A Lovefraud reader posted the following comment awhile back:
I just have one question for everyone here. Does anyone trust people after these sick people did what they did to us? Unfortunately for me, I have run across a few of these sickos but NONE like my ex. Whoever I meet now I’m thinking to myself, who is this person really? Do they have a secret life like the Scott Petersons and Ted Bundys of this world? I don’t let my children out of my sight and I’m already training my kids and they all know the signs of a sociopath especially my girls. I feel like I’m in a prison sometimes in my mind as I try so hard but just can’t trust anyone.
Yes, it is possible to trust again. Remember, sociopaths account for 1% to 4% of the population, depending on how the personality disorder is defined. Let’s bump the number of disordered people up to 10% to account for those who have sociopathic traits, but maybe not the full disorder.
That still means that 90% of the population are not sociopaths, and may be deserving of our trust.
So how can we feel trust again? How do we determine whom to trust? I think there are four components to being able to feel trust, and deciding who deserves to be trusted.
1. Educate ourselves
One of the statements I’ve heard over and over again, through emails and phone calls from victims, is this: “I didn’t know such evil existed.” Well, now we know.
We’ve all learned, mostly the hard way, about sociopaths. Now that we know they exist, we need to educate ourselves about the warning signs, the patterns of behavior that may indicate someone is disordered. Lies, irresponsibility, vague answers to questions, no long-term friends, new in town, magnetic charm, lavish flattery, statements that don’t add up, flashes of violence—if we start seeing the signs, we need to put up our guard.
2. Believe our own instincts
Just about everyone who was victimized by a sociopath had early warning signs—a gut feeling that something wasn’t right, an instinctive revulsion, questions about what was seen or heard. Unfortunately, we ignored the signals.
We didn’t believe the signals for three reasons:
- We didn’t have the empirical knowledge that evil exists (see above), so we didn’t know how interpret them.
- We viewed ourselves as open-minded individuals, and believed that everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt.
- We allowed the sociopath to explain away our questions and doubts.
Never again. We should never doubt our instincts. In fact, we should train ourselves to pay attention to our instincts. Our intuition is absolutely the best tool we have for steering clear of sociopaths.
3. Make people earn our trust
I had a blind spot. I am a forthright, trustworthy person. I would never think of lying to someone. Unfortunately, I thought everyone else was like me. Big mistake. My younger brother’s life philosophy is probably more useful. His rule of thumb: “Everyone is an a**hole until proven otherwise.”
The point is that we should not give our trust away indiscriminately. People must earn our trust by consistent, reliable and truthful behavior.
Important caveat: Sociopaths often appear to be trustworthy, dependable and honest in the beginning, while they’re trying to hook us. So if the good behavior slips, and bad behavior starts to appear, we must recognize the change as a big red flag.
4. Process our pain
I think the biggest roadblock to being able to trust again is our own pain. After an encounter with a sociopath, we’ve been deceived, betrayed, injured, emotionally crushed. We are angry and bitter, and rightfully so. But if we want to move on, we can’t keep carrying the pain around.
To get rid of the pain, we must allow ourselves to feel it.
I recommend that, either privately or with the guidance of a good therapist, we let the tears and curses flow. Expressing the pain physically, without hurting yourself or others, also helps. My favorite technique was pounding pillows with my fists. You may want to stomp your feet, twist towels or chop wood.
For more on this, read Releasing the pain inflicted by a sociopath.
Trust and love
It is important to be able to trust again. Doubting and disbelieving everyone we meet is a dismal way to live. If we cannot recover our trust in humanity, the sociopath who plagued us will have truly won.
The difference is that after the sociopath, we must practice informed trust. We know the red flags of a sociopath, and in evaluating a person, we don’t see them. Our intuition is giving us the green light. The person has proven, and continues to prove, to be trustworthy. These are the intellectual aspects of trust.
By doing the work of exorcising our pain, we clear away the roadblocks to feeling trust emotionally. It’s crucial to be able to feel trust, because that’s what paves the way for love.
Hi Wiser:
Just be glad the big boss upstairs was watching over you and didn’t allow you to get sucked into a long-term thing with this guy.
I guess the holidays are getting to me a little. This will be my 2nd holiday without my husband. He has gone straight from my home to his mistresses home. I am glad he is gone but I am still somewhat jealous. He called to take my daughter to navy pier today which he never asks to get her on a weekend. So I guess he is going to parade around with her 4 kids (they have one together that is one year younger than ours) and our child. That is so sickening. Between the both of them they have 6 kids and she is only 30 and he is 35.
We use to take the kids to navy pier and now he is trying to play dad to her kids. He had been cheating on me with this woman for half of our marriage. I didn’t find out about their baby until the baby was 7 months old. I hate this man but yet I still care for him. How can he do this to women and children? That is how people get seriously hurt. When I tell him about himself he gets mad and doesn’t listen. He believes he is a nice guy. We have finally agreed on a settlement so it is just a matter of weeks and we will be divorced. I wrote and told him that I am sure he will be happy when we are divorced. He replied, “I am sorry you feel I am that cold.” This man is crazy.
nic, exactly, he’s crazy.
this is the kind of mental illness that normal people can’t wrap their brains around, and so it’s infuriating, jealousy-provoking and maddening, all at the same time.
my ex is on baby number four with woman number three. he was cheating on me for 7 months; lying, deceiving, and getting some other chick pregnant.
save your breath. telling him about himself is like talking to a one year old. they don’t care who they hurt as long as they get what they want. let her deal with his nonsense. she’ll be crying soon enough, and he’ll be talking the same smack to her and about her.
you’re free to be your true and authentic you, without having to make excuses for his sorry ass.
peace.
Dear everyone,
It is just really unfair that these assholes hurt people so much and just get away with it. I am feeling pretty angry about this today. I feel so helpless about it. You can’t warn people. You can’t tell people. No one believes you. Everyone thinks you are a drama queen. All you can do is walk away from your friends and the things you loved because they are tarnished by a stupid f’ing psychopath. It SUCKS. I’m tired of him having the influence over my life. Why can’t he just go away???? The worst part is that they have moved on with their lives as if we didn’t even exist! Just happy as a clam, gobbling up all my friends and turning them into his friends. I f’ing hate him. How dare these creeps do this?
Okay, can you tell I’m angry? The WORST part is that I have no one I can talk to about it. I can only do it here. No one understands. That’s the part that sucks so much.
Dear Stargazer,
Sweetie, yes, he screwed you over, and screwed his wife over and tried to screw the army over, but you know what? He will NEVER EVER HAVE WHAT YOU HAVE, A SOUL AND A HEART THAT CAN FEEL LOVE.
Yea, being mad is part of it, and that will come and go, so rant away–heck, USE ALL CAPS IF YOU WANT TO “SCREAM” TO US! LOL
But your “friends” are not much “friends” if they dump you because of him. They may be acquaintences, but not FRIENDS, and you know what, he will never ever have real “friends” cause he uses people. All he will ever have is acquaintences. And,yea, your peeps don’t understand, but WE DO, so scream to us all you want! That’s why we’re here! ((((Hugs and prayers)))) Oxy
I wouldn’t be so mad, Oxy, if my friends on the site all stuck by me and believed me. But a few of them have stabbed me in the back over this, and the whole thing is very upsetting. What if you found out some people here were secretly friends with your S’s? How could you ever post on this site again? So I don’t really want to go back to the reptile site again, even though I have loved it so much. It’s so relaxing at the end of a hard day to come home and goof around with people there. But there is this dark cloud hanging over it for me, and that is the influence of the stupid pathological creep! One of the girls on the site I think may have recommended him to snake sit for another member in Colorado. I’m not sure, but this is the way I took her cryptic message. So fine, let them all be conned off by the loser. I hope he steals their snakes and their identities too. None of my f’ing business! They can all go screw themselves. That’s how I feel. There are lots of other reptile sites, but it’s a lot of the same members and they all know each other. I cannot tell you how much this all pisses me off!!! I’m sure there is a positive side to getting off the internet. But I think I should do it on my own time frame, and not because I’m driven off my some f’ing nutso creep that charms everyone around him. UUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHH. I hope the army buries him! I really wish he would end up in prison where he will get all the action he wants and PLENTY of “snakes”. I think if they took away the air he breathe and lets him slowly suffocate to death, it would be too kind.
Thanks for letting me vent. I’m pretty sure I’m not done yet. Just a warning.
StarG: GOOD SUNDAY MORNING TO YOU SWEETIE!
I think why the hurt keeps haunting you is that you got into your relationship with your EX because you wanted to love him and vice versa. Unconditional love on your part. That you finally wanted that person in your life to love you unconditionally too … settle down with him, be there for him and he would be there for you.
Except StarG … “they” don’t love unconditionally! They have ulterior motives for why they get involved with any of us. “We: getting involved with them purely out of love and respect and assuming they did the same when they met us. Never in our wildest imagination could we fathom the depths that there are so many others out there that have such cold, calculating and diabolical motives for meeting others, believing in worldly goods.
There is NOTHING that any one has NOT gotten already from God. God gave us every thing that we would ever need … all the rest is superficial, man made stuff. Why so many in this world want to insist on being of the world, is beyond me. We are spirits visiting this world, we are NOT of this world … we never will be.
It is because humans want to believe in their own egos which ends up believing in the superficiality of this world.
StarG, your EX, like all our EXs and others that are like our EXs need to understand this concept. From dust or human forms came into this world and to dust our human forms will go when our spirits leave this world. We brought nothing into this world except our spirits … to be housed in physical form for a short while to experience human life down on Earth … and we will take nothing with us when we leave this Earth … we even leave the physical form when we go … our spirits go on … without our human form!
Peace to your heart and soul StarG, for your soul is your spirit.
Wini,
As usual, your post has a lot of wisdom. I am going to reread this later when I’m done with my busy day and see if I can get some peace in this situation. I think the venting has really helped a lot.
Iwonder:
I just came across your post from last Tuesday “God forbid I ever let myself be treated like I was…I was used…just for a free meal…free car…free everything…for a few lousy crumbs of affection here and there.”
I was thinking back to the last trip I took the S on to my family’s home in Greece. That trip will go down in hisory as a disaster to rival the Chicago Fire, the sinking of the Titanic and the massacre of the Huegonots.
I remember towards the end of the trip going into a nightclub with the S and looking at all these happy couples –straight and gay, obviously in love, and thinking “why can’t he give me that when I’m giving him that?” When he actually took my hand later that evening I almost felt like it was being done for show. But I pushed that thought out of my mind because I was so happy for that crumb of “affection”.
The day before we left I was sitting by the swimming pool of a hotel and looked around at all these happy couples in love. That was when the magnitude of how empty our so-called relationship was hit me full force.
I remember starting to cry because I finally had to admit to myself that I had settled for S throwing me an occasional bone of affection — which I would then make into a fabulous feast of love in my mind. The problem was I was slowly starving to death emotionally. It was then that I realized that was all I was ever going to get from S.
Last night I went out to dinner with a friend who said to me about S “I don’t get it. You offered him everything — a lifestyle he couldn’t even remotely afford on his salary — a great apartment in a doorman building — travel — the works. And then he turns around and steals a piece of clothing from your neighbor’s in Greece? What is he crazy?”
Not crazy, I know. But the most impaired, hateful person I ever met.
As lonely as I am at this moment, I realized that I would rather be alone the rest of my life than ever be alone in a relationship like the one I had with S — settling for crumbs. If Dante had known about relationships with an S, he would have added an eighth circle of hell in his Inferno.
Matt, I had someone say the same thing to me. My husband and I had a big house, rental property and we were a “power couple” so why would he just leave and abandon everything? He now is living in an apartment with his mistress and her 4 kids by different men including my husband. Is it just me or is it expensive raising kids and now he is with someone with all of those kids. He thinks spending money means I should be ok. Between his oldest daughter and our daughter my husband spends over 2800.00/mo. in child support. If this 3rd woman takes him to court he is going to be in trouble. That is why I think he is trying to hold on to her even though he still tries to be intimate with me. I feel lonely but I was thinking back when we were together and I was lonely also. He would come home at 6 or 7:00 a.m. from a “friend’s house” and then try and do things with me. I later found out it was another woman but my point is I was lonely and didn’t realize it.
Stargazer, I am so mad also. I was worse a year ago but I am getting better. It was pretty rough this weekend. My S will be 35 tomorrow and I am just wondering how he will celebrate. I know I need to stop thinking about him at all. I don’t want to make myself go crazy thinking about him and what he will be buying her for the holidays. And yes everyone thinks I am crazy. They also think his first child’s mother is crazy because she had him locked up, she broke out his car windows, busted his lip, etc. I found out she did all of that because he cheated on her. Oh well, he still hasn’t learned his lesson.