Finally, you realize what is wrong with your romantic partner: He or she is a sociopath.
Finally, the behavior that was so confusing makes sense. The person you loved, and who you thought loved you, has a personality disorder. Now you realize that anything your partner told you could have been a lie. Now you know why your partner could be so cruel, then tell you how much he or she loved you, practically in the same breath. Now you realize that there never was any love, that your entire relationship was exploitation, and nothing more.
Now what do you do? How do you move forward? How do you recover?
Many of your friends and family tell you, “Just put it behind you. Get over it. Move on.” You are particularly likely to hear this advice if you were “only” dating the person, not married.
The friends and family dispensing this pithy advice probably were never involved with a sociopath. They don’t understand the depth of the betrayal. When you split from a sociopath, it is not a normal breakup. The intensity of these relationships makes the end incredibly painful.
Relationship and addiction
The sociopath initiated this intensity in the beginning of the relationship by showering you with attention, wanting to be with you all the time, claiming that you were soul mates, and painting a glimmering picture of your future together. You, never having experienced such adoration, believed that he or she was head over heels in love with you. Even if you felt misgivings, you suppressed them and focused on the promise of happily ever after.
Then, sooner or later, the sociopath did something to make you feel fear or anxiety. Perhaps you caught your partner lying or cheating. Perhaps he or she suddenly became enraged—you weren’t sure why—and threatened to end your relationship.
Whatever it was, the bliss that you felt in the beginning was shattered, and you wanted it back. You asked what was wrong, tried to work things out, perhaps even apologized for something that you didn’t do. Eventually the sociopath relented, and you kissed and made up.
Then, the whole cycle started again: Intense attraction. An incident causing fear and anxiety. Relief. Around and around it went.
This process has a profound psychological effect—it actually makes you addicted to the relationship. That’s why it’s so hard to break up with a sociopath. You’re not breaking off a relationship—you’re breaking an addiction.
Choose yourself
Addictions don’t just go away. Anyone who has quit smoking, drinking, drugs or any other addiction knows that it’s hard work. You must choose yourself, your health and wellbeing, over the addiction. Then you must work on your recovery, day in and day out.
A relationship with a sociopath is the same. You cannot simply “put it behind you.” You cannot fully recover by locking your internal devastation into a closet, never to be opened, while attempting to go through the motions of living. If you try to do this, you simply end up with an emotional cancer within you, eating away at your life force.
The solution is to choose yourself. Make a commitment to yourself that you will recover, and then work it, day by day.
Steps of recovery
The first step is No Contact. Get the person out of your life. Stop seeing and talking to him or her. Block emails and text messages. Don’t visit his or her Facebook page.
This will be difficult in the beginning, because, remember, you are breaking an addiction. You’ll feel a compulsion to contact your former romantic partner. But if you do, it’s just like an alcoholic falling off the wagon. You’ll be back at square one, and you’ll have to start the recovery process all over again.
The secret to breaking the addiction, as they say in 12-step programs, is to take it one day at a time. So commit to yourself that you will not contact the sociopath today. Then you make the same commitment tomorrow, and then the next day.
The longer you stay away from the sociopath, the stronger you become.
Deeper healing
Getting the sociopath out of your life is only the first part of your recovery. The second, and most important, part, is healing whatever made you vulnerable to the sociopath in the first place.
We all have vulnerabilities—it’s part of being human. We have internal fears, doubts and injuries from our past. Or we have dreams and ambitions—these, too, in the practiced hands of a sociopath, can become vulnerabilities, when he or she promises to make them come true. But generally, the sociopaths target our weaknesses, because that’s the easiest and most effective way to hook us.
Usually the weaknesses boil down to a subconscious belief, deep within us, that we are not good enough.
We rationalize that our mother ignored us, or our father abused us, because we were not good enough. We assume that an earlier romantic involvement failed because we were not good enough. These ideas may have been deeply buried, but they still caused pain, and pain created vulnerability. Sociopaths can sense vulnerability like a shark senses blood in the water.
Releasing the pain
How do you recover from these deep wounds? You acknowledge that they exist. You look at them and allow yourself to feel the associated emotions—pain, disappointment, fear, anger, rage, numbness—and then you let the emotions go.
This is a process, and is best done in private, or with the help of a competent therapist. You’ll find that you have layers and layers of pain, and as you release one, another rises to take its place. You may find yourself crying, wailing or stomping to release anger. You work your way through the layers of emotions, acknowledging, feeling and releasing.
You can’t do this all at once—it’s too draining, and you still have to live your life. In fact, you should intersperse these sessions of releasing with times of treating yourself well, and feeling joy at whatever goodness you experience, no matter how small.
True recovery isn’t easy, fun or instant—it takes work and a commitment to yourself. But the rewards are so wonderful: Release from old traumas. Life lived with peace and lightness. The opportunity for true love and happiness.
It all begins with making a decision to recover.
spoon, that is very thought provoking – thanks for sharing..
Donna, This is superb. Your wisdom, insight, intelligence are all such a comfort. You describe it so articulately and succinctly.Still 7 months on I feel stabs of searing pain in my chest….will it end? It is indescribable betrayal. Incomprehensible inhumanity. Just yesterday a friend refused to let me broach the subject of my SP (crayfish) She said…enough! I don’t want to hear any more about ‘him’ I prefer ‘it’. But for me it is precisely as you describe…layers of pain. We must never, ever lock that away that devastation. His ex-wife who endured 17 years of his lies and cheating is now terminally ill with cancer. Absolutely no surprises there. Thank you for all your words. always.
Sisterhood, even though it’s been many years since you left the spath, you may not have completed the healing process, and that is why you are having dreams about him. The feelings of rejection you are feeling from the dreams is a good place to start the process. They are probably pointing to a deeper issue such as the one Donna mentions in this article – “I am not good enough”. It’s helpful to really feel the pain of the rejection and ask yourself “why” questions. Why do I feel so much pain? Why do I feel this way? You may do better with the help of a therapist. I tend to do this on my own – I don’t know if it’s better or worse. The main thing is to treat it like a journey. The yucky feelings – if you follow them to the vortex – will lead you to something you need to look at.
I used to be a grad student in psychology. I participated in various dream groups and studied dream interpretation for a few years. While there is a whole study of dream symbols, I found that the most useful and powerful way of interpreting a dream is to go with what is called the “felt sense”. That means what I said above – to go with the feeling tone of the dream and actually go into the feeling and see if you can feel it more deeply. If you can do this without distraction (a form of meditating), you can follow it to its very core and possibly even release the pain that is keeping you trapped.
Donna, I have a question for you. How did you get to the point where you were able to clear the belief that you weren’t good enough? I don’t know if I still have that operating or not. I wonder if you necessarily need a therapist or if it can be cleared on your own. I am starting to be around men more and there are several I’d like to get to know better. But I want to make sure this tape is not operating, so I can have a happy healthy relationship with a man should I ever find an appropriate one. Thanks in advance.
spoon – i read it through, but i don’t know that i can do this by myself. I am going to try to find an NLP practitioner here.
Since the spath ans the PTSD (and chemical exposure injuries) my ability to go through new processes is greatly diminished. to try and fail (due to lack of concentration and self esteem) really sucks, and i don’t want more suckage.
one/joy_step_at_a_time
It can be a little scary at first. And you have nothing to prove. No more suck crap.
But here is another way to see things. There is no failure only feedback.
On a NLP practitioner. Know what you want. If you feel uncomfortable walk away.
Once this technique is learned it can be used to clean up lots of things. Bad memories, fears, compulsions, decisions, beliefs – with beliefs there is always a phrase or sentence that goes with it that must be killed. There are other technique, some are quicker for certain things. But this one will handle 90% to 99% of what we are dealing with here.
This is if you have trouble finding a NLP practitioner and you decide to go ahead on your own.
The nice thing about this technique you can do no harm with it. All it does is puts the memory into a dissociated state and removes the emotions from it. It will do this for any memory. What I did was to try it out on a memory that didn’t have a lot of crap tied to it first. In fact I did 4 or 5 of them before I went after the big ones. The first one was where I was ridiculed by a teacher. So if you go ahead try it on something that is small first. Some memory from school. Some minor spate that you had. Or some kid that your still having arguments in your head with. Save the spath and PTSD for a little later.
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~lady/archive/phobia-2.html
“When neutralizing a memory, the subject does not need to actually tell the therapist the details of the traumatic event.
When the technique works, the subject simply loses interest in the traumatic memory or phobic stimulus. (One subject I treated for a memory of childhood abuse was reluctant to go through the process with me at first because “If I think about what happened, I’ll cry.” Two weeks later she told me “I still know what happened, but it’s as if I read it in a book.”) ”
Here is another script of it. The seeing yourself in the theater I found didn’t make any difference if I did it or not. How Can You Mend A Broken Heart http://www.nlptoday.com/love_ellis.htm
And I’ll answer any questions you have. If I don’t know the answer I’ll help look for it.
In this one he says to run it at least 3 times. Sometimes it takes many more times. What I’ve found is that by letting the movie slide out and get smaller and smaller as you run it, will take care of how many times to run it. If it is something that doesn’t take many times it will slide out very fast. Things that need more run time say 10 to 15 times the movie tends to not want to slide out very fast. But the good part about this is if you don’t get it all the first time just do it again. It only takes 15 minutes or so.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Hypnosis-and-NLP—10-Steps-To-Release-Your-Past-Trauma&id=576078
hi spoon – thanks for the encouragement. i will need someone to walk me through it, or i will bolt. it’s a matter of balance – i have to be more curious than scared to try anything – and right now the balance in my life is to the fear side.
there is one NLP practitioner here, and i will ask around about her.
Wife of Man Accused of Faking His Death Fears for Her Life:
http://gma.yahoo.com/wife-man-accused-faking-death-fears-her-life-081505984–abc-news-topstories.html
Just wanted to share a link that exposes another ugly spath.
Dupey
Kim- I am honored that you took so much time, thought and effort to help me. The links are great and I have loved Simon and Garfunkel forever.
Stargazer- Thank you for that last post. I think you are right in making the feeling of rejection my starting point. I thought I was looking at that particular issue, but I realize that I must still have doubts about my self-worth. I took the rejection of my ex spath really hard because I had been repeatedly rejected by my family before he came along. I thought he was the answer to my prayers of hope and rescue. Boy, was he so NOT the answer. But I do believe that he may have been brought into my life so I can heal from the deeper rejection issues I have from my family.
Thank you again for everyone’s concern and help.