Lovefraud recently received the following email from a man whom we’ll call “Andrew.”
I recently met a lady out of the blue after I had sat at home alone for 2 years. She is the victim of a sociopath—reads & posts on the Lovefraud site trying to heal. She says she can’t tell me all the damage done & I don’t need to know—it’s her business unless she feels she needs to share.
She had cabin fever—had to get out for a night—hence our meeting. Well I had basically given up on finding someone until I met her. We instantly clicked. It was so good for 3 weeks—making plans of fun things to do. I thought it would help her heal—to go have fun again.
I think she started liking me too much in that short period of time—got scared & slammed on the brakes. She says she needs time, but truly values my friendship & adores me. I’m trying to give her “time.” It’s so hard when she lit up my life for a while.
She wants to see me again, but doesn’t know when.
I have no motives other than to get to know her & help her get over the past. She might just be the one if we spend the time to know one another.
I have read the Lovefraud blog trying to understand—some really sad stories.
What should I do?
In the thousands of emails that I’ve received, this is the first time someone has asked this question (which I’ve paraphrased) how do you approach a potential romantic partner when that person has been burned by a sociopath? I appreciate that fact that Andrew cared enough to ask the question.
I will answer the question assuming that everything is exactly as presented—a woman, whom we’ll call Caroline, had a terrible experience with a sociopath and is skittish about opening herself to another man. Andrew honestly likes Caroline, and wants to get to know her better. I will assume that neither Andrew nor Caroline is actually a predator who is looking for a new source of supply.
This, of course, is something that Caroline, and everyone else who has been betrayed and damaged by a sociopath, needs to understand and believe: There are good people in the world. Yes, as many as 12 percent of the population are social predators—sociopaths, psychopaths, narcissists, borderlines. But that still means that 88 percent of the world’s people are not disordered, and are capable of having a loving relationship.
Understand where she’s been
So, Andrew, the first thing for you to understand is that Caroline has been through the meat grinder. She’s experienced betrayal that has rocked her to her core. She’s certainly suffered emotional and psychological abuse, and may have also suffered verbal, physical, sexual and financial abuse. In fact, it may be a miracle that she is still standing.
If you’ve never experienced this level of betrayal—most people haven’t—it may be hard for you to believe what she’s gone through. Should she tell you anything about what happened, it may sound like a bad movie, and you may be inclined to think she is exaggerating. I assure you, when someone is involved with a sociopath, anything is possible. I’ve collected more than 3,200 cases, and many of the stories should be made into movies. You can’t make this stuff up.
Caroline, however, is accustomed to not being believed. She may have gone to court and to the police, and they didn’t believe her story. It’s possible her friends or her own family do not believe her. So one of the best things you can do is believe her. It will help her feel validated.
Go slow
Andrew, you will need take things very slowly. It’s likely that the sociopath swept into Carolin’es life in a whirlwind romance—if you call all the time, if you are overly exuberant about wanting to see her, it may set off alarm bells, because that’s how the sociopath acted. Let her set the pace. Keep things light.
Understand that trust needs to be earned. This may be why Caroline got into trouble in the first place—she trusted too readily. Now, she may have gone too far in the other direction, and resolved to never trust anyone again. This is an unhealthy position, because we do need to be able to trust in order to live a good life. But you may not know how much progress Caroline has made in regaining her ability to trust.
So if you want to move forward, you need to be trustworthy. Tell her the truth about everything. Keep your promises. Call when you say you’re going to call, and show up when you promise that you’ll show up. In fact, I hope that’s how you live your life anyway.
It may not work
Finally, it is possible that Caroline simply is not recovered enough to think about another involvement. If she tells you that she really can’t be in a relationship, don’t argue with her, and don’t take it personally. You may just need to accept it and move on.
But if Caroline indicates that does want to get to know you, albeit slowly, getting closer will probably be worth the wait. Before hooking up with the sociopath, Caroline was probably loving, giving, caring, responsible, dynamic and empathetic—because that’s the type of person that sociopaths target. So if she’s able to find herself, and open herself—well, it could be rewarding for both of you.
Lovefraud readers: If you have any more suggestions for Andrew, please post them.
Darwinsmom,
I would like to know more about these phases. Is there more information to go through that would be helpful to me in getting past the past deceit?
I would greatly appreciate it!
Thank you so much!
Alive
The phases of grievance are mentioned in this wiki-article with examples
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model
Basically the stages are: denial (causing cognitive dissonance), anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
The model is portrayed as we all go through these stages in that order. In reality though you can go through the phases in different order or even cycle and hop through all the phases over and over.
Most of us probably went through denial and bargaining already during the abusive devalue phase WITHIN the relationship. I know I did. A part of me already knew it was a bad relationship that seemed doomed. And in that phase until the actual discard I was in denial and bargaining. That left me mostly with anger, depression and acceptance to go through. First came severe anger, close to wrath, followed by a depressed period and finally acceptance.
This article sums up different stages of the grieving process (includes Christian take on it)
http://www.counselcareconnection.org/articles/79/1/Understanding-Grief/Page1.html
This article explains those stages too, but also emphasizes how it remains an individual process
http://www.zentactics.com/stages-of-grief.html
Darwinsmom,
Thank you for taking the time out to help me decipher and clear up the process. Bless our brains and hearts! We have been through so much.
In the past I was totally trusting and have never been in this situation before so I knew that in the spot I am currently in… I am not the same as I was….I guess that is good in some respects and bad in others, but nevertheless it is what it is!
Blessings!
Alive!!!
For the love of Pete (whoever he is!)…I’m going back once again and try to find Andrew’s post! Is it under THIS thread or another one? It’s no wonder that I thought y’all were be so tough on him! It sounds like I’m only catching a very small piece of his actions!
Yeah, I agree, that I feel that I provided my last ex spath with wonderful information about how he could better manipulate future victims by “showing him how to earn other people’s respect” as he asked me to! I had NO idea that he was planning to use the information I provided him with to enhance his predatory skills! I honestly believed that he was a good person who had been raised under less fortunate financial circumstances that I had! Of course, this was true but I also feel that he used it as bait to gain my pity. I thought it was a class issue which is one of the areas that I worked in for years…sociology, cultural differences and every ism known to man. I’m actually friends with his current victim and she has mentioned mature and responsible statements that he has made to her that are direct quotes of MINE…things that I said to him! I guess I’m basing my too much on his tactic. He seems to learn more and more from his victims to better prepare him for the next. And, yes, a sociopath could learn have a field day interacting with us here on Lovefraud.
I apologize for the LONG post earlier but do hope that some of you might benefit from my own experience of realizing that there came a time when I had to stop focusing on all of the sociopaths in my life and focus on myself.
An update on my son…didn’t want to get into a lot of detail about that early and make a long post even longer. He’s doing really well. He is finally putting his foot down to the gf and LISTENING to me. However, I had better results when I stopped trying to convince him that she was a sociopath as he too, believes that I am obsessed with the topic and a little too eager to label people. He seems much more willing to discuss the difference in her family and those of our own. LOL! Yes, he was raised in a dysfunctional environment but has never doubted for one second that I love him and always put him first in my life when he was a child. So, once we started to discuss the situation from that angle, we were able to make progress. He also believed that she was suffering from postpartum, and then her claims of being bi-polar, and then ADD until she finally threw so many illnesses out there that he told her he didn’t feel that he was a stable enough person to support someone who suffered from these multiple disorders. She had a miraculous overnight recovery! However, she still makes any excuse in the world not to care for their daughter. He now acknowledges that she has never spent as much as an hour TOTALLY alone with her. He went back to work and although he earns half of her salary, he paid for all the moving expenses to rent a super nice affordable apartment in a good neighborhood. We also turned all of the interaction with the attorney over to him who is helping him establish his paternity rights through the court system that he THOUGHT had already been established when he acknowledge paternity at the time of his daughter’s birth at the hospital but not in THIS state. Basically, he and my husband and I are raising the child. He can’t force her to be a mother if she doesn’t want to be and admits that he wouldn’t be comfortable leaving her alone with her. He drops her off on his way to work and picks her up afterward and cares for her on his days off. She occasionally still spends the night with us if we just want extra time with her or if he works a double shift. We also keep her on the mother’s days off while she does God only knows what. It’s certainly not spending time with her daughter. He’s been good about making arrangements for a sitter when I have a doctor’s appointment and has a sitter lined up already for when we take a week’s vacation next month. So, I’m proud that he has stepped up to the plate and seems to have accepted that the mother does not want to be involved. She’s taken a step back, too. She was trying to control our every move and dictate our lives. My son told me that he was giving her an ultimatum regarding these things and I have NO idea what that ultimatum was but it certainly adjusted her attitude towards my husband and me.
((tami)) So happy to hear you sounding so much better.
I am happppppy your life has settled down for you and
you should be sooooooooooo proud of your son!
KUDOS and HUGS to such an amazing son and father!
You will be in my thoughts and prayers.
Giving love to a child, unconditionally, is never wrong.
God will Bless and Love you even more.
Dupey
Tami, it is in THIS THREAD, on page 1 of the comments! Best to scroll all the way to the bottom of page 1 and then scroll up (in the order when scrolling back up post from Jenna > Chloe > rgc > visire > dlm > visire > darwinsmom > visire > stargazer > Olga Rodriguez > shane > hens > the sisterhood > a posts by Andrew > the sisterhood > kim frederick > post by Andrew > post by Andrew (long one)
Alive, yeah I get the part about you being angry with yourself. I guess I didn’t express that very well in my LONG post but the humiliation I spoke of stemmed mostly from the anger I felt towards myself. You have to try your best to remember that you have no reason to be angry with yourself. YOU did everything right and HE did everything wrong. You are a normal person and he presented himself to be JUST like you. Don’t be too hard on yourself.
And, your question about all of them having another woman lined up before the divorce? Ha! Mine was cheating on a wife that he told me he was in the process of getting a divorce from when he started seeing me, and was seeing several other women at the same time he was seeing me! I didn’t know this, of course, We got married and he never stopped seeing the other woman and even added several more during our marriage. Most of them had nothing to offer him but sex and to be quite honest, they were crack addicts, pillheads and women who would sleep with anyone for their drug of choice. They didn’t have jobs and lived mostly off the government due to having several children by several different men. Not very respectable women! And, yes, I’ve been fully tested and consider myself very fortunate to be free of any STDs. He had sex with as many as two women a day and then came home to have sex with me EVERY night and nearly every morning! ICK! It makes me lurch. And, I had NO idea because he treated me like a princess. Spaths can do that because they have no conscience. We can usually detect when something is going on with a NORMAL significant other because they feel guilt and it affects their behavior.
He finally snagged a younger gal who had a good job, fooled her into believing that what I owned before I married him was his and used all the right language that I taught him to convince her that he was an upstanding citizen. She wasn’t happy in her marriage…had been married to her high school sweetie since she was 15 and they had grown up to be very different as adults. The perfect target. He cheated on her with several other women before they ever married but had targeted one with a good income who contacted ME out of the blue to ask what he was about. I told her, she believed me, dismissed him from her life and she and I have been best friends ever since. That was over 5 years ago. The girl married him because he managed to convince her that his cheating was HER fault and after she lived with him awhile and figured out that I had told her the truth about him, the wife eventually befriended her, too. His wife invited us and our fellows to a town celebration a couple of weeks ago and we went. My husband and I took the grandbaby along. His wife actually dragged him over to us and I could tell that he would have liked to have died right there on the spot but he said hello to me, shook my husband’s hand, a brief hi to his former lover and spent the remainder of his time focused on the baby which was “safe” for him…she’s innocent, has no idea WHAT he is and by focusing on her, he didn’t have to look at us. We three gals jokingly refer to ourselves as Mike’s Morons. The wife spent a great deal of time telling me how she wished she would have heeded my warnings and praised the other girl for doing so. She said that he fooled her good and if she had it to do all over she would run. She feels stuck because he threatens suicide anytime she tries to leave but she recently lost her job and I expect to hear any day that she’s escaped to the other side of the country where her parents and siblings live since she no longer has any real reason to stay. My friend and I later discussed how sickened we were by his appearance…he was dressed in the finest brands that SHE bought him but hadn’t shaved in weeks and refused to get a hair cut. The wife told us that his appearance was embarrassing for her. The wife had worked as a nurse for a doctor for nearly 10 years when the doctor and her husband suddenly went missing and were found deceased in a hotel room halfway across the country a week later. Their deaths have been ruled as a double suicide for now. She considered the doctor a good friend in addition to being her boss and is quite shaken by her death as well as the loss of her job. She said when she told my ex now her husband they had been found dead which meant she was also unemployed, he never once offered to get a job despite the fact that she was bawling her eyes out due to grief and worry of suddenly finding herself unemployed. He told her not to worry because he bet she’d have another by the first of the week! I feel sorry for her. The 3 of us women are all 10 years apart in age…the wife 32, former lover 42 and I’m 52. I know it sounds absurd that we are friends but life can be strange. He has NOTHING to do with our friendship other than being the initial connection that brought us together. We go out to eat and shopping together. I’m sure he sweats bullets the entire time but that’s HIS problem.
HA: I love it you guys are friends.
Take it all to Jerry Springer.
😛
Really good and informational posts. I’m enjoying reading. Wow this topic really opened up some dialogue.
(((hugs)))
I’m friends with two exes of his before my time and one young girl he cheated me with. He had tried to hook her to replace me, but she was a student with several friends traveling through all of Latin America, still enjoying life too much with others to get hooked. Plus she noticed that we were a couple on fb and that my comments didn’t sound like an ex at all. He managed to hook a new victim around my birthday 2-3 months later, a woman in her early 30s from London. He spent time with her while still sweet-talking me in between the times he disappeared. Took me over a week to finally get a hold of him over the phone the night before my knee operation only a few hours before I would go under to talk with him, and his response was “Ah, yeah, your operation.” I blew up then and told him it was over. I went in the hospital blubbering and feeling shel-shocked. I knew it was absolutely over but didn’t want to believe it yet (denial), so tried to reach him. Had him on hte phone once and he sounded rough and annoyed, and on his way out (she must have been staying there with him). He told me he’d be traveling north and contact me again a week later. For once in a very long time he did as he promised: contacted me and wrote me a 2 line FB message: Met another woman and I love her. Goodbye. Then he undid our relationship status and put himself in relationship with her.
She must have seen in those 2 months that I was still in relationship with him and that I posted small love messages. But she wanted to believe that he “didn’t know how to undo his relationship status with his ex”.
Well, unfortunately she got what she bargained for: a total spath. And she was the poor sucker that helped me be free of him for good when it was so hard for me to finish it off myself. Now she’s married to him and in over her head even more than I ever was: financially, emotionally, etc…
No ex ever warned me while I was with him, but several of us warned her together. Nobody told me he cheated on me until well after. She was told before she married him that he cheated on her by people. And while I was broke and in debt because of him, I think I had less financial reserves than she has. I’m guessing she’s broke by now too, because she invested more plane tickets in him, more money in keeping him, more money in housing him.
Hmm, I guess I feel some resentment for her. I know she’s been duped and not a bad person. I am glad that he didn’t need to look for a new victim any longer than he did, so I was liberated from him. But I also think her an incredible fool, even more than I was, because she started a relationship with someone who was still involved with someone else. It is something that I never have done nor ever would have done. And I would have resented a man for pretending to be free while still involved. I guess that’s because I hate and resent competition or anyone manipulating me in a competitive situation. I’ve always had at least the instinct to turn my back onto such situations. And I do judge her badly over not having that instinct. I also know that if someone had told me he was cheating on me with other women I would have dropped him like a stone. I just totally abhor that kind of disloyalty. But he made sure that I didn’t find out much too late.
I guess her vulnerability lies in the competing area over other women (something I lack). And she won the competition I didn’t even know existed. And what a shitty prize she won over it.