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.
Hell, I trigger myself…….!
I think that people who have shared similar-yet-individual traumas can trigger one another without ANY intent.
Long ago, before I married the exspath, he said something to me along the lines of, “If you do _____, I’ll give you _____.” Well, I will say with absolute honesty that I went off like a rocket with, “Don’t you EVER try to bargain with me for ANYTHING!!!” I went into an absolute meltdown because……..BECAUSE……….the first abusive exspath would make me perform sex acts in trade (yes, in trade) for groceries, medicines, birthday gifts for the children, to pay utility bills, etc…….
At that time, I had no idea that I was experiencing a bona fide “trigger,” and I actually apologized afterwards for my meltdown.
So, I think expression of feelings is exceedingly important, Skylar – we ALL have our triggers, and we each learn how to manage them, over time. There’s a lot that you want to express, especially about the family dynamics. My belief is that it’s “safe” for you to express any feeling that you have, here – anger, grief, etc.
Brightest blessings
Kim, I read what you’re saying about the “inner child,” and I’ve sat myself down with her on MANY occasions when that cloud of pity began looming over both of us!
I can throw the best and biggest pity-parties, EVER! Holy cow, I have snacks, prizes, and everything!!! And, I’m allowed to throw my pity parties, every now and again. I just have to remember to shut it down in short order when the invited guests pop in as a courtesy to me. LMAO!!!!
Brightest blessings
I don’t think there is a general script available that says on what to heal first or foremost, or who to cry the most for. That is a personal path, just like spirituality is a personal path.
Not everyone trauma bonded in their youth. Not everyone mourns the loss of the illusion of the spath for years.
For me the spath experience was a cure: it burned once and for all the desire out of me to seek acceptance of the peers who rejected me in my youth (7-14) through convincing those without capacity to love to love me. I had my birthday this week and so my mom and I reminisced about some times and events in my teen years. My mother mentioned a guy I used to have the hots for on a holiday. Him and I did not date… but he knew I liked him, and he was cold cold, cold. I remember even how in elementary school I secretly yearned for the boy who was cool but treated me with disdain… as if I was not much of a person, not much of a girl. I was ignored, sometimes pestered and looked down upon by most of those in that class. ANd in that time my brain must have concluded: if such a man ever loves me then it proves all those 8-9 year olds wrong.
I had already treated and worked hard on the trauma of the peer rejection, and most of it was solved by the time I met the spath, except for that weird link in my head about the cool guy of class. The spath was the ultimate, the last effort. The result at the end was that I utterly ended up rejecting him. The day he discarded me, I rejected him. Did I cry? Yes I mourned what he had done to me, I mourned what I allowed him to do to me, I mourned the loss of my too optimistic belief in humanity…. for about 6 months. That’s it.
For me, the experence burned out the last faulty brain link left of that youth trauma in me.
Some of the attraction is not solely based on that. I do believe my attraction is also based on my temperament make-up. I still notice these are the men I notice first, pure physically. I was born with that skewed picker. But I do not have any desire anymore to make them like me for what happened in my youth… none. The need to prove myself to the imaginary peers of my youth is totally eradicated. I feel a chemistry, but I do not like these men anymore. I turn away from them with full conviction.
As for being triggered. I rarely, ever get triggered anymore. Certainly not in here. But I do make note of openly aggressive or uner the belt reactions of people, here and in the world outside. And I agree completely with skylar on this: the best thing is to simply go NC.
C-Kathy, After the aircraft crash and the PTSD onset, I could not READ for about a year…my son who was iin the plane wiith my husband, he also could not read. Our short term memories were so bad we couldn’t remember the first half of a sentence when we got to the end. Affect and effect…???? Yes, lots of that and Word-finding difficulties, can “see” the object iin my mind but not find the word, even a simple word like “tree.”
It iis all part and parcel of the PTSD and it WILL IMPROVE but it takes time and give yourself a break. I was so UPSET I freaked out about “losing my mind” but we haven’t lost it, just having to make new synapses and we will so keep on working on it and don’t freak out, it will improve.
These posts about spelling and reading difficulties have been really interesting!All this time I’ve been blaming these difficulties on fibromyalgia,as it causes cognitive problems.
When I was in school,and even as I got my GED,I was above average in those subjects-so it just didn’t make sense when I started having problems spelling,having to edit everything I write to get rid of “double words” and though my concentration is better now,it used to be so bad that I had to keep rereading sentences and paragraphs to get the sense of what I’d just read!
blossom4th (and others)
I agree! I have written many times about how I’d twist myself into a pretzel trying to get the words JUST RIGHT, b/c if I didn’t, if I got ONE word wrong, my X! husband would use it as justification for punishment… and I never knew what/when the punishment would happen. I lived in absolute TERROR of what was to come and many times the punishment fit the level of terror. The stress was enormous.
I think about it now. HOW STUPID I was to not put the picture together. I took pride in being taught english so well that I tested out of the english requirement at University. My husband (met him at university) was SO bad at english that he had to repeat the remedial class three times. As an spath, my husband must have hated me for my proficiency. And punished me for it, b/c I could NEVER be perfect enough. And after the abuse got really bad? I couldn’t even spell, never mind retain what I’d read. I even stopped reading books. I thought it was b/c in my depression, I’d lost interest. But I bet it was b/c I was unable to READ and comprehend! In my brain fog, I just wasn’t able to reason the links between my disability, my abuse, and the spath mindset.
I STILL have problems in comprehension if I am stressed. I am STILL being condemned as being spath b/c I was trying SO HARD to be perfect in my sentence structure and meaning. And that accusation put me in such painful depths of hurt and agony that I’d try SO HARD, just as I had to with my husband, to get the words right so I could prove I wasn’t spath. Only it didn’t matter what I wrote (and frankly the stress MADE me MAKE mistakes!) b/c my accuser became like my abusive spath, NOTHING I did was good enough and EVERYTHING I did was proof her labeling was valid.
It wasn’t until I realized decent people don’t do that, and anyone who has suffered at the hands of an spath should understand the terror that came to me. It’s ptsd. I reverted instantly. I don’t want pity. I never have. But I did want understanding, I wanted someone to help me figure it out. And I didn’t get that. Instead, I was condemned. First by my spath b/c I refused to submit, and then by the very people I turned to for help.
I quit. I am going away. I had thought to stay and try to help others who are unfairly targeted, but I can’t do it anymore. Not b/c people who condemned me were right but b/c what’s the point of fighting people who feel entitled to be cruel? After all, that’s why I left my spath and his nest of minions. B/c they felt entitled to treat me as if I were defective whenever I objected to abuse.
Goodnight and good luck ya’ll. Funny how it took me so long to get to this point. But I am a slow learner when it comes to realizing I’m being bullied and abused (b/c it’s NORMAL to me).
Katy
Not to be deceptive, I have posted here before under a different name.
Anyway… I thought I was losing my mind, after the spath left 4 yrs ago, I waited out the poisons in my system, that he had poisoned me with and yet my thoughts got more messed up… I lost the ability to spell and I didn’t ever put it to the spath, except that he had turned my brain to soup from all of the gaslighting. However, I didn’t really think on it and all the posters writing about it really has me thinking.
I don’t seem to be able to communicate to people anymore. If any thing I come across more like a spath than he does. :(.
Then on top of that I thank people way too much, for the smallest gestures, like they have jumped into a lake of fire to save my life, and I apologize for EVERYTHING.
After all this, and no where, it seems, to turn, I don’t know what to do. I feel so lost and unable to get it together. I’ve researched and I read here all the time, but I’m so easily throwed back into the panic attacks. I know the answers but am paralized and can’t put them to action. Like, I know that being frozen isn’t going to help me, but I find myself hiding from movement anyway. I know that fibromyalgia is a big problem for me but it isn’t the whole problem… I just can’t get it together.
Anyway, thank you all for being brave enough to tell your stories and help others. I’m no less paranoid of him finding me online than I was 4 years ago.
KatyDid, I just saw your post and I am so sorry that you have been where you’ve been. I understand that terror, why , and the punishment meeting that terror.
I also understand being sick of bullying and people feeling they have the right to condemn me when they have no rights to. BUT good are they, I reckon…
I’m sorry that you have been feeling like you have about some of the LFers. I can’t say I’ve found it to be different in real life and I am completely sick of it too.
I hate to see you go, your posts have helped me so much and I want to thank you for having the guts to put yourself out there as you have in the past. There are people like me that mostly just read, like myself, for instance that love you, even if you don’t know me… your post’s let me into your life when it seemed I had no one.
Blossom, the spelling and word problems are typical of PTSD and it is because just like a stroke, the trauma that provoked the PTSD is an INJURY to the brain. The brain is very PLASTIC though and unlike what science thought for many years, it CAN HEAL and repair itself. So keep on working it will get better. Don’t despair.
Katy,
Your posts are of value to me.But do what is best for YOU.Perhaps you can still come here from time to time.As for putting books away for awhile,I know what you mean.I had always been a ‘bookworm’ in school.Reading was something to be enjoyed.Once it became work and almost intolerable,I just quit reading.But I’m back at it again!Hopefully you will too,very soon!~ Best Wishes~ 🙂
struggling,
My ability to communicate was greatly hindered also.It just served to increase my feelings of isolation from spath husband running family and friends off!
I got to the point that I couldn’t accept a compliment (been working on that as part of my counseling),and yet,like you,I felt I had to thank people all the time and with the spath especially,I was apologizing all the time.As my esteem and confidence increases,I find that is getting better!