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.
Darwinsmom, I really appreciate your insight – it give me hope that I won’t be in this ultra-self-protection mode, forever. I don’t even want to let non-romantic relationships to develop, at this point. I just want to sort it out, and get on my feet. Fear-driven? Without a doubt.
Hens, so neat that you can see that hypervigilance for what it is and shut it down. I work on that, feverishly. At some point, I hope to be better at it.
Brightest blessings
I guess it depends how much you were betrayed. I haven’t had a friend who betrayed me since I left elementary school. I had a few meddling friends but they got sorted out.
Now, I don’t think he betrayed me. He didn’t lovebomb me nor made any promises. He simply declared his feelings and that he was playing around with the idea to join me. And the declaration wasn’t wrong or insincere. It was something good he did for me. But he shouldn’t be doing it anymore in the future though. If we were to engage in flirtation and desiring in the future it would be wrong, because there is no future for us. It would be indulging in a lie and illusion that would hold the both of us back.
Darwinsmom, you say there are no opportunities to miss out on……I so disagree with you (respectfully, of course)! I’ve taken a lot of risks in my life, and I have no regrets. Anyway, I’m going with my counselor’s recommendation. She thinks taking the risk will lessen my anxiety in the longrun because then I will know where I stand. I have to agree with her. There is nothing here that “didn’t work out” at this point. I think so far it is going well. And it could go better. 🙂 I’m just gonna bite the bullet and ask J if he ever plans to ask me out. I will do it very casually and see what he says. If he’s not interested, I will just let go and move on. He may not be in dating mode right now. But if I don’t ask, I’ll always wonder. I don’t want to go through what I went through with the neighbor for 2 years. Ironically, since I came clean with the neighbor, we’ve gotten much closer, and he’s been very attentive. There are MANY opportunities if you are willing to dream and then to take the risk to reach for them.
Stargazer, you mistook my meaning. I didn’t say there aren’t any opportunities out there at all nor that anyone can’t dream… There are plenty of opportunities, but not ‘opportunities to miss out on’, not if you are open to them… It’s got nothign to do with ‘taking risks’. I have no problem sticking my neck out, revealing my feelings, taking chances… And if there is an opportunity, especially love, it won’t disappear into thin air all of a sudden because the risk-taker needs some time to live.
The difference is the motivation for taking a chance. Do you take a chance out ‘of fear on missing out’ or because ‘it is the right thing to do ‘ or the ‘right choice to make’? The first is motivated by fear and actually implies that the risk-taker doesn’t have faith. The latter is motivated by a clearer vision of themselves, people involved and the situation.
Anyway, jumping on someone’s love declaration when the month before they showed to be pre-suicidal and I helped them pull through in their time of need is not taking a risk, but foolishness imo.
Stargazer, I understand that you regard people here as dreamless, fearful cynics. I also understand that this perception helps you from reading and negating what some people are actually saying about these issues. I’m quite upset with you now. I don’t need anyone to tell me when or how to take chances, nor how to dream, nor to recognize opportunities for real opportunities. I can do all that fine on my own, thank you. And not every post regarding the subject of boundaries-opportunities and love is meant as advice for you.
I may not be hurt, I may not feel betrayed, but I do feel disappointed. Of course wasn’t fun for the ego either to read what he learned from being with a a woman he pined for, other than myself, in reply to a love letter of mine. So, excuse me if I take your post that implies I should learn and dare to dream a bit ridiculous right now.
Sorry I mistook your meaning, darwinsmom. And yes, it often seems like LF folks inject a lot of fear and limitation where it need not be, at least for me. I feel like I am continually combatting that, but all in all, I still enjoy blogging here, watching everyone’s progress, and sharing my own. I don’t think having fear and anxiety is a sign that I shouldn’t take a risk. Quite the opposite. The definition of “courage” is feeling the fear and doing it anyway.
My motive in taking a risk is always to go after something (or someone) I want. There is no reason to take a risk purely out of fear as a motivation. I don’t even understand that concept. I don’t just want to date J because I don’t want someone else to have him. I want to date him because I really want to date him. I really like him, and I think he really likes me, too. And yes, risk always involves an element of fear, or it’s not a risk. If he ends up dating someone else because they were more assertive than me and they asked him out, I would be very disappointed. I’d rather risk rejection than risk letting this opportunity pass me by. I wish it were true that “if it’s meant to be, it will happen” and all that. But I think sometimes when you just sit on the sidelines and wait for the other person to make a move, you will wait forever. Sometimes you have to just take your life into your own hands and go after what you want. No, I’m not overly excited about asking a guy out. I’m a very feminine woman. But there are men who are intimidated by me. So sometimes I have to hit them over the head to give them the green light.
Case in point, I waited 2 years to tell the rock star neighbor that I liked him. I thought it was pretty obvious but he said it wasn’t at all. Everyone here told me he was a spath and that I should just stay away from him. So for 2 years, I suffered, wondering what was really up with him. FINALLY, I told him last week. And lo and behold, it has brought us much closer now as friends. There is no anxiety, no withholds, no miscommunications, nothing left unsaid. We hung out for hours drinking wine and talking the other night. Today, he thanked me for the talk and invited me to go swimming with him. I wish I’d talked to him 2 years ago. Would have saved me so much aggravation.
So I apologize to you darwinsmom if I don’t understand what you’re saying. I think you are taking the fact that I’m afraid as a sign that I should just play it safe. That’s what I’ve done my whole life. It’s not really working for me anymore. I suspect I’ll be freaking out a lot in the next several months. I will be interviewing for a medical massage job. And whether it’s with J or with someone else, I will be dating men who are appropriate for me. This is all terrifying to me! But it’s also exciting. It’s the stuff of life.
Anyway, I asked my therapist if she felt I need more work on myself before I could approach J. She said no I just need to do it, and this will lessen the anxiety. I think she’s right. She said anyone in my situation would be feeling a lot of anxiety and that it’s completely normal given the awkward situation.
Star,
IMO, your fear is a sign that you aren’t ready to date. But I think you should do it anyway. Because if you don’t, you’ll never know that you aren’t ready, you’ll always wonder.
I’ll explain: YOU’RE AFRAID TO ASK A MAN OUT FOR FEAR OF REJECTION. (not shouting, caps are for emphasis).
Fear should be reserved for things that can endanger your life.
When you were a child, being rejected by your parents WOULD endanger your life, so fear WAS appropriate and we learned all kinds of ways to manipulate our parents into taking care of us and not reject us. Even people who had good, loving parents experienced this – though not to the extent that children of narcissists do.
You should not fear being rejected because it won’t kill you. You don’t need him for survival. Furthermore, you are a beautiful, desirable woman so the idea that YOU should fear rejection from him is ridiculous. If he rejects you, it shows that he can’t see your value and isn’t worth your investment in him.
The problem with fear of rejection, is that it is like shame. It is recursive. It is also self-fulfilling.
My spath had fear of rejection. That’s why he lied, manipulated, told stories, poisoned me to keep me dependent, etc…
When I left him, I said,”spath, you need to grow up. You’re a spath because you never grew up. You even told me that you never wanted to grow up.”
He replied, “I never wanted to grow up because when you grow up you get a wife and she leaves you.”
It answered everything. He could never commit to me because he was afraid of rejection, so he rejected me from the beginning in his heart. He decided to hate me so that I could never hurt him first, yet he kept a facade of loving me so he could have me. But then, he had to justify his hatred of me and his abuse of me, so he had to actually believe that I deserved to be hated.
This is the convoluted logic of a spath and it comes from shame and fear of rejection.
Star, the reason I think you should ask him out is because learning something intellectually is not the same as incorporating it into your experience. Whatever happens, it will help you grow and get past your fear of rejection. First, if he asks you out, you will get to explore a relationship with him, that’s a huge growth opportunity in itself.
Second, if he doesn’t ask you out, you’ll get to practice not feeling rejected or hurt.
Darwinsmom,
I like your explanation about risks. Fear is not necessarily a good indicator of whether something is risky. It usually has deep psychological trauma involved. Risk, is a calculated thing.
Different from fear.
Star,
I wasn’t countering the advice of your therapist in any way. I was only trying to explain there is no need to believe that you have to miss out on an opportunity. You are open to opportunities, seeking them. That is why you can’t ‘miss out’ on them. Also, love opportunities are not the responsibility and dependent of but one sole person, but two people. 🙂
I agree with Sky that fear sometimes can only be countered by biting the bullet and experience results emotionally. It’s how you discover things weren’t so dangerous after all, irregardless of the outcome.
I don’t regret that I dared to let my desire grow for the ex again, nor do I regret writing about it to him and that I discovered that love and peace can go hand in hand. It is exactly what prompted him to tell me what he learned the past months, and thus what he needed to do, and what his decisions in life were. He didn’t want me to harbor expectations. I wasn’t scared of the outcome, because I actually thought it very likely anyway. It just felt like it was the right thing to do to let him know how the desire was returning and growing within me and that I was at peace with that.
Yes, Sky, risk is a calculated thing. I’ve been pretty fearless all of my life, and to many people I seem to be a risk-taker. I like a good challenge once in a while. But I’m not rash. I weigh the outcomes and decide from there. The only fear I had for several years was responsive commitment fear, fear of rejectioin, and I clamped up emotionally to men I was involved with because of it. They didn’t stay around of course. And I used to fault myself for that. But I have recently pieced stuff together about all these men between my giant love of the past and the spath, and I learned that since my picker was serious broken by then, that commitment fear served as a protective blanket against spaths. I was healed from that commitment fear by 2008, but the picker was still broken, hence the first man I did get involved with was a spath. That lesson taught me to be much more discernable about who’s wrong and who’s right to have in your life, as well as the fact that I never ‘missed out’ on those previous guys.
Giant love of the past isn’t a spath but an unavailable man. And he’ll always be unavailable for all sorts of reasons (timing, location, life events, spiritual growth, etc), even if he wants to be available. It ain’t my fault, nor is it his. It just is what it is. But I’m finally done with unavailable too. Unavailability has become a turn-off for me. He’s a good person who can have a place in my life as a friend, but nothing more. It’s time for me to meet available, healthy men. Because that’s who I deserve to be with. So, I don’t regret his love declaration nor my regrowing desire over the past months nor the outcome, because it cured me instantly of unavailability. I needed to reexperience unavailability at this growth stage, to be finally cleared from it once and for all.
How is fear of rejection a sign that a person is not ready to date? My therapist (and the last one) would disagree with that. Is a person with a fear of success or fear of failure not ready to take a step up in their career? How does a person face their fears if not to take a chance on the very thing they’re afraid of? I’m not understanding the logic. If we all waited until we were enlightened to go for something, we might be waiting many lifetimes. Taking the risk releases the fear. At least that’s how it’s worked for me in the past. I’ve taken several risks with men over the years and was always glad I did, even if the outcome wasn’t what I wanted. I’m about to take another one. I may fall flat on my face. But it’s still better than sitting on the sidelines and letting life pass me by. Whatever happens, it’s gonna be a learning experience for me. If it turns out that the guy really likes me and wants to date me (as I suspect he does), I will probably still experience fear of rejection at some point and will need to deal with it. So how does that mean I shouldn’t date? I don’t think having issues precludes one from dating. I think it’s how you handle your issues that determines if you can have a healthy relationship or not. Everyone has some issues, but taking responsibility for them and not dumping them on the other person is what makes a relationship work IMO.
For years I was terrified to work. So I stayed home and lived in fear of the world. Know what cured me of my fear of getting a job? Getting a job. I could have sat home and processed the fear till I turned 90.
Darwinsmom, “love opportunities” often happen because someone makes the effort – someone takes the risk. If both people are scared, hesitant, shy, or whatever, then nothing will happen. It’s great if the guy can make the first move. But sometimes they don’t. Or sometimes they need a push, as I’ve been learning from talking to a lot of my guy friends. There are a few different reasons why a guy could like a woman but not make a move. I’m going to remove one of the reasons for him. If that was not the reason and there are other reasons, then I will know and move on. It’s pretty simple to me.
From someone who hid in her room for many years, I prefer to take a risk rather than to sit around and wait, scary as it is. You read how waiting screwed me up for 2 years with my neighbor. Once I came clean, we became good friends.
There is no shame in liking someone, even if you’re not perfect. You don’t have to be the most confident or together person to like someone or date someone. In fact, I think it takes a certain amount of self-esteem to recognize that – that I’m lovable and datable exactly the way I am. I don’t need to be perfect or have it all together. My big issue in life is fear of expressing myself to someone (because of the fear of rejection). I think it’s really important to change that pattern. I can talk about it in therapy for the rest of my life, but until I go out and take risks, I will always have that fear.
If you guys are convinced that I’m not ready to date, then I will not be able to discuss my dating experiences here because I will be shot down.
Exactly Star, you need to experience in order to learn. Then when you are no longer afraid, it will be because you’ve learned what you had to learn.
I think that people get stuck repeating the same mistakes over and over again because they intuitively KNOW that they have something to learn.
Example: boiling a perfect hard boiled egg for deviled eggs.
I googled it. There are techniques and procedures so that your eggs turn out perfectly boiled and peel without a blemish. I read it and then discarded the information. I know that I can boil a perfect egg if I want, but I don’t want. I want to boil imperfect eggs. It’s interesting to see how eggs turn out when you don’t follow the directions from the eggsperts.
It’s interesting because you learn more from mistakes than you do from perfection. I like learning how each step changes the outcome. If I do everything wrong except I cool the eggs in cold water, HOW much does that change the outcome? In other words, what is the effect of the cold water without all the other steps?
What happens is that I learn more about the properties of eggs than I do about getting what I want. That’s more important to me. Getting what I want because I follow instructions is like when primitive people followed a ritual in order to obtain blessings from the gods. It seemed to work but they didn’t know why. Ritual cleansing was good for their health but they knew nothing about germs.
Mistakes are risky and costly, but we learn and we grow. It’s so much better than superstition.
As far as eggs go, I could google more information and not need to make any mistakes. I could learn all about albumin or whatever. But instinctively, I choose not to. Information, as wonderful as it is, cannot replace experience. Only together do they create wisdom.