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.
Great posting ….. my one question is how the heck do you heal when the damage keeps occuring over and over because you have a child with that person? It is like a jail sentence ……LIFE.
If you try to get legal help, the s-path lies so well that the lawyers suck you dry & leave you hanging, the courts don’t have time to care and you are left broke to deal with a child who is an emotional wreck all while you try to keep treading in deep waters…..MD
Mommadebba, there are techniques and methods to co-parenting with a sociopath. Yes, it is very much like a sentence of lifelong torture.
First of all, I would strongly urge you to consider counseling therapy to help you – that is YOU – to process the carnages and assist you in rebuilding your boundaries, etc.
Then, there is the “grey rock” approach. The ex is there, but has no more substance than a piece of rock. It simply makes noises, but it has no power. There’s a great article, here, about that very technique.
Having gone through this, myself, I can say that it isn’t easy to practice the “grey rock” technique. I wanted the first exspath to “know” what he had done to me and our children, and I took every opportunity to lash out at him. Well, that simply doesn’t work because a sociopath simply doesn’t care. This is the hardest truth for us to come to terms with: they DO NOT CARE. They NEVER DID CARE. And, they NEVER WILL CARE.
Please, note that I use CAPS for emphasis, and they are not to be interpreted as online yelling.
Additionally, I would seek out the services of counseling therapy for my children. Children experience the same carnages that we adults do, but they do not have the emotional maturity or Life’s Experiences to process what has been done to them. As a result, they develop a multitude of emotional (and, physical) issues that can leave them open to be perfect victims, or evolve into abusers, themselves.
It’s not so much as the Courts “don’t have time to care,” as much as the Courts do not become emotionally involved in each case. They hear cases, sometimes 100 in a day, that all have the same complaints, issues, accusations, game-playing, and so forth, and they do not address the true issues (at this present time) that it is not always in the best interests of children to have BOTH parents involved, as well as viewing “equitable distribution of assets” as a reasonable solution to marital misconduct.
Do whatever you have to do to get assistance, Mommadebba. I’ve applied for every available public assistance program within the last 48 hours, and it’s grueling, humiliating, and desperate, but taking proactive steps is a healthy thing to do.
Brightest blessings to you and your child
I am glad that so many of you found the article helpful. Thank you for your kind words – and your contributions to Lovefraud.
darwinsmom
Hard to do this without writing a book.
We think in two modes emotional and intellectual. The way it works is, an event happens and the information goes through our emotional part of our brain before the intellectual part gets a hold of it. If the event triggers a very strong emotional response the intellect can not over ride it. Then the emotional response is off to the races and has to run it’s course. When one calms down enough the intellect can engage. It basically works this way, the higher emotional response the harder it is to intellectualize the event.
As we grow up we create beliefs and assign certain emotional responses to these beliefs. We now have all these things already decided on what events mean. An event happens and our mind picks the closes meaning that we have and the emotional response that is hooked to the belief is triggered. “We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.” Anais Nin — We are the one’s that supplies the meaning to events. So there is the event we supply the meaning and this gives us the experience.
We code the meaning in three ways. Emotionally. Self talk – a short phrase or sentence that is hooked to a belief. I’m bad, no one can love me, I’m unlovable these are all limiting beliefs. [note music is another form of self talk where a tune can be hooked to a memory.] Then there is the physical touch, smell, taste, sound and sight.
The technique will strip the emotions from the memory we have stored. If one still has the feelings of being in love with the spath. Anchor that feeling and run it through the technique and no more feeling in love with the spath.
PTSD run it through and it’s gone. Well for PTSD since it is a multi-part experience the different parts have to be killed.The simplest way I know to explain this is every time the PTSD comes up anchor it and run it through the technique. If there is self talk then just run it backwards repeatedly. Just like listening to a recording backwards. “A trauma is not an experience. It is an emotional response to an event. Which creates the experience.
This can be used on any childhood memories. Say your mother kept calling you stupid. And now you freeze up. Anchor that feeling, follow it back and run it through the technique. And check for any self talk and kill that.
And what your finding out is our emotions are not always correct. And if not correct then they can give us loads of problems in dealing with life. Emotional IQ is more important then the just the normally hyped IQ.
My 2 Cents
Ok girls, she is finally showing some interest in LF as she asked for the link the other day after I showed her a particularly familiar post from the author. and she has been asking questions pertaining to her fears and specifically, “so what do I do with the memories once i have dug them up?” I said that we dig them up, dust them off so we get a really clear picture, and then examine and discover how little guilt we actually have and find peace in knowing that much of the blame is not ours, that we didnt choose to be fooled, that we bargained for something else. then we can bury them again and not be burdoned by them. too simplistic?
Rgc, for myself, it’s not that simple. And, for your wife, it may simply be that easy.
Perhaps, your wife would be better off if she were asking her questions to a counseling therapist that “gets it.” Although we can share on this site, and many of us have some strong insight into terminology, definitions, and techniques, a good, strong trained professional has the ability to detach themselves from their clients, emotionally, and can, therefore, give them the strong (and, sometimes, painful) truths that open the door to personal recovery and healing.
Brightest blessings
MOMMADEBBA
Hi, Sorry that it is an on going problem. But Truthspeak is right. I’ll put it in my words. You are holding on to expectations that you’ll never get from the spath. This is what keeps you tied up in knots. Grey rock says it very well.
That is except for what he is doing to your child. Counseling and any kind of good support you can get for your child. And be there to explain, love and support. Help your child see that it isn’t them. Hate this part of it.
Dopey
Thanks for the clip. 🙂
And love right back at you
T
Yup, she has a good therapist, i’m just trying to reassure her that there is a reason to dig up the past. I always try to gently leave the tough stuff to the therapist cause being her husband makes me biased and too emotionally invested to be impartial. besides, a lot of this stuff she isnt cozy with sharing with me yet and may never be.
Spoon – I need your help.
I must not have my thinking cap on today because I’m confused about a great post you made.
In your post about “almost having to write a book” you explained things almost exactly the way my counselor did. If you were in AZ I would think you were her.
I did not understand the part about “technique will strip the emotions from the memory”. Because even though I am intellectually sure my partner was an spath and that I don’t love him, I do find myself missing and wanting him at times. Maybe it is because I just have a hard time seeing the facts for what they are not the way I want them to be.
If you could elaborate about this “technique” again I sure would appreciate it.
Thanks, Stormy