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.
Henry,
Was the “Companionship and the comradere” really all that great, you told us before that he didn’t like to be outside with you planting or taking care of the yard, so was it REALLY all that great or are you just remembering the “good” parts or putting a coat of paint on the old jaloppy?
Huh – putting a paint of coat on the old jalopy – I like that, I DO that. His compationship was fantastic in the beginning, but abusive at the end. At best, he was just this empty, vacant, shell of a person, showing up only when he had to. At worst he was actively abusive, yelling, swearing, and looking at me with the disdain and revulsion. SHUDDER.
Dear Healing heart,
Two or three years ago if you had asked me what kind of childhood I had, I would have painted you a bright picture of an IDEAL childhood and family in which I grew up, with a loving mother etc. Now, I realize that I had looked at my “childhood” through a pair of rose colored glasses a FOOT THICK.
I think all of us (humanity) in generally try to “put a coat of paint” on the ugly parts of our lives, especially where we look at our relationships. Especially as children, we think our life (no matter how twisted) is “normal” and “the way it should be” and if there is an unhappiness in it, in order to survive, we “paint” mom/dad as loving even though the way they treat us may be FAR from a loving parent. It is too painful to realize that the person who should love us and care for us does neither.
I think that sort of carries over into our relationships and we paint over the rust spots to make them look prettier in retrospect.
I do realize I had some good things in childhood, it wasn’t all bad. I did have unconditional love from my grandparents and my step father, and mother saw that I was adequately clothed and fed and encouraged me to succeed in school as far as an education was concerned. It wasn’t ALL bad.
I had a therapist tell me once that she had never seen such a thick pair of ROSE COLORED GLASSES as I possessed. I didn’t pay much attention to her at the time, but she was RIGHT ON! I realize that now that I had had them broken. Sometimes I feel like I have shards of the glass from those glasses stuck in my eyes, but my vision is still trying to adjust to life without them, without becoming the kind of person who wears “Chit-colored glasses” since their rosy ones are broken. That would be as bad or worse I think.
UGH. Trusting again is such an issue for me. You know I’ve just started this new relationship with this guy and I asked him before getting into his car if I could trust him…if he had a knife or something. Later, I asked if he was looking for money or something from me. Can’t believe he wants to see me again.
Iwonder: You have the right to feel at ease … just make sure you pay attention to his friends, co-workers … and if you are lucky, his parents are still living so you can observe how he relates with them. Speak up and ask his mom and dad what their son is like. Don’t make any excuses for what they say. Jot down your notes, dates, times, who said what and how they are related to him or know him. Hopefully, he has siblings that you can pick their brains about regarding the new man in your life. Keep your ears and eyes open.
You have work to do!
Peace and good luck. Oh, and try and have a good time … with meeting new people … you don’t have to get serious about anyone … just meet them as friends and you’ll never go wrong.
Dear Iwonder,
Go to the main home page on LF and there are articles there about how to “scope out” a person–I go there every once in a while and re-read these articles. All of them are good advice.
“Trusting” is NOT, repeat NOT, something we should do easily with people we don’t know. It should and does take time to see a person in all kinds of situations and see how they act.
Last year, a man from my living history group (a large group) that I met in October seemed really nice and attractive. He started calling me and we spent a lot of time on the telephone talking. Seemed we had a lot in common. When all this mess came down with my mom, the Trojan HOrse, My DIL and my P-son, I talked about it with him because he had been married to a borderline personality disordered woman and we had shared confidences. I felt like he understood me and my situation.
When it became apparent that I had to “get the heck out of dodge” he happened to be between part time jobs (he is retired) so offered to help me and I gladly accepted. He owned a small house in a resort area about 35 miles from me and he invited me to park my RV on one of his 4 lots there right across from the water. He even helped me tow it, and set it up and hook up to utilities. Couldn’t’ have been a nicer man.
I lived there in the RV for six months and he was really super nice to me, but I started to notice some “cracks” in his “feet of clay” and realize that this man had some SERIOUS anger issues and dysfunction.
While I had trusted him (to a point) and wasn’t afraid of him physically, I realized during this time that he was not a person I wanted for a “permanent” friend. At the time I saw the first crack, I was sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place and literally couldn’t go home again, plus I was also quite sick from Rocky Mountain Spotted fever and so weak I could hardly stand up, so I let that one slide, and the last episode was the week before I moved the RV home, which had been planned for a couple of weeks.
While I am VERY grateful for all this man did for me, I have not contacted him since I left and he has not contacted me. I don’t hate him, and he didn’t “hurt” me because I was not romantically involved with him, but I COULD HAVE BEEN if I had not kept my emotions in a RESERVED mode so that I did not become involved with him until I KNEW HIM BETTER.
A person who has bad behavior will not have bad behavior EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY DAY. So you are looking for a behavior that only comes out once in a while and one that will usually get worse with time as they see what yo will tolerate.
I don’t think this man is a P by any means, but he is dysfunctional and does not handle anger appropriately and is not willing to discuss his inappropriate behavior or to apologize for it. I think he was a victim, both to N or P parents, and to a wife who was at least an N or a BPD or maybe worse. He did NOT LEARN THOUGH about his situation either as a child, or as a husband to an abusive woman, and so he has NOT HEALED. IN fact, he is very lonely, confused and still angry and bitter. He is not easily triggered, but if he is triggered he responds with anger….inappropriate anger. It is a shame, but because I did not quickly give him my complete trust, I was not hurt. Of course I would have wished better for him, and for us as friends, but I realized THANKFULLY that the problem of his anger was HIM, NOT ME.
I am just more “cautious” about who I trust and how much. Going back to “trusting” people on what they present to me on first meeting WILL NEVER HAPPEN. So if you are wanting to return to these days of naivete and instant trust, I think you need to change your goals. CAUTIOUS trust is the name of the game. It doesn’t mean NO trust, but just be cautious and rational and reasonable.
Oxy _ Well it is another day and I have no clue why I said I miss the companionship and comradere. Maybe I sometimes focus on what it could of been instead of what is was. And yes there were good time’s here and there – even if it was a game for him – I was under the impression I had met my soul mate – duh~~!!
in other words I had my head up my ass – have gone through most of my life in that painful position – nice to see the sunshine again tho!!!!
Henry, Henry, Henry: Now, now, now … if we didn’t have loving and giving people in the world … what a fix this world would be. I for one am not ashamed that I loved my EX. He’s the one that should be ashamed for what he did/does! Same with your EX … but I guess they will never feel that shame.
Peace. How’s the weenie doggies?
Henry: If it’s any consolation … I too was under the same impression about my EX. Actually, I used to tell my friends how healthy minded he was … I couldn’t believe I found someone that wouldn’t freak out over the simpliest of things in life. He acted very mature.
Now I know why.
Peace.