Healing from an emotional trauma or extended traumatic experience is a like a long, intimate dance with reality. Or perhaps a three-act ballet. We are on the stage of our own minds, surrounded by the props of our lives, dancing to the music of our emotions. Our memories flash on the backdrop or float around like ribbons in the air. Down below the stage, in the orchestra pit, a chorus puts words to the feelings and gives us advice drawn from our parents’ rules, our church’s rules, all the rules from the movies and books and conversations that have ever colored our thinking.
And our job is to dance our way through the acts.
The first act is named “Magic Thinking.” We stumble onto the stage, stunned, confused and in pain. Our first dance is denial — the “it doesn’t matter” dance. Our second dance is bargaining — the “maybe I can persuade whoever is in power to fix this” dance. The third and last dance before the intermission is anger.
This article is about anger.
The emotional spine
Everyone here who has gone through the angry phase knows how complex it is. We are indignant, bitter, sarcastic, outraged, waving our fiery swords of blame. We are also — finally — articulate, funny, re-asserting power over our lives. We are hell on wheels, demanding justice or retribution. We are also in transition between bargaining and letting go, so all this is tinged with hope on one side and grief on the other.
Anger really deserves a book, rather than a brief article. It is the end of the first act of our healing, because it really changes everything — our way of seeing, our thinking, our judgments, the way we move forward. Like the element of fire, it can be clarifying, but it can also be destructive. To complicate the situation further, many (if not all of us) tended to repress our anger before we entered this healing process.
So it may be helpful to discuss what anger is, where it comes from. What we call anger is part of a spectrum of reactions that originates in the oldest part of our brain. The brain stem, sometimes called the lizard brain, oversees automatic survival mechanisms like breathing, heartbeat, hunger, sleep and reproduction. It also generates powerful emotional messages related to survival.
These messages travel through increasingly sophisticated layers of our emotional and intellectual processing. One of those layers, the limbic system or mammal brain, is where we keep memories of good and bad events, and work out how to maximize pleasure and avoid pain (often through addictive strategies). The messages pass through this layer on the way to our cerebral cortex.
There in the thinking layer, we name things and organize them. We maintain concepts of community and identity (right and left brain), and we manipulate them continually to run our lives as thinking, self-aware beings. Beyond the thinking brain is the even more advanced area of the frontal cortex, which maintains our awareness of the future, interconnectivity (holistic thinking), and the “high level” views that further moderate our primitive responses into philosophic and spiritual meanings.
What our thinking brains name “anger” is actually a sensation of physical and emotional changes caused by the brain stem in reaction to perceived danger. The spectrum of those danger-related sensations roughly includes alertness, fear and anger. While our higher brain may see a purpose in separating fear and anger into different categories, our lizard brain doesn’t make those distinctions. It just keeps altering our hormones and brain chemicals for all kinds of situations, depending on its analysis of what we need to do to survive.
The point of this long digression is this: alertness-fear-anger responses are a normal part of our ability to survive. They travel “up” into our higher processing as the strong spine of our survival mechanism. There is nothing wrong with feeling them. In fact, paying attention to them is better for us in every way than ignoring our feelings (denial) or trying to delude ourselves about what is happening (bargaining).
The many forms of anger
One of the most interesting things about the English language is its many verb forms, which express various conditions of timeliness and intent. I can. I could. I could have. I would have. I might have. I should have. I will. I might. I was going to.
Those same factors of timeliness and intent can be found in the many facets of anger. Bitterness and resentment are simmering forms of anger related to past and unhealed hurts. Likewise sarcasm and passive-aggressive communications are expressions of old disappointment or despair. Frustration is a low-level form of anger, judging a circumstance or result as unsatisfactory. Contempt and disgust are more pointed feelings associated with negative judgments.
When anger turns into action, we have explosive violence, plans for future revenge and sabotage. When anger is turned on ourselves, we have depression and addictions. The judgments associated with anger foster black-and-white thinking, which can be the basis for bias and all kinds of “ism’s,” especially if the anger is old, blocked for some reason, and thus diffuse or not directed primarily at its source. This typically happens when we feel disempowered to defend ourselves.
All of that sounds pretty terrible and toxic. But, in fact, the most toxic forms of anger are the ones in which the anger is not allowed to surface. The lizard brain does not stop trying to protect us until we deal with the threat, and so we live with the brain chemicals and hormones of anger until we do.
Anger can also be healthy. The anger of Jesus toward the money changers in the temple is a model of righteous anger. In response to trauma, righteous anger is a crucial part of the healing process. Anger has these characteristics:
• Directed at the source of the problem
• Narrowly focused and dominating our thinking
• Primed for action
• Intensely aware of personal resources (internal and environmental)
• Willing to accept minor losses or injuries to win
Anger is about taking care of business. At its most primitive level, anger is what enables us to defend our lives, to kill what would kill us. In modern times, it enables us to meet aggression with aggression in order to defend ourselves or our turf. We expect to feel pain in these battles, but we are fighting to win.
However, anger also has its exhilaration, a sense of being in a moment where we claim our own destiny. For those of us who have been living through the relatively passive and self-defeating agony of denial and bargaining, anger can feel wonderful.
As it should, because anger is the expression of our deepest self, rejecting this new reality. We are finally in speaking-up mode. We are finally taking in our situation and saying, “No! I don’t want this. I don’t like it. I don’t like you for creating this in my life. I don’t like how it feels. I don’t like what I’m getting out of it. And if it doesn’t stop this instant, I want you out of my life.”
Getting over our resistance to anger
Of course, we don’t exactly say that when we’re inside the relationship. In fact, we don’t exactly think it, even when we’re out of the relationship. And why is that? Because — and this only my theory, but it seems to be born out here on LoveFraud — people who get involved with sociopaths are prone to suppress their anger, because they are afraid of it, ashamed of it, or confused about its meaning.
When faced with a painful situation, they suppress their inclination to judge the situation in terms of the pain they’re experiencing, and instead try to understand. They try to understand the other person. They try to understand the circumstances. They try to interpret their own pain through all kinds of intellectual games to make it something other than pain. To an extent, this could be described as the bargaining phase. But for most of us, this is a bargaining phase turned into a life strategy. It’s an unfinished response to a much earlier trauma that we have taken on as a way of life.
Which is very good for the sociopath, who can use it to gaslight us while s/he pursues private objectives of looting our lives for whatever seems useful or entertaining. Until we have nervous breakdowns or die, or wake up.
We can all look at the amount of time it took us to wake up, or the difficulty we’re having waking up, at evidence of how entrenched we’ve been in our avoidance of our own anger. It retrospect, it is an interesting thing to review. Why didn’t we kick them out of our lives the first time they lied or didn’t show up? Why didn’t we throw their computer out of the window when we discovered their profiles on dating sites? Why didn’t we cut off their money when we discovered they were conning us? Why didn’t we spit in their eye when they insulted us? Why didn’t we burn their clothes on the driveway the first time they were unfaithful?
Because we were too nice to do that? Well, anger is the end of being nice. It may be slow to emerge. We may have to put all the pieces together in our heads, until we decide that yes, maybe we do have the right to be angry. Yes, they were bad people. No, we didn’t deserve it. And finally, we are mad. At them.
Anger in our healing process
Anger is the last phase of magical thinking. We are very close to a realistic appraisal of reality. The only thing “magical” about it is this: no amount of outrage or force we can exert on the situation can change it. The sociopath is not going to change. We cannot change the past, or the present we are left with.
But anger has its own gifts. First and foremost is that we identify the external cause of our distress. We place our attention where it belongs at this moment — on the bad thing that happened to us and the bad person who caused it.
Second, we reconnect with our own feelings and take them seriously. This is the beginning of repairing our relationships with ourselves, which have often become warped and shriveled with self-hatred and self-distrust when we acted against our own interests in our sociopathic relationships.
Third, anger is a clarifying emotion. It gives us a laser-like incisiveness. It may not seem so when we are still struggling with disbelief or self-questioning or resentment accumulated through the course of the relationship. But once we allow ourselves to experience our outrage and develop our loathing for the behavior of the sociopath, we can dump the burden of being understanding. We can feel the full blazing awareness that runs through all the layers of brain, from survival level through our feelings through our intellect and through our eyes as we look at that contemptible excuse for a human being surrounded by the wreckage s/he creates. Finally our brains are clear.
And last, but at least as important as the rest, is the rebirth of awareness of personal power that anger brings. Anger is about power. Power to see, to decide, to change things. We straighten up again from the long cringe, and in the action-ready brain chemicals of anger, we surprise ourselves with the force of our ability and willingness to defend ourselves. We may also surprise ourselves with the violent fantasies of retribution and revenge we discover in ourselves. (Homicidal thoughts, according to my therapist, are fine as long as we don’t act on them.)
It is no wonder that, for many of us, the angry phase is when we learn to laugh again. Our laughter may be bitter when it is about them. But it can be joyous about ourselves, because we are re-emerging as powerful people.
The main thing we do with this new energy is blaming. Though our friends and family probably will not enjoy this phase (because once we start blaming, it usually doesn’t stop at the sociopath), this is very, very important. Because in blaming, we also name what we lost. When we say “you did this to me,” we are also saying, “Because of you, I lost this.”
Understanding what has changed — what we lost — finally releases us from magical thinking and brings us face to face with reality. For many of us this is an entirely new position in our personal relationships. In the next article, we’ll discuss how anger plays out in our lives.
Until then, I hope you honor your righteous anger, casting blame wherever its due. And take a moment to thank your lizard brain for being such a good friend to you.
Namaste. The healing warrior in me salutes the healing warrior in you.
Kathy
Jim, I am ENVIOUS of your trip–so THERE!!!! (that’s a rasberry) LOL
But I do love my coos. Went out and petted them yesterday and pretended I was in Scotland. Except the weather is better here (at least the last couple of days!) “Spring is sprung, the grass is riz, I wonder where the birdies isz.”
Glad you had a good time, though, my son D loves the Guiness, fortunately, he is the skinny one….he says it has the nutrition and the calories of a while loaf of bread in each bottle. I guess you got yours in “pints” though on tap. Welcome home, and welcome back.
kindheart 48 says..do they bond with us in any way..
That seems to be one of the hardest realizations or questions in my mind as well. With any normal realationship, you have the knowledge that in a breakup both parties generally grieve, re visit memories, have regrets, and general emotion that is attached to you and makes a footprint in that persons life and yours.
Its hard to swallow and is a huge part of our aftershock to accept the reality that this is just not the case with a P (from my understanding).
I found a college journal that my x N/P wrote (he is 39 y.o. now) that he “only chose gf’s that could DO things for him. Such as ,one gf did his laundry. He commented that she was stupid and he “ended” up having sex with her roommate.
He also elaborated that for some reason he had a need to be “the best” at everything, very competition oriented with guys- especially when women were at stake. He claimed he had a need to take gf’s away from other guys to show that he could. He enjoyed the game and challenge. But never indicated any emotional attachment to anyone.
During our 3 yr. relationship (w/1 yr marriage) he made many derogatory comments towards his many exes, about how crazy “they” were. He talked horrible to any one that would listen about his “deranged x wife,mother of his children. He spun the story he was the good, faithful, husband/father like nothing you’ve ever seen.
But, his bizarre game was to try to make me feel inferior/jealous of her. She is bi polar, recovering drug/alcholic and those two were always in a drama, but he made it very clear that whatever she said went (incl. making us run to & fro to pick up kids,crazy power trip manipulations.)
He always tried to make me feel as tho she was the pretty one, & they were best friends during their marriage although she had him thrown in jail many times, she and he were in rehab, kids almost taken away by DHR,she repeated suicide attempts (wonder why????), and their relationship was beyond dysfunctional.
He would have such herendous fights w/ her over children,
then I would find him hiding out talking to her like they were best friends- why?? she provided a Narsissistic supply.
After all that, the x wife told me after my divorce that he told her ” I loved sabrina way more than I ever loved you.” Another game- to hurt her just as he played games to hurt me.
His x also said she could always tell when I was around when they were on the phone together. He would spend hours at work chit chating with her as “best friends” but would be vicious, relentless at a drop of a hat then she would get mad, retaliate, and all I would hear would be venom coming from her.
Po int of this is- P’s don’t have a preference rather its a healthy relationship or not, ANY attention is a Supply. They thrive off of sick relationships that normalcy can’t stomach. Due to NO EMOTIONS, no doubt.
Could you systematically, calculatingly, hurt others to the degree that the S does. I couldn’t with even a stranger. ACTIONS TO LIVE BY -NOT WORDS IS KEY.
Reality- Guess we have to release the quesions of how he feels, and focus on what we KNOW. I am glad the peices of this puzzle are coming together. At the time of of the drama, you are so involved you can’t step back to see truth. Now its ALL ABOUT ME-there wasn’t enuf room on that pedestal for both of us anyway.
They play the cat and mouse game like nobody can-well he killed his cat .( Good thing there’s 9 lives!) I am a survivor- all of us are, or we wouldn’t be Here at LF!
have a blessed day.
KH 48- BE STRONG! Remember he is Jim Jones- DON”T DRINK THAT KOOL AID!!!!!!lol
jen i was reading your earlier post and i remember my s saying on different occasions how his first wife(who booted him out after she found someone who gave her some happiness) saying that he “was going to find someone younger and prettier” and then said “i did too”. Gosh i can’t ge t over how they think so much alike, sames lines, so dam predictable. I was lying in be the other night thinking back to my very early years of marriage when my son was just a toddler (he’s 25 now) and how happy i was and what a great husband and father my ex was and i was literally in mourning just thinking about it. I know it’s not good to live in the past but i sure didn’t know how blistful my life really was, and we didn’t have any money but what a difference from what my life has taken on in the last 6 years since becoming single and meeting the s. It seems like a lifetime ago , almost as if it was a dream. I am starting to see what sabrina said , with him being overly nice recently it’s just a ploy as he knows other men are interested and im not as needy where he is concerned. Sad to think , that the more you ignore or reject these types , the more respect they give you, so opposite to normal responses. Im trying very hard not to fool myself anymore.
Jim , you lucky dog (just kidding) for going to Ireland and Scotland, i am of both decent and would love to go but the Guiness and all the rest would be so dam tempting but im sure i could be a good lassie. It’s wonderful that you are travelling etc. My sons are always telling me to go and travel but i have a hard time finding someone to accompany me. Sure i’ve had lots of guys want to take me here or ther e but im not that naive anymore. If i didn’t have this court thing hanging over my head i would have def been to Florida(couple male friends there) or Vancouver (gf there for 3 months) but i sure would like to get out of this dull town (other than to A mental inst.trauma/addiction prog) . I’ve come to the conclusion that if i don’t move , i certainly need to drive an hour to find something to do as there is nothing in this town. I’ve never tried haggis but i would try anything once. Glad you are back on as i’ve been slipping but im not beating myself up to a pulp like i used to i’m just trying to get a grip on it. Truth is it has crossed my mind that the s is losing alot of sources and he knows it ‘s only a matter of time. I ordered the Betrayal Bond as i’ve been so dam loyal none of this makes much sense but i def have bonded with him and need some help in that area. Just so glad i have this site and all of you to help.
Hi I am new to the site. My run in with the my married sociopath meant I HAD to get angry!. I guess it was a visit to the aids clinic that finally did it for me when after I finished with them something didn’t quite add up !
Like many women on the site here my ex was alot younger than me. 14 years in fact. I nursed him through three months of “cancer” which kept me sucked into the relationship for alot longer and it was only through a chance visit away to India and some counselling when I came back that I realised something didn quite add up. I grew up in a household with a socipath dad and narcissist mum but until I was 45 I had no idea what that meant.
This is how I stopped getting angry.
Rather than getting revenge and telling their wife I wrote this to myself, and then confronted the abuser face to face. Of course I had all the evidence by that time that they had been on all the sites I had found them on. When I asked why they did it there answer was “I dont know” Of course they knew! It was all about manipulation, control and sex.
I have changed it somewhat to protect the innocent. Its taken me nearly 18 months to recover. I have only just considered dating again. I spent nearly 4 years with this man believing his lies. I consider myself to be intelligent and smart but it was only when I read Women who Love Sociopaths that I stopped beating myself up. I work as a spiritual healer and empath and I make music.
You can read it here.
Hi my name is Jamie ***** **** born on 19 October 1975,
My motto is “I AM EXTREMELY ADVENTUROUS”
I am not shy and I have no problem telling you all about myself when I first meet you.
Telling you all about my famous parents. My dad is a famous professor.
My mum is very successful head of a ********* company a multinational corporation.
Unlike me who is Mr ordinary.
I will tell you lots of stuff about them how she appears regularly on the radio and how my dad pays for my free holidays every year.
Actually its a bit of a cover up because I really despite them both with a vengeance because they sent me off to boarding school at four years old. In fact I hate them so much I do the things I do to punish them for my crappy childhood.
I do NOT have any feelings but I am good at PRETENDING I do have them. I have covered them up all my life.
I am very good at saying I love you. And good at the odd crocodile tears. I am good at portraying myself as the classic Mr Nice guy.
I will have no problem getting you SUCKED IN by befriending your own family even your kids. I will happily take them out with me on martial art events on the weekends. I will befriend you mum, your dad, your friends and your brother. They will, like you, believe I am an unhappily married man that dearly loves his children and has had a run of bad luck which includes lost jobs, cancer and so on. The list will become endless until you finally start to believe all my lies. You may feel SO CRAZY you cannot work you have to go and sort your shit and feel like are completely bonkers.
You won’t realize that I have been stringing you on all along. Your finances will be a complete mess and you will have to go and get yourself a load of counselling to sort yourself out.
I on the other hand will be laughing all the way to the bank.
I am an UNDIAGNOSED out and out classic pathological narcissist or better put a sociopath with narcissist personality disorder. When provoked I can also show signs of borderline personality having cut myself in the past but that’s more in the past. I am also very good at being passive aggressive. I will give you little clues along the way but if you have come from a dysfunctional background all the better you won’t spot me very easily.
When I first meet you I will be charming and very loving. I will give you a real sob story and tell you how unhappily married I am. I will tell you about my sexual abuse because you were sexually abused as a child. I will mirror you perfectly!
I will tell you how plain and boring my wife is and how lovely you are and how I never sleep with her. I will tell you all kinds of things about her, about how she is a nagging selfish bitch.
Actually that is not true, if you met her she is quite OK although actually she is more messed up than I am for staying with me.
After you have done a bit of research about my family You will find that my my wife is a hateful spiteful woman but I am happy to stay with her because I hate myself more than anone.
I sleep with when it suits ME. What she doesn’t know is that I sleep around and have sex with other people UNPROTECTED whenever it suits ME. I do it because I want to unconsciously punish her for being such a terrible person. I have all kinds of horrible fantasies about her dropping down dead and hoping she will die and leave the expensive house and kids to me so I can get out of this miserable hell I have created for myself. But I stay because I believe I do not deserve anything better and I dont want anyone to have anything better than me either.
When the sympathy vote is not working I will use my children on you. Tell you how I am such a great parent and how I do everything for my kids. I wont tell you that I am selfish and that I only do things that I like, like Martial arts and taking time off at weekends just for myself. I never do anything with my family. I will only tell you the things I want you to hear like how my wife is selfish and never does anything for the boys. How she is a bad parent. How I think she has affairs, how I think the is a gold digging bitch.
If you want me to be there for you when you have a problem. FORGET IT. I will always have the perfect excuse not to be around. I will promise that I am there for you always by saying lots of bullshit like I love you but when it comes to the crunch I will NOT be there for you. I know how much you love me by this time so I will make you feel very guilty for even asking me in the first place.
If you have a crisis like having to go into hospital for an operation I will conveniently just NOT have any time to even come over for an hour. However I you offer me something I want like SEX I jump at the opportunity whenever I get the chance.
I am very good at using the sympathy vote if you are very soft and loving and have lots of light or are a light worker or healer. I will use every trick in the book I can to get your sympathy.
One of my best ones was pretending I had throat cancer for three months so my girlfriend wouldn’t leave me. It makes me laugh so much just thinking about how I GOT HER on that one.
I love ridiculing healers and light workers. My mother and father in law are light workers too and I delight at taking the **** especially out of women. I enjoy taking the *** out my wife and particularly my mother in law telling stories about how things like hoppponono are rubbish and the Interfaith Church. I will get extremely angry and rageful if you become successful when you finishe with me.
I do however LOVE NLP because it allows me to use my BULL*** on others. I have developed a way of talking to people is nothing more than “conversational terrorism” and is great at making people be controlled by me and making them think they are crazy
Behind your back I will be all sweet and light especially to my inlaws. I will begrudgingly do websites for you and even put recommendations on there.
If you are my girlfriend I will SELECTIVELY tell you everything just to keep you SUCKED into my game.
You will have to find out all the other stuff yourself but being cleverer than me. If you have an IQ of about 146 which my last girlfriend had. I will tell you mine is 175 and get really p***** at you for being so suspicious.
If you start to uncover who I really am I will THREATEN TO KILL YOU and make you think you are so crazy I will put you off balance. You will have re really persevere and be strong to uncover the truth. If you tell the police about me I will turn it all around to you and tell them you are crazy.
In the beginning I will tell you that I have no money so you feel sorry for me and you will pay for everything. I will conveniently have no money to pay for anything not even lunches.
I am greedy I like to eat massive 12 inch subway sandwiches with so many chillies on that a normal person would not be able to eat them. How can I do that because I have NO TASTE why because I have NO FEELINGS.
I will tell you what a hard worker I am how I GRAFT every day for my family. How my lazy wife does nothing when in fact she runs a successful business and I am envious of her for her success. I selectively forget that if I am dating you I am only there to flop on the sofa while YOU pander to my wishes or have sex with me. While I skivvy off work.
I will tell you all kinds of things like my wife keeps the purse strings. I won’t tell you that I keep money for myself and that I HIDE everything from her. I will never pay for anything. You will always have to pay. Despite living in a million pound house and you having far less than me. I will never have money on me when it comes to going out. I will always conveniently have forgotten my wallet.
I have had over 5jobs in 3 years. You will believe I am just a victim you wont think for one second I just leave my jobs the minute I am about to be caught out.
If I am unlucky enough to get caught out for messing up on my job because I am trying to run two businesses at once I will ask you to cover my ass for me so my wife doesn’t find out. You will be stupid enough to say you were my therapist. Its only when you find out later by uncovering the truth that I have strung you along and I am suing my employer.
If you are my employer and dont do what and upset me I will sue you!
The other thing I have is NO FEAR.
I am GREEDY in every sense of the word. Especially when it comes to sex. My motto is take take take. I have no problem putting myself all over the place so long as I can get MY needs met. I am good at tricking people. I learn my skill very well. I seek women in particular who can teach me how to be a better lover so that I can move on to my next VICTIM when they are not giving me my sociopathic narcissistic supply or have caught me out.
I am a classic BI SEXUAL narcissist. that will make you feel really sick when you find me on a number of different sex sites that put your health at risks. Because I love strong women I will come across as submissive and advertise myself as such. Nothing better than making out I am something I am not. Its more of a challenge for me
I have no qualms about that and I will have no qualms about passing that down on my children. I actively flaunt my naked body in front of my two boys. I know about covert sexual abuse because her own family did it to her.
My last girlfriend was pretty clued up and accused me of it and gave me loads of books to read but I don’t care. In fact I will probably be proud if they grow up unconscious just like ME
When I first meet you I will tell you I like being SUBMISSIVE. That’s a big COVER UP because actually I am a classic sociopath that likes to control people. It will take a while for you to figure me out. I get off on inflicting pain and hurt to anyone that meets me. I see people that are kind and loving as WEAK AND PATHETIC.
If you are ever likely to confront me I will DENY EVERYTHING and thats when I start PROJECTING all my vile s*** back on to you. I do it consciously and unconsciously and I love doing astral aikido and projecting all kinds of vile s*** on people who I feel have hurt me. Even if they haven’t !
In the beginning of the relationship I will save all your texts saying you love me on my phone because it makes me feel so good about myself. I wont care that my wife will find them on the phone and if you check it might make you feel like I really do love you and really am going to leave my wife for you.
What you wont understand is I have no fear about getting caught by anyone. Its all just a game getting away with as much as I can.
However when the relationships starts to deteriorate I will save ALL the texts you sent to me saying that you are suspicious, that I have hurt you, that you are angry and you are pissed at me for all the horrible things I have done to you. I actually find it FUNNY.
I am a really flamboyant. I love to show off. If you are a dominatrix I will appear in lots of your films without a mask.
I love the fact that I am ALL OVER THE INTERNET on thousands of pages where anyone can find me anytime. I also love it that my films can be found in any sex shop in the country. I DO NOT CARE that my wife or my mum or dad will find out that I have been in kinky domination films because my motto is
I AM INVINCIBLE
I will secretly stick myself on modelling sites thinking I can make money for myself.
When you try to catch me out I will DENY everything and make out you are crazy for even suggesting I could be on such a site. I will even suggest that my family put me on there for a joke even though you have to have had a passport to confirm that you want to be on one of those sites.
I am so arrogant I will use full face pictures and use my real names. You wont have to hack into my computer to find me you will just have to google me. I am that arrogant.
I will chat on social networking sites like facebook under my REAL name and have mostly female friends on there. If you are my girlfriend and ask to be friends on there I will completely ignore you. I will then make you even more crazy by saying I am still on there when I am not. I cannot stand it if I am not in contact with exs like my old girlfriend Sally. I have never gotten over her but I have this deep sense of self hate that I still have the overwhelming urge to push good things away when them come along. In fact the nicer the person the more I will push them away!!!!
Then my narcissistic tendencies will really come out and I will start to have grand illusions of planting my seeds all over the place because I will be feeling so FULL OF MYSELF. I will start putting myself on sites like sperm donors with SMUG pictures of myself. I really do have a big self destruct button. Part of me actually wants to be punished. At the same time this was my biggest thrill Putting myself on a sperm donors site. I wont tell them I am on every sex site in the country and that their health would be at risk. Nor that sociopathy is passed down in the genes.
Then you will find me on lots of bi sexual sites telling everyone about my sexual prowess.
Then you will start to become angry because I have insisted you didn’t have sex with anyone else while we were together except of course women who I hate !!!
You will be even more angry because I will have said things like “you are a risk to my children” when clearly I am a BIG RISK TO MY CHILDREN. But I DO NOT care about anyone.
Well thats not entirely true partly I want a loving relationship but I am so screwed up I bury my feelings so much and confuse sex with intimacy. I dont know what a real loving relationship is and when it comes along I am TERRIFIED. I have not choice but to screw things up because thats how I am wired.
I do it because I don’t have any feelings. The only feelings I have are shame, guilt, hate, anger envy and lack of self worth but I will NEVER show them to anyone. I will just PROJECT them all on you so you end up feeling suicidal and depressed.
If that doesn’t work I will start psychically projecting on you especially if you are an EMPATH which is really good for me because I don’t have to make any effort. I will even project vile thoughts on your family and make your children Ill if you have any,
When you start confronting me with all this vile stuff you have found out about me I will be so arrogant I wont possible believe you could have the intelligent to have found all this stuff on google alone and I will get EXTREMELY ANGRY. At the same time I will still be denying everything! Thats when you will get a nice surprise. I will even hack into your computer just for the hell. firstly to check how you found all this stuff out and secondly just for the hell of it because you have moved on with your life and so I can steal all your stuff and hard work.
I will love it because I will have stolen all your hard work. all your writing all your music album you have created for the last six months while you have have been trying to get on with your life forgetting about me.
I like stealing things the same as I like stealing your soul because I don’t have one myself.
When you confront me and show me all the evidence I will have no choice but the crumble like a small baby and say sorry. But ONLY BECAUSE I HAVE BEEN CAUGHT.
Will I have learnt anything NO.
Because underneath If I was to get exposed. I WOULD LOVE IT. You see I am like a naughty child with a mental emotional age of about 5. I wouldn’t care if I was in the national papers and everyone saw me for what I was. I wouldn’t care if anyone said I was vile and a pervert because I was GETTING THE ATTENTION I DESERVED that I didn’t get when I was a child because my emotional brain got switched off when I was about 5.
I know I am different and that’s why I seek loving kind light workers like my wife, my ex girlfriend, my in laws and others that I can look on and abuse and see in them the things that I cannot ever be.
If you have these traits
Loving
kind
naïve
gullible
spiritual
empath (untrained!)
dysfunctional background
co-dependent
single
wealthy is good
sexually adventurous
Or actually just plain anyone I am not fussy!
PLEASE CONTACT ME NOW
?
Dear Noordinary,
WOW! What an excellent depiction of the S you were with. You really were able to get into his head and describe his personality, actions, wants, needs, and DISORDERED WAYS.
My “wow” moment came near the end of your description of him. When I would always ask myself why? why do they do the things they do… I like what you said…”they see in us (or others) the things they know they can never be”
Your extox like so many of ours have damaged non-existent souls… they walk around empty on the inside and use us/others/anyone to fill their well hidden gaping deep dark abyss inside of them.
Noordinary, Im sorry you had to go through 4 years of emotional abuse…but I am certain like so many of us, you learned alot about these devoid creatures and learned so much more about yourself and how to protect yourself from them when the redflags appear.
Im glad you got angry, and proactive for yourself. You wrote out all the truthes about him. All the ways he operates. You captured the essence of a Sociopath, right down to his empty, evil, emotionally-void, conniving messed-up soul.
For those of us, considering contacting or going back… you may want to reread the above post and see that you are merely applying to the above advertisement and getting involved with someone who lives their life as a total lie – and you will just be falling back into the arms of a leech disguised as a man or woman. NO CONTACT.
Thanks Noordinary. That was a powerful post. You nailed it. Peace, love and light on your healing journey.
Nordinary,
That was a really interesting post. I think alot of married sociopaths would be put out of the romance fraud business if we, as victims, had firmer boundaries. If we had a hard and fast rule of I am an honest person and there are certain lines I will not cross such as getting involved with someone who is married or is already in a relationship with another woman (or man) because this is dishonest not only of them, but also of me. And I will NOT get involved regardless of the bullshit they tell me because they have a wife or a girlfriend who also deserves my consideration and respect and I do not wish to treat her as I would not want to be treated.
If we would all just say NO to that dishonesty and respect other people’s relationships, alot of sociopaths wouldn’t be able to worm their way into our hearts and defraud us in romance.
I want to follow that up with I am talking about getting involved when you know the person is married or is in a relationship with someone else. I also know plenty of people get involved with married people but they don’t know they are married, so yes they are duped into a relationship without knowledge of the marital situation.
And because last time I posted something on this subject it was taken as my victim bashing, I want to say that I am basing this on MY own personal experience, not other people’s on this board. Everyone has their own reasons for whatever they did, but still I think it boils down to boundaries you are not willing to cross.
I am 53 years old. When I was 21 I got involved with a married man. No, it didn’t turn out as I hoped (at the time) and yes I was hurt. But no I do not feel I was duped into the relationship because I entered the relationship TOTALLY aware that he was MARRIED to someone else.
When it was over, I made a solemn vow that I would never cross that line again EVER, regardless of how lonely I was, regardless of how charming, regardless of how miserable of a woman I thought the guy was married to. I decided if they were that miserable and wanted a relationship with me they best have divorce papers in hand. Also later on, once I was married myself I came to realize just how painful it is when you are married and you suspect your spouse of infidelity. I do not want to do to someone else and cause the sort of pain that I would not want caused to me.
Yes, since then I have had married men flirt and TRY and yes there have been times I was lonely and would have liked to, but never once have I gone there again. It is a hard and fast rule for me. I have very weak boundaries in alot of areas and am working on them, but that one boundary was simple really. Just say NO if they are in another relationship–no if’s ands or buts. Problem solved.
Jen, I agree, “If he will cheat on HER, he will cheat on you” That should be our words to live by….and it doesn’t matter if he is cheating on her NOW, if he EVER in the past cheated on her.
When I am talking about “cheating” I am not talking about the guy or woman who has ONE “one night stand” or ONE short “fling,” but the person who SERIALLY cheats as a “way of life”—–who sees nothing wrong with adultery, who excuses it because x, y, or z.
People who are DISHONEST (not just in sexual ways) in any way, who DO NOT HONOR THEIR WORDS, their responsibilities, are NOT good prospects for a RELATIONSHIP for us.