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.
The recurring dreams I have are always about my ex and his wife, I’m crashing their wedding (Not breaking it up but just attneding) and I always feel a deep sensation of rejection. I also dream about me being alone in a former nice boyfriend’s home, but it is my ex spath, his wife and children who live there now. Again I have a great sense of rejection and feel like a fool. Whenever his wife is in the dream, she is always very angry at me for intruding in their life. These dreams are always recurring. Last night was about a H.S. reunion (again recurring) and I finally exposed my spath for what he was. I stood up to him and told him off. But right after I did, everyone started to hate me. They were defriending me left and right on Facebook. LOL
I just want to stop having these dreams because I am left feeling so rejected and foolish.
darwinsmom,
Thanks. i get it. have been doing the love language thing and have found that i actually enjoy doing things that speak her language. and once she understood that she was supposed to speak mine and started doing it, it felt really good. shes primarily an acts of service with physical touch coming in close and i am a physical touch with words of affirmation a close second. we learned of this in early therapy when i had my head buried in the sand and believed her crap about this being an”emotional affair” and while he was playing with our therapy. i came to find out later that she “misunderstood” and didnt realize that she was supposed to work on speaking mine. i dont know if he screwed it up for me there by coaching her or if she just didnt get it but later after we got a therapist who was familiar with trauma bonds, i asked her and once she understood she started working on it . i’m almost afraid to ask her, no hell iam afraid, does the physical touch thingy go into intimacy as well? i suppose as she definitely had her boundaries pushed, that intimacy is likely to trigger some guilt and shame. do i get really patient here and wait for a long time? i miss that part of her so! she was fooling me pretty well till she started talking to old girlfriends , sisters whos kids he molested etc. and then it completely fell off. then she came back and afterwards would cry a lot. i didnt know if i was doing somthing wrong or if she missed him or was ashamed? it really cut me deep to ponder all this and she avoids risking hurting my feelings like the plaugue. ??? any thoughts/ anyone??
sisterhood,
the wedding dream: usually weddings symbolize a transition into a new phase of your life, one involving unification of two aspects. However, when you have bad feelings while attending one, it indicates that those feelings of rejection and bitterness highlight anxieties and fears yo are struggling with. In order to stop those recurring wedding dreams you will need to address exactly those feelings you are feeling in the dream.
You can do this in the dream by rejecting this fake union. Next time you go to sleep you can promise yourself that you are not obligated in any way to attend it, and that as soon as you find yourself there, yo just get up and walk out on the wedding ceremony. This might give you a feeling of empowerment, because it’s not you feeling rejected, but rejecting them. Let us know if you were able to manage this, when next time the wedding dream comes up.
The good ex’ house with the spath and his wife living in it means the following imo: you had healed and learned from the love relationship with the ex. Though it didn’t work out, it represents love for you. However, that image of love has been taken over by the lovefraud of the spath and his wife. Here again you can do something in the dream, rather than suffer throgh it. You can tell them that it isn’t their house, and they can play house somewhere else. You can evict them.
You actually started to act in the reunion dream. HS reunions are the ultimate symbol of either social failure and success. Everybody’s asking each other what careers they have, who they married, their children, etc…. It’s all about appearances, which makes HS reunions as fake and superficial as the spath.
All these dreams reveal you feel like a victim, obligated to suffer through it all without any power and fearful of what people in general might think of you. My advice is to start take actions in those dreams, and allow yourself to be justifiably angry. What is that wife angry about you intruding in their life? She had no qualms intruding in yours, did she? Get angry! Reject them! Stand up and walk out or evict, instead of the silent suffering. And it seems you’re starting to do that, but you still feel fear of rejection by others if you were to stand up for yourself and get angry (per the latest HS reunion dream).
Did you laugh in the dream of them defriending you after you exposed him? Or are you laughing now about it? Even if you are laughing now about how silly it seems to care about what the HS bullies think of you, that is the first sign that you are starting to let go of that fear. I’m pretty sure that the next HS reunion dream will be very mch different than the previous ones because of this. You might not even have it again.
Darwinsmom, you are a GEM!! I love your interpretations and I really agree with them. I love the idea of evicting them. So awesome and I never even thought of that. You’re right, I need to make a stand and take control in my dreams.
As for the FB friends from the H.S. reunion, during the dream I was desperately trying to tell these people my side of the story. They were people I really liked and I was so sad that they could be swayed by my ex so quickly. It wasn’t until I woke up that I found it to be funny…but I have to admit I did check my FB friend’s list to see if these people were still there. LOL.
I think bottom line is that I need to re-think this whole wedding scenerio. I like how you called it a fake union. A part of me really feels sorry for the wife and can’t understand why she is so mad with me. I see her as a victim in denial.
I am going to take all of your advice and I will let you know how it turns out. Wish me luck!!
Sisterhood,
I knew a woman, k, who had similar feelings as you after what her spath did to her. She was the other woman and expected him to divorce his wife and marry her. But he never did. Instead, he divorced his wife and married another woman.
He made sure that k was “put in her place”. She was made to feel that her status would always be “not good enough to marry.”
He was able to do this because he could sense what she valued and what she wanted, then he made sure she would never get it but someone else would and she would get a front row seat to watch. Spaths are filled with envy and they want others to feel it, so they work hard at it. They dangle the carrot and take it away.
It was his INTENT that you should feel this way. So you must refuse. I’m not in touch with k anymore, but I think she was able to break past some of that cog/dis, I sure hope so.
You have to see him for what he is: THE WIZARD OF OZ. A pathetic little man pulling the strings behind the curtain, just making drama so he can feel like a big man.
YOU have the power to see him for what he is and when you do, you take away his power.
Sister, maybe you do have some issues that you need to work on to make yourself happier with who you are, but PLEASE don’t let your low self-esteem come from rejection by a spath! You are 1 billion times better than he is and that is the reason why he had to reject you, you reminded him of how pathetic he is as a person.
Skylar, thank you for your sweet words of encouragement. I really appreciate them.
Thank you Truthspeak and Kim for your words of wisdom, also. I do have CPTSD. I think my emotional flashbacks are coming in my dreams now. I will take these dreams and work with them to help in my healing.
Maybe I have to deal with all of this in my dreams because to deal with them while awake I think I would go nuts. I think it’s my brains way of being kind to me. Although I am so tired through the day. Who said healing was easy, right?
Thanks again for everyone’s help.
sisterhood,
when I was with the spath, the dreams were off the charts. But I didn’t listen.
I do feel that dreams are the right brain screaming at us to pay attention. But there isn’t much you can do during a dream. You have to listen and then deal with it during the waking hours, using the left brain. It’s not easy because the left brain continues to betray us. I just tell my left brain to pay attention to the right brain and shut up. it doesn’t always work, though.
Do some research on the corpus callosum to understand the brain hemispheres better. It will help you translate your dreams.
sisterhood,
I’m glad that I helped you reframe the impact and power of those dreams for you.
Dreams are just a means to resolve our emotional state on an issue. And even the scariest and most disturbing dreams often contain a resolvement toward the end. When the emotion and the event linked to it is reframed or resolved within the dream, the dream ends and we do’nt dream of it again anymore. That’s why I say that dreams are the healing tool. We don’t really normally need to understand the dream in our waking life or make much sense of it in order for the emotions to be resolved; the dreaming brain is usually just fine doing that all on its own. Somewhere deep inside of you, the emotional issue is resolved.
However, when we cannot resolve the emotional state in the dream, we will have a recurring dream until we do resolve the emotion either in our waking life or our dreaming life. You did the most important step yesterday when you admitted your emotional state in those dreams, thereby admitting your major feelings regarding the situation. Those feelings are rejection, guilt, shame, and fear for losing face (facebook).
Those aren’t abnormal feelings really, but they are very painful and it’s not helpful when you’re stuck on them. What I noticed is how powerless you feel and how much power you give to others. It’s almost as if the acceptance of others is the only way you can accept yourself. It’s normal to want to feel accepted by others, but when the acceptance by others replaces self-acceptance that is nhealthy. This is something deep within you for which you need to find the root of, and I do think you need to do that in your waking life. Because this seems to have been your vulnerability that allowed you to be hooked by the spath. It’s an issue that is older than the spath, and my guess would be HS.
You even started to ascribe more power to the dreams than necessary, as something you have to slavishly suffer as much as you feel somehow you must slavishly suffer the anger of the wife and the rejection of the spath. (BTB: It’s quite funny really that she is so angry in your dreams about you intruding in her life, when she’s doing the intruding in your dreams 😉 )
When we cannot reframe the emotional situation within a dream it then becomes helpful to reframe the dream situation in waking life, kinda like you did with the HS dream.
Good luck on empowering yourself! You took the first steps in doing that in the HS dream, not surprisingly, because ‘schools’ represent a ‘learning environment’ in dreams. They are the places in dreams where you get to exercise what you need to learn 🙂
the intersection of pain and vulnerability. i visited that address for a while last night. just sitting with the enormous pain i feel, and the incredible vulnerability and fear that rose in its wake.
i have been feeling that fear and vulnerability lately and perhaps because it has been so acute, i didn’t even identify what i was feeling…what i did know was that i felt doomed, and it felt really bad.
i used to be a person who could easily stand in the face of loss and illness. My loss, or the loss that others experienced brought out compassion in me – and although there were time of great and many losses i did always return to the equilibrium of compassion. but not now….or perhaps, it’s just not ‘yet.’
i feel that i will have to fight to become that person now, to fight to stand in the face of my own losses and find compassion and the ability to deal with the people in my life who are melting away in dementia.
i don’t like me as much as i used to – i liked being able to be with grief and loss – because it felt authentic, and i have found that people are most ‘real’ (emotionally open) when in grief. i think i have just experienced a lot of falsehood in the people i have known – they cover, hide, or are not aware of what they are really thinking or doing – either through emo dysfunction, substances, mental illness or disorderedness…but, i digress.
i realize, that four most important losses (not even touching on my health, poverty, or what the spath did to me) are the loss of beings I have been closest to. And this pain has changed me.
i sat and thought about my grandmother’s house in great detail last night. i haven’t been there in decades, and the house no longer exists…but it brought me to a place where i thought about the loss of family. i realized, sitting there, that my mother loves me; that i feel hugely guilty for my inability to be with my grandmother in her decline; for ‘pushing’ past my emotions when i could not longer deal with the turmoil caused by my 18 yr old beautiful cat’s dying, and having him put to sleep; for ending a pregnancy when i was young, that has meant i have not been a mother (something i didn’t realized i wanted to be until I was well into my 40’s), nor did that being have the opportunity to be my daughter, to be loved, to grow into her own world.
these are losses that cut me so deeply, that i am not yet able to fully stand in front of – they cause me deep and ongoing pain and guilt. I am stuck.
It used to feel natural that i felt comfortable with loss and grief, and then when i realized that most people i knew ran from them, i felt like a bit of an outsider. Then i started to realize that this ability was a bit unusual. Later i internalized this emotional lability as being ‘better’ than what other folks could do. I saw myself better than the rest of my family. now, I have an inability to stand with their dying – i find this shocking. I have been able to show up for others….but the spath experience did change me, made me less resilient (for now). I hope that i can get back my ability to stand in the face of pain – both mine and others…..because pain is constant in life, and without this ability i am withdrawn from the texture of life.
the texture of life with a spath is enough to put one off texture altogether.
Sisterhood, What most stood out for me when you were describing your dreams, was the precarious bridges, or those that were underconstruction. These bridges are symbolic of transition from one state of being to another…or, alternatively, they function as links between two isolated things, such as the two islands. When I read about your islands, I thought about the two seperate functions of our hearts and minds. Ideally, they work together to guide us. Is it possible that you are working to construct a link between what your heart knows and what your mind knows….in other words, trying to work through the cognitive dissonance?
I also noticed that you lived alone in a house that the good man once lived in, but now, the x spath and his angry wife live there.
Houses symbolize self. The good man possibly stands in for your old belief in goodness and love, that is now changed to be inhabited by the spath entanglement, and it lives inside you.
Also, other people sometimes stand in for rejected aspects of ourselves. I’m sure there are many things you have in common with the angry wife….could she be a part of you?
I agree completely with Darsmom about the warehousing and the dingy shop interpretation. It reminds me of a poem by Yeats. I see if I can find it.