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.
Hi, Panther
Thomas Sheridan’s website (out of Ireland) Psychopathfree.com has a section for non-English support. The link is:
http://psychopathfree.com/forumdisplay.php?7-Non-English-Support
German is one of the languages listed. Hope this helps.
Thank you gathersnomoss!!! None of the threads posted so far are in German, but maybe if I poke around a bit or contact the site owner I can find out more for that is available in German. I keep wishing I could find this whole site (Lovefraud.com) in German…comment section and all 😉 That’s really what I wish….if I had a magic wand. This was where my HOLY CRAP HE’S A SOCIOPATH moment light went on and my healing began. This community was the lifesaver. Maybe she could translate it all with google, but then that gets pretty tedious for her.
Thanks again for the link!
Great article Donna!
So true…I’ve been walking the walk of recovery and everything you say is true. It takes time, alot of time, and patients with your self. Most people don’t have that patients or tenacity that’s why they don’t heal or fully recover and wind up in another exploitive, abusive relationship. I’ve learned so much here on LF and it has been the integral part of my recovery.
Thank you!
Oh, Donna, thank you, thank you! This is so timely and perfect. I am being gentle with myself knowing that it does take a long time to work through everything. It isn’t instant and I’m accepting that now.
Thank you for Lovefraud.
No contact sounds great – it’s definitely what I was seeking when I applied for a divorce. However, when you have had a child, that option goes out the window. I have been struggling with the courts and their penchant for “children need both parents” since 2003. My child is now at risk – believe it or not, narcissism is “contagious”. Just real “Malignant Self-Love”. How to deal with a borderline in your life? I’m still searching and hoping that ultimately I will prevail. The courts are lagging behind their constituents – far, far behind, and the repercussions will be felt for generations.
I haven’t been posting in a few days because I found things too painful. If anyone remembers, I had my first session with a therapist two weeks ago and whithin the space of 20 minutes she had diagonised one of my problems as abandonment issues from my childhood. I thought she was crazy. My spath was my problem, and I had a wonderful childhood. I even called my sister to get her feedback on this abandonment issue, and, she didn’t see any great issues.
She also told me a few more things in that session that I thought were a lot of BS but had made an appointment for two weeks later. Had to be that far out because I’m on SS and could not afford to go more often.
Yesterday was my second session and I went into it with a lot of questions. In my first session I was a wreck and couldn’t comprehend a lot, much less ask questions. And I thought she was a quack. My issue was my spath not my abandonment. I was absolutely possitive. Boy was I wrong.
In the space of 45 minutes we covered my abandonment (there was some) my self image (I was a heavy child) my self worth (I was lacking) and the need to address my inner child where all this pain and misery dwelt.
Then I asked her to tie all of this to the way I felt about my spath since I was POSSITIVE that my addiction was my issue and not all that other crap.
She then said that most people that have addictions normally have abondonment issues and, yes, it is possible to feel addicted to a person. He picked me at my most vunerable moment. Told me all the things I needed to hear and continued to pursue me until he had me. And boy did he have me. He put me through so much emotional abuse in the 20 years we were together that I felt so attached to him it was like part of my own body. She asked me why I had let him do all those things to me. I sat for a moment and thought. I really could not put my finger on it. Then she said because deep down I didn’t feel I deserved any better.
I was not intending to post today, but I received an email from LF listing a few topics. I chose to read Donna’s article “After the sociopath, make the decision to recover”. And while reading I discovered the sentence “Usually the weaknesses boil down to a subconscious belief, deep within us, that we are not good enough.” My therapist had hit in on the head in two sessions.
Donna’s article was amazing and insitefull, as always. It just went to reinforce everything the therapist said. I have even made a third appointment. It is two weeks away.
Thank you Donna and LF members. This site has been my only link to sanity as I go through this process of ridding myself of this albatross around my neck. To anyone who is thinking of therapy, my advice, if you can afford it, is go for at least two sessions before giving up. I almost did just that but am glad I didn’t. I have a lot of personal work to do on myself to be free, but I am confident that I will be. I will keep reading LF blogs even if I don’t post often, and think of Donna and her “angels” as helping me along on my journey.
4now,
For those who cannot go full no contact, there is ‘grey rock’. It essentially means going no contact on an emotional level. You either talk about boring everyday stuff (like the weather, the dishes/cleaningwashing you’ve done and some awesome cleaning product you discovered) when non-business communication is required and you keep that to a minimum. Everything else is business.
People recommended a particular log site here to use as a communication tool specifically for cases like yours, because it can be used in court. That then would be the sole comunication tool allowed to talk about the childen: not the phone, not texts, not emails, no fb, etc…
stormy,
Yes, the spath is definitely an issue and they do cause their own typical mental damage to you for which you need to recover. But it’s also true that we were all vulnerable for the spaths in our lives because of older issues.
So, your therapist is right to make you deal with the underlying vulnerabilities. But it’s also important that your therapist recognizes that the spath caused trauma and cognitive dissonance on top of the old, and that these also need to be addressed. Both the pre-spath and spath damage must be healed.
Great article Donna. I spent years trying to figure out what was wrong with my husband. I wanted to help him in the worst way. I thought I could fix the marriage, the relationship, any problem. I thought it all could be fixed just like a broken down car taken to a great mechanic. In fact That was one of the things that disturbed me greatly. …. If his clothes were torn he would want them patched or get new, if the roof leaked we would’ve called the roofer, or the irrigation system was broken we’d have called a very knowledgeable gardener…. but our marriage he didn’t care if it was so so broken down half in disrepair.
darwinsmom: yes, both the pre spath and spath damage must be healed simultaneously.
I found this true in my own journey.
When this began, (the earth shaking shock), I attended EMDR therapy sessions which helped me (confusingly) deal with older issues I had buried in my (I call them) PTSD files. All those ugly things you don’t want to think about that you have put aside somewhere and don’t even realize they are creating the basis of who you are to shatter and crumble. Not being able to find the strength to move past all this is absolutely tied to the traumas we have had in our lives before. That isn’t to say anything is or isn’t our fault: it IS saying that all of the ugly things we don’t want to think about are still there, even though we choose to not think about them. They need to be dealt with just as equally as dealing with the ‘spath attack’.
THAT is a very hard thing to do.
Especially if you have been physically and emotionally abused to the point where you just LOST YOURSELF and YOUR LIFE for such a long period of time. The healing journey takes time. But the rewards are equally as astounding as the hardships.
I feel, since my ‘release from captivity’, like a child looking at some things for the first time. It’s amazing that events have just passed me by and here I am years down the road and realizing these things just whooshed right by me because of my ‘entanglement’ with a psychopath.
YOU HAVE TO MAKE THAT CONSCIOUS DECISION
TO WIN THIS BATTLE BEFORE YOU CAN BE HEALED.
It’s just like any other addiction.
It will eventually wear off and you will replace it with new
habits; new realizations and a new way of life. You will
be stronger and more aware and more focused on you.
You will find yourself again but it will take time and effort.
Thank you Donna, for more than I can ever say….
Dopey Doopey