This week we received the following email. I am sharing it with you because what she reports is very common on a number of levels that I will discuss.
I was married to a sociopath for 25 years. They were horrible years because most of that time I had no idea I was married to a sociopath. I was deeply in love when we met. He told me everything I wanted to hear. Knowing all my weaknesses and fears he fed them, made me totally emotionally dependent on him. He helped me get great jobs, pumped me up so I would keep making more money, while of course he lived off me. But at the same time kept telling me I was ugly, fat, sickly. He had affairs. All of this and I still kept hoping he would change and someday really love me. He even encouraged me to do some illegal stuff — which I did — just to make him happy.
Twenty five years and when I finally couldn’t take it any more I left (8 months ago) Thought that was the end of it — but I actually kept worrying about him. He didn’t have a job or enough food to eat.
Well, he had used my computer one day when he was visiting and his email site was left on. I got curious and started reading his emails. He had been seeing other women, started relationship while he was still with me, telling them the same things he had always told me — but what I found most hurtful was that he was talking to these women about me in derogatory ways. That I was a psycho, unattractive, that I didn’t inspire him to do anything, etc. In many ways, this should have been good. Had I not seen that with my own eyes I would have never believed that my husband of 25 years who told me every day that he loved me more than life itself was bad mouthing me to these other women. I feel such anger and hatred in me that I know is not healthy”¦but I don’t know how to let it go.
I cut off all communications with him, but I still check into his emails. It’s like watching a soap opera — I’m hooked on this and don’t know how to stop. Every day when I see a new email where he’s dragging my name through the mud, it just makes me feel like crap. Even though I know he’s heartless and I should just not care what he says — I do. This is the man I slept next to for 25 years. I’m 58 years old and I can’t even think of starting a new relationship with all this distrust and hatred in my heart. How in the world would I ever trust another man? The duplicity that men are capable is incredible and every man I meet gives me the creeps.
Is there any hope that I could ever get over this? I just don’t know how to move forward.
First of all 25 years is a long time to spend with another person, might as well be a lifetime. To come to grips with that, a person has to focus his/her attention on all the other things he/she did and accomplished during that time period. Usually the relationship was not the only part of life. Since the outcome was so bad the mind naturally wants to focus the attention on the bad and recovery means fighting this natural tendency.
Second, worrying about the sociopath is extremely common. Again overcoming this means focused attention. Attend to what this says about you. You are a person who cares and naturally worries about those you have loved. Just because you have a feeling does not mean you have to act on it.
The third issue, spying on the sociopath. I have seen that behavior a great deal so don’t feel you are unusual because you do this. I have also observed that the spying is often linked to anger, as is difficulty letting go.
Why would spying, anger and difficulty letting go be linked? I think this relates to a need for power and mastery over the situation. How many times have victims said, “I just didn’t want him/her to win”? I think recovery starts with admitting that we “lost” and the sociopath “won.” In the same breath though we have to question what the “prize” for winning was. If we don’t go on with our lives and recover, we give the sociopath a real prize!
The fourth issue is trusting again. That will come with recovery, but perhaps the trust for others will always be different. I will say that evil people tend to capture our attention. Some studies show that the good has to outweigh the bad 4 times in order for good to capture as much attention as bad. Evil men are much more visible in society, so make it a point to focus your attention on the loving empathetic men you know. This is difficult for many women who are attracted to power because they do not find less powerful men very attractive.
I would rephrase, “The duplicity that men are capable is incredible and every man I meet gives me the creeps.” To the duplicity of every man I focus my attention on… I am working on a book, both discussing love and empathy in men and telling the stories of men who have been victimized by sociopathic women. I am doing this to help both men and women realize that loving behavior is the norm for men. We just attend to evil/powerful men more, the loving man goes unnoticed. He is invisible to us.
That gets me to recovery and some tough advice. Recovery takes a great deal of work and self discipline. In order to have the mental discipline you will need to stop reading the emails and move on, you have to work on your physical health. If you are out of shape, smoking and/or using alcohol, you may have great difficulty recovering. The part of the brain that is responsible for will power and impulse control is easily affected by poor health andxiety and lack of sleep. Start with a total health program. That program will go a long way toward lifting anxiety and depression. Keep a healthy diet and exercise every day. I would really like us to have a virtual exercise club and I put up Fit and Smart for that purpose. On that web site you will find a free program to help structure your exercise routine.
Fill your free time with activities that build you up mentally and spiritually. Build yourself up mentally by reading and perhaps taking a class. Build yourself up spiritually by volunteering or participating in a spiritual community. If you do all these things, you will have the health and strength to focus your attention where it needs to be. The writing of M. Louise Gallagher may be an inspiration to you.
OxDrover
haha…you made me laugh with your last paragraph. HELLO! You are WAY ahead of me in the allocating of hard earned wisdom. I read your posts constantly as inspiration and I am striving to permantly live with my own personal power.
And…you are absolutely correct. You clarified it for me perfectly. See? I don’t know everything and I absolutely need other women’s perspectives. Especially the battle worn, but fierce, determined warrior babes!!
And I am totally relieved I ditched him before any more damage was incurred. Yeah, I had me a few bumps and scratches for a while afterwards, but now I’m smarter, more cautious with who I want in my life. I’ve also realized that trust is something that is earned and it takes as long as it takes for it to grow. I need to learn that not everyone thinks as I do. That not every man is as trustworthy as I am. I’ve learned that from myself as well as from you wonderful women!!
Thank you very much for your feedback. Mucho appreciated!!
Free
Every time I read a post regarding another woman hooked by these controlling predators, I shake my head in sadness, frustration. Frustration like you in trying to warn them that they are in for some serious emotional and psychological damage. It’s easy to witness, sense the wrongness in other people’s mates because we aren’t emotionally invested. We are concerned about our friends, family but our views are WAY different, aren’t they? We are all susceptible to these types of men, though. I don’t have that much of a problem leaving them when I know their just wrong for me, but usually I’m just a little bit invested emotionally myself to hurt when I do. But not as much if I would have spent more time in the relationship. “better to pay a little now than to suffer more later” My practicality keeps me grounded when I discover my fella is less than sincere.
And your post spoke volumes to me, concerning my ex “weird guy”. He’s also a very talented musician and aren’t they ALL more than a little egocentric? To say the least.
“When we are on our way to being a whole person, not half of one, that is when we stop being disordered. That is when we start to listen to our own truth”
Amen, Free. That was profoundly beautiful to me. I wasn’t a whole person for years, but I know that I am now. I need to set strict limits on not how much crap I’ll deal with but with how LONG I’m willing to deal with it. Which means…never, right? Right.
Thank you for your response, insight. It really means alot to me. 🙂
OxDover,
You really nailed that for Jane. How perfectly you picked apart her story and read between the lines!
Sometimes, I can’t get over how formuliac this is with these disordered people. Now when we hear stories like Jane’s, we hear if different, don’t we? Different than before because dispearsed among the details, we hear the distinct and unmistakeable patterns and behaviors.
Yes Jane, you did save yourself some serious trouble.
Bumps and scrapes. I know about bumps and scraps.
Thank you guys for the accolades–yes, it is FORMULISTIC. Once you see the PATTERN you can recognize it much sooner before you are totally hooked and invested.
When you are NOT hooked it is easy to see. When you are hooked you are BLIND to it and blame youself for the problems of someone else.
Setting boundaries becomes easier.
I got to thinking last night about setting boundaries and a sentence kept going through my head. “Tell me how this relationship is benefiting me?” “How does you being in my life benefit me?”
I have a couple of perpherial friends that I am thinking about when I state this concept. How does having them in my life benefit ME? I do things for them, but what do I get out of the relationship? Me being in their lives is an obvious benefit to them, but how does it benefit ME?
It doesn’t matter if the relationship is a lover, friend, relative…and it isn’t about being selfish either, but about setting boundaries, and a reciprocity in the relationship. If all the “benefits” of a relationship (and I am not talking just favors or help here) are one sided there isn’t any reason to continue it. When my step father was dying and I spent 24/7 taking care of his physical and medical needs, it was NOT a one-sided relationship, I was receiving many positive things. I was reciprocating for the many hundreds of hours he had spent hauling my horse to rodeos, the nights he had set up with me when I was sick, the things he taught me, the time he spent with me, and I enjoyed listening to his funny stories about his years in WWII that he had never before told. I enjoyed seeing the neighbors and friends come visit and the respect and love they showed for him and the kind of person he was. I got back so MUCH MORE than what I “gave” to this wonderful man, yet the relationship might have appeared very one-sided at that time.
When our kids ar elittle we give and give 24/7 but what we get back is the smile, the sense of nurturing a new life. It isn’t one sided at all.
But some people in our lives take our gifts of love and caring, and return nothing in the way of gratitude, caring, appreciation for who we are, but only for what we can “do for them.” Their entitlement for us to serve their needs. I don’t need that kind of person in my life.
Jane quickly saw that the relationship was not what it first seemed. Though obviously she had been “receiving” something at first, it wasn’t long before the man decided that it was time for her to “pay back” what he had given her (flattery) by allowing him to abuse her.
Sometimes people give “gifts” of whatever, flattery, money, etc. to others to hook them in, but they are not GIFTS AT ALL which are given unconditionally,, but PAYMENTS IN ADVANCE for ABUSE. My X-BF was quite financially generous with her previous girl friends, and seemed actually insulted when I refused to allow him to pay my liight bill, or buy me a new washing machine when mine broke while we were dating.
He knew he was going to cheat on me, and he wanted to “give” me something to buy his OK to treat me like that by saying “well, I was generous with her, I bought her a new washer” (I could afford to buy my own, and even if I couldn’t have afforded a new one, I would not have let him buy me one because I am aware that some “gifts” are not what they seem, but PAYMENTS.) That was one reason that I would never take money from my mother. My first husband’s parents, (his father was a P) were “generous” with us in many ways, but always ALWAYS extracted or tried to extract control in exchange. Nothing they “gave” us was truly a “gift” but a PAYMENT FOR CONTROL.
Sometimes the “payments” can be emotional flattery or anything that you “value”–doesn’t have to be money at all.
The old “Scots-Irish” prohibition of taking favors and gifts from people you are not VERY CLOSE to, and thus, becoming “indebted” to them is quite WISE really. So one of the RED FLAGS I see now (and subconsciously I think saw most of my life) is if people are “too nice” to you to early on in the relationship. It is kind of like the fish that sees the juicy bait and jumps on it without realizing that there is a HOOK in it. “If it is too good to be true, it probably IS too good to be TRUE.”
Jane, you are a wise woman! Don’t discount yourself at all. Getting out of a bad relationship EARLY ON before we are totally hooked and INVESTED is wisdom—a LOT OF WISDOM.
I think we can all talk a better game than we live, but that is the truck to think about these things, bounce them off other people whose judgment we can trust (and that are not emotionally involved, and thus maybe blinded) and LISTEN to them. That is the wonderful thing about this board. I can see through your problems and you can see through mine. That’s why it is good to go to a therapist as they are not so emotionally involved that they are blinded to the REAL PATTERNS in our behavior and can help US see those patterns.
When we CAN SEE what is going on, we can learn from it. Otherwise we will just keep doing the same wrong thing over and over and never realize why it doesn’t work. LOL Stupidity is doing the same thing and hoping for a different outcome. LOL
Getting older doesn’t mean we mature. It is like the man who has 1 year experience 30 times, vs the man who has thirty years’ experience. Unfortunately for me, I fell into the catagory of the first man and didn’t learn from my experiences until recently when I finally SAW THE LIGHT, but because I have made a LOT of mistakes in the past, I can process those mistakes, all those past mistakes, take the learning from them, and put them behind me and grow from those long gone repetitions of the same error so that when a similar situation comes up I won’t fall back into the same error again.
Life is always going to be decision making and learning, it will never be a “done deal” until I breathe my last—learning will be ongoing, and probably some mistakes too, but the BIG deal about it all is to use what I have learned to grease the wheels of progress and not lose my direction.
Free
I wasn’t being fair when I said that ALL musicians were egocentric. It was a generalization and since I don’t personally know every single musician in the world, that was a smug thing to say. Just stings a tad when I think of all the beautiful songs he would play for me on his guitar and keyboard. I’m a HUGE music lover and have over 300 cds to prove it. I’m also a dancer which to me is a great creative outlet for the intense emotions I feel sometimes. I feel almost primal when I’m in the groove….haha. 🙂
Anyway, you women are a powerful influence in my life. Yes, I spend oodles of time being introspective, learning about myself, learning to tap into my own feminine intuition, but I sincerely value and appreciate all of you for your insight, wisdom, your intelligence, your own personal struggles and emotional pain you have suffered from the people in your lives. I don’t trivialize, discount any comments I read on here. Every one of us has the right to peaceful, productive, happy lives. And I am thankful for the positive AND negative experiences I’ve had in my life as they are important lessons if I’m willing to listen and heed their importance.
Dear OxDrover, Yes, I want to add my thanks and appreciation to you too! You put in so much thought, wisdom and heart into your contributions and support of others.
Yes, the bottom line question has to be ‘what value is this person adding to my life’, if the answer is none, or very little, then what is the point. I remember saying to the exNarcissist, ‘Are you available on ANY level’? Also when he sent me a text saying ‘I realise how much you are WORTH to me’, I thought, (a) he is measuring me in ‘worth’ (b) how good is he for me? If we dont ask these questions we will be a party in our own exploitation!
OxDrover
Wow!!…I just reread your last post for the third time and there’s no way I could have written something so eloquent and profound. And soooooo smart! Thank you!
I think we can all talk a better game than we live, but that is the truck to think about these things, bounce them off other people whose judgment we can trust (and that are not emotionally involved, and thus maybe blinded) and LISTEN to them. That is the wonderful thing about this board. I can see through your problems and you can see through mine. That’s why it is good to go to a therapist as they are not so emotionally involved that they are blinded to the REAL PATTERNS in our behavior and can help US see those patterns.
THIS part in particular is EXACTLY what I needed to read. So true. Being reality grounded is paramount to our existence, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s been painful for me to face some aspects of reality that I was afraid to acknowledge, confront but I realized after I did face them, I’m much stronger and capable than I was before. It seems ironic to me, that I’m one of those freaky introverts you hear about, the ones who consider periods of solitude to be essential, necessary in maintaining sanity, equilibreum, and also time to recharge the batteries from too much social interraction, that being involved with a man is not really as important to me as it was once upon a time, and yet I met and dated 3 fellas last year! I didn’t even really WANT them all that much at the time, but after a while I did. Crazy, huh? Did they become a habit to me? Did they work incessantly to worm their ways into my heart? Their agendas don’t matter to me anymore, as I HAVE moved on and let go. But I have to take responsibility for my behavior, my actions, my shrugging off the initial red flags (however subtle they might be in the beginning).
Thank you so much Jane, It makes me feel good to have validation for my musing from someone that I respect, and I sure do respect you. You GOT IT WOMAN!
I too require lots of solitude but yet I am still very gregarious and enjoy company too. I am just real PICKY about that company. I made a decision several years ago to cut down on the number of “friendships” I was trying to keep up with, and to focus on those that were closer and more meaningful and spend more time and energy with those people rather than just scattering it across too large a group. I’m open to new friends and new acquaintences, but again, very picky about them. I want people who are interesting, honest, forthright, “not into games” (ah, what a tired phrase but we all know what it means!) people who can THINK and who have an interest in life above soap operas on TV or in life.
Many of the really interesting people I know, unfortunately, are on the other side of the world and I no longer have the finances to travel to see all of them, but e mail is wonderful and phones are so cheap now I am still able to spend “time” with them.
But the good side of that is that now that I am spending more time at “home” here on the farm and my health and energy are returning (mentally AND physically) I am able to work on some of the things I have wanted to do for years and my son and I are putting in long and hard and satisfying days de-cluttering our lives, deciding what to keep and what to toss, what to sell and what to throw away—in terms of objects and things, but also in terms of the way we interact with others. He’s kind of in a different “stage” of the grief process that we have both gone through for so long, with the multiple deaths and relationship crashes, because he has tried to “be strong” to take care of me (I was so out of it I wasn’t aware he was doing that for so long) but he is making progress too and I am so proud of both of my boys now that my P-son is out of our lives.
Sometimes I look around at the mountain of physical things I need to get done and feel a bit discouraged that I will ever get it all done, but then I look at ONE CORNER of the barn where everything is neatly stacked or hung up and it gives me the strength to go on the next day. Sometimes it is human nature to look at the rest of the mountain we hav eto climb rather than look down and see just HOW FAR WE HAVE ALREADY COME from where we started.
When we moved back to my grandfather’s old farm it was a mess of 20 years of neglect with brush covering the pasture, fences all down, etc. Now after 15+ yrs of steady work, by comparison it looks like a park and visitors frequently comment on how pretty it is etc.–yet when I look at it (unless I do a reality check) I only see what STILL NEEDS TO BE DONE. I’m not sure if that is “human nature” or my own nature that is pessimistic, but in any case, I am working on trying to see what HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED and the beauty that is there rather than the negative “oh, yes, but I still need to …..”
It doesn’t change anything except the LENSE thorough which you view the picture, but it changes your whole outlook from negative to positive, and that is where I want to be. I KNOW where I want to be, it is just getting there ONE STEP AT A TIME, and to learn PATIENCE, which I guess is something I really DO need to work on. I need to ENJOY the JOURNEY and quit being impatient for the destination. So “that’s this week’s project”–laugh. When I become aware of something I need to do like “patience” I try to “work on” that particular thing in particular for a few days and then when I flash on something else, I work on that for a while. Hopefully, I will eventually get around to “working on them all”—Laugh out loud!
June FIRST last year, I was in the process of leaving my home, crazy as a bessy bug as my grandfather would have said, fleeing my home in fear of my life…now, I sit her watching the storm and rain out the window, listening to the wind in the trees, seeing my flowers around the old well swaying with the winds, and content as a cat on the window sill. ONE year–it made a world of difference. I am NC with my P son, don’t really think about him except like a character in a novel I read, the pain connected with ‘losing’ him is pretty well gone, and the anger at him. He just IS what he IS. I am exxentially NC with my mother except for the few times I have to speak to her for business reasons. No more worrying about pleasing her, “pretending we’re a nice normal family and that none of this happened”-the toxic DIL is GONE (Thank you Jesus!) and theTrojan HOrse P is STILL IN PRISON, (his parole rescended because of my big mouth and my complaining–thank you Jesus!) haven’t had a crying jag in MONTHS, laugh frequently, am feeling well physically and mentally, though I still am far from perfect, I am learning-learning-learning to set boundaries and NOT FEEL GUILTY. I miss my husband and I miss my daddy, but I can “visit” with them mentally without pain or sadness now, remember the wonderful times and laugh about some of the less than wonderful times even. So this past year has been a nightmare and also an AWAKENING. I think I am more grounded and more alive now than I have ever been. Thanks to all you wonderful folks out there for sharing this journey with me. (((hugs and always prayers))) to you all.
hi all some of you know my story;as i have been writing here a while now. well i have been no contact with the ex boyfriend s path for about four months now we broke up a long while before that and were friends then i cut all contact . he met someone else and i saw a photo of them onth the net and she was spit image of me but younger, by the way he said he left me cause i was too old. well nothing for four months which was ok by me i knew he was starting to see this other girl just as i broke off the contact. well out of the blue he just walked into my place of work on saturday last week. he used to work there also it is a public place so anyone is free to walk in. well when i saw him at first he had this angry p off look on his face then when he noticed i was watching and i was a bit shocked to see him he put this silly smile on his face like he was all happy. he knows people i work with too and they were present while this happened these people dont know the whole stroy about me and him so they think he is ok. well i didnt nt know what to do it was a difficult situation and a million things running thru my head at the time. any way he leaned in and gave me a kiss on the cheek and started to talk to me saying stuff like how are you what have you been doing blah blah. so i had to make chit chat as everyone else was there with us watching. he never mentioned his girl he was s upposed to be seeing last time we spoke, so i put 2 and 2 together and thougth it must of not worked out big suprise not. anyway magaged to get out of it cause of work so it ended with him giving me a hug and saying call me he also told me how good i looked. i was stunned at the audasity of him after 4 months of not a word and this so called girl he was dating he just comes into my work and is like lets get together and catch up i think because the other girl thing didnt work out. he always does this its like when something ends for him or dosnt work out he just thinks i am there waiting to lift his ego and spirits back up. niether of us said anything about the girl i didnt want him to think i wanted to know anything about her. so it just shows me the patterns these guys make. i m glad the other girl dumped him a i was worried for her . i would love to know what happend and how she or if she learned wha t he is like but he would not tell me the truth anyway. i was contemplating contacting her to warn her but i guess she figured something out fo r her self. anyway i have not contaced him since his visit to my work and he hasnt contacted me yet, he just dangled the sausage so to speake to see if i went for it. i hope he is as lonely as hell. it is so true they cant stand rejection or to be left alone so here he was trying to drum up me and who ever else was available i guess just amazing to see it in action after all the reading i have done here and else where people telling me they do this but to see it played out step by step by him it really hit home, what a user he is. i felt sick after he had been in . if he wanted to take a chance he could of rang me but i guess he was a fraid of rejection me not answering his call so he came into work where he knew i could not get away and had to talk to him. more control just as usual. feel free to comtent ladies or tell me of a similar experience you had like this. just wanted to share and keep you up to date with what is happening to me.
Dear Jules,
GOOD FOR YOU! You saw through his “bait” and saw the HOOK—I think under the circumstances you handled it right, it would have been poor taste to have made a scene at work.
However, now that the SHOCK value of it all is over, if he comes back again, you might say to him, “John (or whatever his name is) I would appreciate it if you would shop elsewhere. I don’t have any fondness for you or wish to resume any kind of relationship with you.” Just say it quietly and matter-of-factly.
I ran into my P XBF in my area a few weeks back at an auction he knows I attend frequently. It is 400 miles from his home so I know he didn’t just “pop in”—and he also knew he might “accidently” run into me there. I was TOTALLY taken off balance and shocked that he was there. I gave him the COLD shoulder and my best “icy stare”–which was all I could manage at the time. He likes to pretend to be “friends” and “friendly” with all his X-es (so he can screw them once in a while when he is witout regular supply or just for variety I guess) and since I wasn’t at work I could be COLD to him. I didn’t want him to get the idea that I approved of him or had any warm feelings for him at all.
Next time, if there ever is a next time, and there might be because we sometimes see each other at my living history events, I might say something to him—not sure. Last time I saw him, more than a year ago before this last time—I just pretended he didn’t exist and when he saw me in a group of people talking or listening to music, he would appear uncomfortable and leave the area.
You have TAKEN BACK YOUR POWER though, Woman, so you are moving on down the line toward healing yourself from this Psychopath…recovering, but becoming even stronger than ever! GOOD FOR YOU. It takes time, but I think with the support we find here, each day gets a little better.
He won’t take you so off guard ever again. (((hugs))))
Aww….thanks Oxy. Coming from a woman who’s seen MORE than her fair share of tragedy and heartache, gaining your respect is wonderful. I respect and admire many of you women who are always there, with your hands outstretched and your arms open wide, for the folks on this website searching for answers, comfort and support. Especially you, Beverly, Free, and Alohatraveler. I would harbor a guess that you all have probably saved MANY lives by being open, warm, caring and supportive. And listening. Just listening to horrific accounts that seem bizarre, surreal to the victim, but make total sense to you/us. We’ve all been tossed and torn by wickedness, now it’s time to take back what was rightfully ours in the first place: our dignity, our personal power, our innate strength in overcoming what once seemed like insurmountable odds. We are survivors. Hear us ROAR!!…:)