emergency rewiring may already exist as a result of earlier events when our higher levels of thinking were not yet developed. That primitive adaptive wiring may still be in use, because we did not have the independent circumstances that enabled us to act freely or assign our own meaning without concern about outside influences. First-response emergency reactions may still be embedded as the “best response” in the working structures of our personalities, coloring our fundamental views of our position in the world and our life strategies.
The model of trauma response that I am describing to you is based on a synthesis of early childhood development theory, neurological research, and theories about the environmental basis of personality disorders. It is also the beginning of the entire model of grief processing, where the nature of the challenge that we face is to learn something.
In the event of trauma, the first thing that we learn is that we are surprised and disappointed. The context of this learning is that something happens from outside of us that challenges our beliefs about who we are and our role in the world. Throughout our entire life, every person goes through these challenges. It is part of growing up and maturing as a human being in this world.
However, certain types of challenges are especially painful and difficult to process at any age, no matter what internal resources we may have. The characteristics of these events include:
1. Disrespecting — we are not recognized as worth caring about
2. Devaluing — we are used for someone else’s purposes or experience a “force of nature” event, and therefore not separate or special
3. Abandoning — our world does not prevent this from happening
One of the reasons that an understanding of early childhood development is so important to this model is the concept of “good enough parenting.” The infancy and early childhood years are the period in which we separate and develop a separate identity from the “source of all good,” our mothers or surrogate mothers. In developing this separate identity, we also learn freedom to explore and develop independent knowledge and skills.
Ultimately, we come to recognize too that we are not the whole world. And that we live with people whose feelings and intentions are not always the same as ours, as well as material circumstances — like traffic, the force of gravity and things that are not good to eat — that limit what we can do without damage to ourselves.
If we make it through the “good enough parenting” successfully, the “source of all good” that was in the beginning survives in our view of the world and our perceptions of ourselves as part of it. We learn that we have the power to transform vision to reality through our own efforts. Although our world places limits upon us, sometimes discovered in pain, our foundational belief is that we live in an essentially loving and supportive place. The style of nurture we receive is internalized to become skills of comforting ourselves after an unexpected disappointment, extracting meaning that empowers to better navigate the world, and moving on to new goals.
Unprocessed trauma — that is trauma that is not treated with comfort and support of learning and moving on — literally stops that developmental process. Or throws us back into regression, undoing what we may have already learned. If we don’t have the internalized skills of “good enough parenting” a resource, for whatever reason, our built-in need to complete this developmental “thread” of growing up makes us like homing devices seeking the missing pieces to complete it.
Seeking security. Seeking encouragement and support. Seeking freedom to act without risk of abandonment. Seeking emotional comfort. Repetitively seeking the same missing elements and recreating the same relationship patterns as we try to “make right” something that failed in our histories.
Fast healing
In trauma at the identity level, there is only one way to resolve it immediately. That is to fully recognize that the “problem” is external. To activate self-comforting mechanisms to soothe the pain of the shocking disappointment. To extract meaning from the event that empowers us to better navigate the world. And to move on.
These skills are what we see in people who react quickly to everyday traumas, who recognize threats to their wellbeing or early hints of dysfunction in systems or relationships. These are people who respond with apparent coolness, clarity or rationality to suffering around them, or to other people’s projection of meaning upon them. They are centered in their own identity maintenance processes. It occurs naturally for them. Because they are compassionate with themselves, they have no lack of compassion for others. But they also have perspective about what is “about them” and what isn’t.
All of this depends on unshakable belief that the world, including ourselves, is essentially a benevolent place. As all of us know, the learning opportunities of life become increasingly challenging. As our lives progress, we invest ourselves in relationships, careers, children and possessions. Every life includes losses and failures. The more we have invested, the more we believe that something is part of our identity, the more painful a loss or failure is. Every life includes huge challenges to our beliefs that we can survive, that we are good people in a good world, that suffering and pain are the exception rather than the rule.
Unmanageable trauma
Beyond the characteristics of particularly painful and difficult-to-process trauma noted above, there are certain circumstances that magnify the challenge we face.
1. The sense that we have been targeted
2. The intensity or scope of the loss
3. The persistence or repeated nature of the trauma
Of these, the last one is the most debilitating. If we have a pre-existing weakness in our trauma-processing skills, do not respond quickly as we recognize a threat to our wellbeing or cannot escape from the situation for some reason, repeated and continuing identity trauma has the effect of cumulatively weakening both the foundation beliefs of our identity and our ability to process loss.
This is the true risk in an ongoing relationship with a sociopath or with anyone who threatens our core beliefs about the essentially benevolent nature of our identity or our world. Many of us make choices to be educated in ways that challenge our beliefs. Attending a philosophy class or learning to ski or starting our own businesses are all equivalent to volunteering for significant learning experiences that we can expect to push us beyond our comfort zones. But we go into them voluntarily, bringing our identity maintenance skills with us, and have the intention of consciously integrating what we learn into who we are.
A relationship with a sociopath is different. The learning challenges we face in the experience are completely different from what we volunteered for.
Not one word of this piece has discussed the sociopath’s characteristic behaviors. This will be discussed in later parts. But from the perspective of our own wellbeing, in particular our healthy maintenance of our identities and our relationship with the world at large, a relationship with a sociopath subjects us to a series of traumatic blows that become more and more difficult to process, and that essentially cultivate diffusion of identity for the sociopath’s purposes.
The next step of healing
Just as the first step of healing occurs while we are “in” the trauma, the second step is likely to begin when we are still in the relationship. Either literally involved with the sociopath as our partner in life, or still attached emotionally to the sociopath with hope for a good resolution. However it also includes internal activities of trying to reframe the situation intellectually, because its apparent meaning is too threatening to our beliefs about our identity and the nature of the world.
This next stage is when we first begin to process beyond the emergency reactions. In the model I am presenting to you, it incorporates both of the “denial” and “bargaining” stages of the Kubler-Ross grief model.
Until then, Namaste. The deep secure wisdom in me salutes the deep secure wisdom in you.
Kathy
P.S. Here’s a fragment from one of my poems, written in the midst of my recovery process.
They say you can’t learn
until you lose what you love.
They say you can’t get there
until you give up trying.
They say that the way
is through flinging yourself
toward all you ever wanted and loss
that breaks your heart,
dries your spirit to jerking sinew,
and then burns your hope
on the sidewalk in front of you.
They say, through all the waiting silence
you just don’t hear, that it’s not until
nothing is there in the mirror
but a monkey playing its toy violin
that you see
with eyes like windows into another country.
That you see.
Swerhli & KH: Trumped up charge? I totally get it. KH: after I explained the situation to the woman cop, and I was sure she understood, she looked directly at me and said, “If you break in and he contacts us, we will have to arrest you. Even if he’s not there.
Oh, yes, I understand. This creep knows how to dance in realm of blind justice. There is no rule, no area of law, to protect us from pathological liars. Not that I’ve found, anyway.
swehrli,
If you’re looking for advice on how to handle it, here’s what I’d do.
He pursued you, you got temporarily involved, but you realized that it was a mistake. (Or if the relationship was longstanding, you got out of it for reasons you’d rather not discuss, but you’re discussing defensive legal action with your attorney.) It appears that he’s using the company to punish you for getting away from him. That’s what you believe this charge is about. If so, he’s abusing company resources for his personal objectives.
That’s your position. That’s what you tell the HR people. And further…
You’ll, of course, handle any inquiries about your job performance. But you are conscious of the issue of professional harassment by a disgruntled suitor (ex-lover) who happens to work in the same firm. You attorney has suggested that they may want to take a look at his behavior toward other women in the firm in terms of a potential sexual harassment suit. You, of course, have no desire to go there. You like working there and respect the management. You have no desire to embarrass them.
This is your whole story. No matter what comes at you, you find answers from this script.
The initial conversation should be verbal. Anything written about this matter should not refer to a personal relationship with another employee. However, it’s reasonable to ask them for updates, whenever they approach you, on their investigation of harassment, in regard to the instigator of this complaint. You don’t threaten them, but you make sure they know that you’re considering your legal options.
Beyond that, if you don’t have an attorney, find a labor lawyer. Someone middle-aged and relaxed, not a young hotshot dying to go to court and make his name. Ask him if he’d mind if you used his name, copying him on correspondence between you and HR. You may have to pay for an hour’s consultation to get that agreement from him. You can use it to tell him the story and get his impressions. But beyond that, you probably won’t have need of him. The likelihood is that you can handle discrediting this idiot and his investigation by yourself. I believe he’ll agree.
Rune, I am so sorry you have to go through this. It must be incredibly disheartening to find no help from any of the obvious avenues in protecting your property rights.
Even though he is possession, I do believe that you can recover thinks that belong to you, and legally establish your equity in the house. You may have to go to small claims court. And if your financial records could help you to verify ownership, you can reconstruct them from statement copies and government filings.
I’m going to stop trying to help, but the one other thing that occurs to is legal aide. If you started the story with the fact that you left because you feared for your safety after you discovered what he’d done, it might help to focus their attention. Likewise, if you find yourself talking to the police again.
There unfortunately is no such thing as financial battery, but there is fraud, embezzlement and other criminal statutes related to use of false promises for personal gain.
The police, who are mostly uneducated in white-collar crime, may be looking this as a domestic issue and you as a disgruntled ex-lover. Your ability to document exactly how much money is involved may kick this up to another type of investor. But it really sounds like you could use an advocate, and maybe you could find one at legal aide.
Or if they’re not willing to take this kind of case, it might be worthwhile to go through the phone book and try to find a civil lawyer who’s willing to offer a free consultation to a successful and affluent woman who is now homeless because of a con man who is in possession of everything she owns. Clearly it would be a pro bono case. But if your ex is prominent and connected, that might be more interesting to some attorneys.
And now I’ll get out of it. I know you’ve been exploring every avenue you can think of. And you’re working against a lot of obstacles, so it’s harder than it might be. I wish you everything, all the energy and hope and resources and open doors you need.
Kathy
KF: You are stating all the avenues Ive explored. Legal aide won’t touch it because “it’s a civil case.” The money in the house is far beyond small claims court (at $7500 per month? Plus down payment, plus, plus . . .), and the things that belong to me constitute virtually all the furnishings in the house. And how do I move them? to where? when I should be living there . . . and I’m trying to rebuild a life from . . .
You are confirming that I have turned over all the obvious and non-obvious stones. Every effort required that I summon up my depleted strength. Every disappointment knocked me lower. I have not been able to find any advocate, and I am eminently resourceful. I spent 10 years working in mortgages and finance. I run into the credibility that people impute to his outrageous lies (“She stole all my money and ran off to Hawaii.”), and the naivete of society in general. No one wants to hear a sad story like this. Especially when he’s so fun, and charming and successful (look at his lovely house!), and he’s managing to recover from that evil girlfriend who “stole all his money.”
What does this say about people who have less creativity and world experience than me? Because I also know I’m far from the only person to suffer this way.
I will note one more legal detail: In this state within the past two months, a man was charged with “criminal libel” for publishing a rant about his ex-wife on Craigslist. The police literally filed criminal charges against him for saying that his wife ran off with her lawyer. What he said may in fact have been true; I don’t know. But I run an additional risk if I get even more public about this outrage that I could be silenced by such a maneuver. Yes I have some paperwork, but how much was I able to take in my suitcase?
Can I get on that flight to Hollywood with you? I don’t know the laws on “criminal libel” in California. Thank you for your suggestions. I truly do appreciate your thoughtfulness and energy. I guess the real answer is that this is beyond what I alone can do. I’m ready for a Higher Power to step in any minute now.
DEar Rune,
It IS FRUSTRATING isn’t it?!!!!!! We get the idea that RIGHT MAKES MIGHT! The “rule of law” and all that—unfortunately, that is not always the way it is in this world.
Sometimes, I am afraid that we just have to “cut our losses” and “suck it up” and DAMN IT, that is HARD TO DO WHEN YOU ARE RIGHT, and you know you are right.
I’ll tell you a little story. In 1976 my late husband was a multimillionaire inventer, he had a wonderful company going, manufacturing his product in his industry and things were going gang busters. However, being an engineer, my husband was so involved with R&D and new products that I a afraid he was NOT a savy businessman and some professional con men, came in, and literally STOLE the company without a single dollar invested. They were Ps of the smartest sort. They had apparently done this multiple times before and one of them eventually went to prison for 4 yars in a subsequent scheme he got caught in, but they lost in court (only after the company was bank rupt) but they kept the records tied up on “appeal” so long (12 years) and my husband was SO BROKE he didn’t have 2 nickles to rub together. We finally got the records and I went through them and pieced it all together and it was SO SIMPLE, like Madoff’s scheme, clever and simple and so ARROGANT.
My husband spent the next 7 years fighting for JUSTICE and grinding his teeth to the gumline. He never let go of that bone. He was RIGHT and he was MAD DAMN IT!
Then he found out that his patents (in aviation called STCs) was being used by a major aviation manufacture company since 1978 without his knowledge or any payment to him, so 3 years befsore his death he filed suit against them. The suit is still going on and I may or may not collect money on it.
The point is though that my husband spent 7 years and his entire earnings and 100% of his time trying to “clear his name” and send these guys to prison and got ZILCH for his efforts. He never did let go of the anger. I tried so hard to get him to “let it go” and get on and he did get on with his life, but it had taken so much out of him. I just think of the time and effort he wasted to “get justice” and there was no way it was going to happen. I realize to one extent it depends on “whose ox is gored” but the point is that sometimes it is better to just “let it go” chalk it up to “tuition in the school of hard knocks” and realize it is JUST STUFF.
One of the things that this whole thing with my family of Ps has made me see is that STUFF is just that, STUFF. and STUFF is not the thing in this life which is important.
I have spent a great deal of my retirement funds trying to live through all this mess, and it is GONE. The only thing I have to show for it is the RV which is only worth about 1/2 what I paid for it now. I am purposely downsizing in lots of STUFF, and concentrating on ME and on my sons and our lives together and separately. I have “enough”—whatever I have is “Enough” and I realized that if I were living in a tent or cardboard box and eating out of dumpsters, I would rather do that than worry about STUFF.
I know you have had a hard time with him taking all your STUFF and the house etc. but frankly, I would rather be YOU than to be HIM. (((hugs)))))
Rune,
Oxy is right, even though whether or not letting go will be the ultimate resolution for you is yet to be determined.
One thing I have learned is the importance of pausing when something is not working out. Step back and focus energy on some other aspect of your life which needs your time , talents, and energy. Taking positive steps in another direction can work wonders. In life, one thing leads to another and it’s surprising how often things can come around full circle and meet with a surprising impact. Often things happen in their own time and things are working in ways which we cannot always know at the moment. Things can happen or not happen for reasons that are not always known to us.
Maintain your goals regarding recovering your property, but at the same time remember that waiting is a very powerful action. Things are never static, they keep moving and continue progressing. Sometimes when we let up and stop trying to force an outcome, we will be very surprised about what might develop in our favor.
I am not into magical thinking about the universe. I think the universe is indifferent, but I think we can form intentions, put them out there, and take action in many ways that can move things forward. Sometimes that action is waiting, pausing, reducing the intensity level, and allowing aspects of this at other levels to unfold. Sometimes it takes a long time for things to work out and they can work out in very unexpected ways.
Be aware of the small things that might be significant or working. Sometimes they can be indicators that we are not as alone as we think we are with these overwhelming and painful challenges.
There is a little book entitled “When God Winks”……that’s really what it is about……the little synchronicities, the small things not even related to the big issues that mean things are working and you will get through it and come out whole.
Eye & All: The LF community is a “wink.”
Kathleen
It’s taken me a couple of days to take in your article, it very much resonated with me and what I have experienced, processing all the information will take even longer I expect. I also just read Pearl’s article and that helped put it together a little clearer for me. Sometimes when things hit home hard, I have a hard time focusing on them. I expect it’s my way of protecting myself from learning an ugly truth too quickly. Now that my S is no longer a part of my life, I have the luxury of really processing what happened and why.
There were so many things that didn’t feel right and would take me days to sort them out. Since he was still in contact and stirring things up, I couldn’t be clear on much at the time. Looking back I am stunned at some of the boundaries that were crossed that I didn’t have the tools to enforce. Some of the similarities to my childhood I only recently picked up on. I knew I had been damaged as a child, but i spent years in therapy trying too repair some of that damage. This was made easier by being in a very loving relationship with my husband. When it was clear he was going to die, a lot of those hurts either resurfaced or happened all over again. My family couldn’t support me through the process. It took 10 years and the combination of loosing him and feeling abandoned by them was pretty intense. It also totally set me up for what happened a year later.
I desperately needed to be in a loving relationship again. I knew what it felt like and I wanted another one. That should have been my first red flag. I still had a lot of wounds to heel. Ten years is a long time to go through watching someone you care deeply for dissinigrate and finally die. The fact that my emotional support system from my childhood was virtually non existent only compounded things.
I met my S on-line and he fed into all the needs that I revealed (by design) and the groundwork was setup. By 3 months the devalue, dismissing and destruction began and even though I knew something was wrong there was also a piece of it that felt so familiar that I could only present it to my friends but not see for myself what was happening. So I didn’t believe it. It was only when one of them months later ran a background check and presented me with proof did I really start to see… then I could believe.
Now I am looking at my family structure once again and with new information. I will survive and learn from this. However there is a new generation of young adults trying to start their lives and depending on which sibling is involved, all of us have children who are suffering in varying degrees. My nieces are all involved with S’s or P’s, my sister can’t seem to see and doesn’t want to address it. OK, as hard as that is to watch, there is nothing I can do to help them. For my own sons, my hope is that I can share with them some of the healing process I am going through. Even if they can’t immediately apply it to their own lives, they will at least know that it is a journey that can be traveled. I have long known that the best way to help them and be a better mother is to fix me first. Then I can go into the situation more open-hearted and really be there for them. Right now that’s a real struggle. Since they are adults, I can bow out and do my own work without creating too much destruction because of my absence.
This website and these articles have been a real Godsend for me. Everyone is very understanding and incredibly tolerant. I’ve made some very stupid decisions in the last year, and am trying to forgive myself, which has never come easily for me anyway, which I suspect is part of the brake that I need to fix as well. Since many people here have experienced similar things, it’s a force of support that I can’t get any other way and I don’t feel quite as isolated. Thank you everyone.
To clarify a little more what I was trying to say last night……….Pausing and stepping back, lowering the level of intensity and waiting can allow a new perspective to develop It can give us time to sharpen our focus about available options.
Often we feel lost because we have become mired and lost in our own problems and we are not seeing beyond them. Moving out of that pattern is important.
All positive actions are beneficial even if they seem unrelated to the main overwhelming problem, because they create a momentum that has a ripple effect and they contribute to a habit of thinking that gets results. I have found this very important in healing which is usually ongoing.
For those who are interested, I recommend Barbara Sher’s website and books. Her book “Wishcraft” can be read online. For those who have dreams and want to begin to move forward with realizing them, you might find some prompts and support for doing so. Google “Barbara Sher”, also “Wishcraft” to find these resources.
Dear blew me away,
I’m glad you found us, and even more glad that you’re posting.
You’re right, Pearl’s article on emotional blindness and particularly her follow-up’s from the Betrayal Bond are about exactly the same thing that I’m writing about here. And lately, it’s become pretty clear that a lot of us have childhood issues that made us vulnerable to the sociopath.
I’m sorry about your husband, and how hard that long caretaking must have been for you. And the business of watching friends and family members involved in destructive and painful relationships is, I know, another really hard thing.
Like you, I believe that getting better is one of the best things I can do for my son. Despite my best efforts to be a different kind of parent than mine were, my core issues of trust, insecurity and dependence affected his upbringing. And now, as I work to develop new values and behaviors, it affects our relationship a lot. Some of it is very challenging, and but mostly it is a learning and bonding experience for both of us.
In dealing with our families and friends, I think one of the biggest challenges we face is the fact that it’s so hard to talk about this. We have shame about the relationship with the sociopath — our vulnerabilities, our judgment, our behaviors, the results in our lives. But even more difficult is that there’s no common model for discussing these relationships. It’s like the whole culture is in some kind of collective amnesia about the fact that sociopaths exist at all. And the words “sociopath” or “psychopath” have been co-opted by Hollywood and the media to describe violent criminals, rather than the psychological, sexual and financial predators they more frequently are.
One of the best things about Lovefraud for me is that we are developing some great language here, as well as becoming more confident about using it outside this forum.
But here on Lovefraud, we’ve all been through it. We don’t have to break through any disbelieving resistance to share what happened to us and what we’re going through.
I loved reading your post. It was lucid and self-aware. There was a lot in that really resonated with me. I’m really glad you’re here.
Kathy