By Ox Drover
Going through my family photos I came across one of my two oldest sons. We had gone on vacation to Montana to visit a friend for the summer in 1981. They were about 10 and 11 years old. My friend took us around to all the local sights and showed us some old gold mines dug back into the solid rock.
In the photo made that summer, I saw my sons, both kneeling on a huge rock about five feet from the edge of a stream of rapidly flowing water, with a gold pan in their hands. My friend had put a handful of sand from the edge of the creek into the wok-shaped pan and showed them how to swirl the sand in the bottom and let the rushing water wash away the lighter sand, and told them that the heavier gold dust would stay in the bottom of the pan.
They were so excited to be panning for real gold and before long they started to see flakes of glitter in the bottom of their pan. It shone like the sun and made them very excited and they were talking about all the things they would buy with the fruit of their efforts. GOLD!!! REAL GOLD!!!
When they had a teaspoon or so of golden dust in the bottom of their pans, they could come to the bank of the river and put it into a plastic container. Then they would scoop up more sand and go back out on the big rock in the river’s edge. They worked for hours digging and panning for gold dust, excitedly washing the sand they dug, and keeping the glittering dust in the bottom.
As my friend and I sat on the bank of the creek watching the boys enjoying their experience, he leaned over to me and said, “I don’t have the heart to tell them it is fool’s gold they are panning.”
I sort of chuckled that day, and never really did tell the boys that their work was for naught, or that what they thought was a treasure trove of real gold was nothing but pyrite, or “fool’s gold.” Eventually, I think they figured it out for themselves, and my oldest son still has a small jar with the fool’s gold in the bottom.
I was thinking about “fool’s gold,” in terms of false things that glitter and mimic “the real thing” but are, in truth, worthless. A psychopath’s claims of loving us, their claims that they care for us, are “fool’s gold,” because in fact, they don’t have the capacity to love or care.
The miner who came back to “Deadwood” with a big poke (bag) of fool’s gold would be the laughing stock of the town for a while. Sometimes we may feel that we are laughing stocks or fools for having accepted the “fool’s gold” of the psychopath’s “love” for us as real.
Just as my sons were unable to distinguish the fool’s gold from the real gold, we are sometimes unable to distinguish what is real and what is not.
Experience, however, is a good teacher if we will listen to it. Having seen real gold dust, it is easy enough to compare the different sparkle of fool’s gold from the real thing. Having been fooled once (or twice or more) by the fake glitter of false love, we can use this knowledge to protect us. As the old saying goes, and it is so true, “not everything that glitters is gold.” As we learn that everyone who says, “I love you” doesn’t really, we learn to pick the real from the false.
Oxy, thanks for a wonderful gentle lesson.
“I was thinking about “fool’s gold,” in terms of false things that glitter and mimic “the real thing” but are, in truth, worthless. A psychopath’s claims of loving us, their claims that they care for us, are “fool’s gold,” because in fact, they don’t have the capacity to love or care.”
It reminded me of the warning, “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.”
Ox another good read – thank you..Harmony I have seen your name here before , thanks for sharing your JOY with us …Betty that was a wonderful post and I laughed out loud when I read about the slime trail – I just about have all the slime trails cleaned up –
Hello Harmony, (And Cherre)
Thanks for chiming in Harmony. You must be one of the 1st readers of LF! Congratulations on your honors in school! Truly!
You are in a position to understand these disorders far more than any collegue that is just reading about them in a book. Good luck with your path toward higher learning. I am doing the same with my Sociopath/Bad Man experience. I am working on my Masters of Social Work and then.. further down the road, I will strive for the LCSW. Maybe we can open a practice together… or travel and consult. :O) Imagine.
Your post provided the perfect contrast between you, further down the road of recovery, with Cherre, just breaking in her walking shoes.
BTW, Cherre, perfectly wonderful that you posted that letter. It reminds me of when I knew something was wrong with the Bad Man and his communication that seemed to tie me into knots.. but.. I didn’t know what it was. I found it difficult to describe but I was always unnerved and upset and defending myself. It was exausting! Your example reminded me of what I have learned and I am sure that out there is a reader silently nodding… *this helped me too*.. but doesn’t want to post. Hi Reader! We see you!
Your example was perfect and it gave another reader the opportunity to walk you through it… the patterns and the manipulations are so classic and eventually… quite boring!
Ho hum.. another Sociopath reading aloud from his Sociopath Handbook. How boring. HAHA!
Thank God for what I have learned here. Thank God!
I am strangely thankful for my lessons from the Bad Man. I am doing things with my life now that I never would have done if it wasn’t for the trainwreck he cause in my life… and I never let myself forget… I chose to ride that train long after I sensed danger. There are many lessons in that too and I haven’t missed them.
We are smarter, wiser, stronger for having gone through these experiences.. all of us.
Oxy, thank you for the great post and sharing your memories with your young sons.
I remember similar memories with my sons when they were about the same age and discoverd fools gold…I remember thinking back then that the enourmous love I felt for them was like pure gold… and now thanks to the visualization of your post I can see that like a child I am desperatly wanting to beleive that what I have is real gold when he sais ILU, but in reality, it’s only fools gold that I have. The glitter and shine wont last forever, nor will the value, it’s only make believe….to play with for now…for as long as I can deni it’s not real gold.
Hi harmony, congrats and thanks for making time in your life for helping humanity. As I live my life and see the horrible p’s on every side of me, I can still look on the community of LF and say, WOW! there they are, the super heroes. These are the good ones that make life worth living. I don’t have to turn into a P and I don’t have to kill myself.
Now all that’s left to do is move in together, so we can enjoy great people ALLLLLL the time. 🙂
cherre,
I can’t find the campfire of my love letter. maybe someone else can remember where I posted it. LF makes it difficult to find previous posts but I think that may have been intentional, so that a crazy stalker can’t easily find one person’s posts.
Alohatraveler
Thankyou for your response and congratulations it was sincerely appreciated. I am sure you will well succeed in you Masters and I wish you well with it. It is my belief that only people who have actually dealt with the NSP’s actually “understand” how difficult the process can be to recover.
Henry
Thankyou again. I remember your comment along the lines of “some old man is sitiing in his back yard thinking of you right now”. You are are very sweet and sympathetic to others.
Skylar
Thankyou also.
Please dont get me wrong I have my occassional thoughts like today I typed a letter not yet sent to the S. Saying I am now “a whole not a hole”. I remember when I first joined love fraud i wrote to Donna I was suicidal with guilt driven by the S. I found Without Conscience by Dr. R Hare a book I read, read and highlighted over the 5 years, which really helped. In the end i “actually got it” he didnt love me because he cant love me. that is sad in itself (I consider, imagine a life with no feeling at all), no good, no bad, no indifference. I actually feel some empathy for him but no sympathy.
I will continue to read all posts here as I have done for years I will understand your desperation, anger, rage, pain, hurt, suffering and all the other emotions you will go through in the process. However I will watch all of you grow here on Lovefraud reclaiming your self esteem, dignity, love, sanity and most especially peace and happiness within yourselves.
To Donna and everyone on Lovefraud thankyou and to those going through the process of recovery, recovering takes time and it is a process you need to go through. Love and big hugs to you all x
That was beautiful Harmony… (I just love the screen aemes people have here.)
I have been lucky enough to find a therapist that for some reason, understands the place I am in with my recovery and we have been able to have great conversations about what I have learned, how I apply my lessons, and also, how I have reached a stuck place.
I used to be so trusting.. and so naive. I miss that part of me… there are things we don’t want to know about in the world.. but once you know.. well, you know! What else is there to say?
I too am so grateful for this healing place.
Also, I am thankful to my friends that took me in when I really didn’t have anywhere to go. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be where I am right now. They didn’t understand what I was going through but the knew it was something big.
They understood that they didn’t understand… and they wanted to help me anyway.
Have a wonderful day everyone and don’t forget to smell the roses and do a little something nice for yourself.
And if you are struggling with no contact, keep trudging forward. I know it’s hard but you can do it and it really is the only way to clear your mind of a most toxic experience.
Love from AlohaTraveler……………E
Hi harmony: Hello to you and congratulations on your new insights and accomplishments! I was very touched by your post, particularly your comment about finding some good out of the bad relationship experience, and now being able to use that new-found wisdom both personally and professionally.
I too have experienced a similar outcome — with stronger personal boundaries than I’ve ever had before, not just with the ex, but also with family, friends and colleagues through my business encounters.
Feels good not to have the weight of the world on my shoulders, especially since I’ve always been a responsible person since childhood — and felt I had to “do right” by all.
I maintain my values/integrity for the most part, but now I also hold others accountable and do not feel guilty when I say no, set boundaries and say goodbye to people who do not deserve the best from me.
Hi Folks . Great little story but I have been thinking about something that has had me a little puzzled for quite a while . It goes like this . Since my encounter with a pschopath , we broke up about 18 months ago , I have noticed that I am in a state of hyper awareness . Now I have read a little about this apparent change of consciousness but am wondering about what exactly is going on in order for this to come about and will it ever subside or am I stuck with it for ever. Being hyper aware I am sure has got something to do with the survival instinct and with what I know about psychopaths and how I seem to attract them like flies I am always on the look out for them , whether they be male or female . I am a heterosexual male so avoiding the female ones is to hopefully avoid the emotional turmoil that my psychopathic X put me through . Avoiding the male ones is to hopefully avoid a physical encounter that may be detrimental to my physical self . What I believe is that I can basically see pschopaths , as in instantly. I am sure that I am not infaliable , but even the smart ones I can figure out fairly quickly upon having a conversation with them . One of the things that is particularly bizarre is that if I am talking to someone I am particularly aware of their hand movements . Also there other things like how people walk or how they stand in fact all facits of body language . It is as if my subconscious has been tuned into all the aspects that make up psychopaths . It has become instinctive in that I do not even consciously realise sometimes that I am observing . So whats the problem you may ask . Well , being in this hyper aware state can make other people even normal ones uncomfortable . I would appreciate any input or perceptions any of you have on this subject