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.
Has any one read the “anxiety” thread Dr. Leedom did on Friday (comments there are closed)? Boy did that hit home with me. “Avoidence behavior”—because of the anxiety–just “not functioning” at ANYTHING, and at first it was terrible, totally debilitating, I couldn’t do even simple daily house hold tasks, and even now, I am still having to work very hard some days to “make” myself do things that I don’t want to do but know I need to do.
It is hard to move on if you have trouble getting enough energy to comb your hair, or to care if it is combed. I’m past that stage now, but still that “lack of ambition” sneaks in every once in a while and I have to MAKE myself do something.
That post really hit home, Dr. L, thanks.
yes ox…..im still in that phase…i can fake it at work 4 days…but 3 days at home i can barely leave my room…i forced myself to go to lowes and home depot and a plant nursery today…it felt good looking at the beautiful spring flowers……it sounds like living at your place with all those animals, must not only be awesome but truly a learning experience…how cool to know your animals so well…not many of us live like that today, so it sounds like never a dull moment….happy mothers day to you and to all
Thanks Newworld view,
Actually this will be the happiest mother’s day I’ve had in a LONG time….at least since my son C married the P-DIL 8 yrs ago last august. She distanced him from us as much as possible. Though we now live 350 miles apart, we are “closer” than we were when he lived on the farm. Talk more, and really communicate again. It’s a great feeling.
In some ways not having to go to work (I retired after my husband died) is good, but at the same time, it is easier for me not to “fake it” and sometimes faking it is actually good for us I think.
I do love the bucolic atmosphere and the farm, it’s always been my sanctuary, even when I was half way round the world, I knew it was HERE. Last year though when all this chaos went down it was like there was a great black cloud of evil hung over it. I thought seriously about moving away forever, but I’m glad now that I didn’t and I’m determined to stay here now. I won’t live in terror any more, just be reasonably cautious, but not paranoid. I’ve taken my stand again, and that’s only been in the last few weeks. No moving away permanently. If I have to take off for a while I will but not forever.
Watching animals, especially social animals, is interesting to me, and I think there is so much of US that is biologically almost programmed at least with bonding (like Dr. LEedom’s thread about the sheep) and other reactions. I’m reading a book now on Family Role Theory that goes into the biology of how individuals behave in a Unit–like an ant colony. You can’t find out about ants by studying one ant, but by studying the COLONY, and we are a “unit” with our social groups and our families, so when there is one part of the unit not functioning well (for whatever reason) it effects the whole unit as a whole.
Lots of good stuff in it about our functioning with our Ps…how they effect us both mentally and biologically.
I know that depression can sap your strength and resolve and “ambition” to accomplish anything as well as anxiety. After my husband died, for months I didn’t care if I bathed or not, if the floor was so dirty your feet would stick to it as you tried to walk across it. I just DID NOT CARE. I noticed it, sometimes, but didn’t have the will or strength to do anything about it. It just wasn’t important to me, though actually I do NORMALLY like a CLEAN house.
Like Dr. L’s young man though, I didn’t have a mother to call me “lazy,” so I called myself “lazy”— LOL It’s all part of the “moving on process”–but I think for me, it was one of the harder parts, and I still fight with it sometimes. When I become aware of it and my frustration builds with myself, I don’t “drive” myself too hard, but do “make” myself get up and do a little bit so I can see some “progress”–even a little bit. I realize that driving TOO hard isn’t good either. So I strive for a middle road.
Yes, the spring flowers are wonderful, and to me spring is a renewal of life after a dull gray winter. LIfe does go on, and I want to go with it! Happy mother’s day back to all!@.......
thanks to all of you who comented, i agree with you all though i may be sensitive to ps more now but they are there a lot of them in my age am 40. maybe not all ps but some screwed up dudes none the less and it does suprise me how many. ia m ready to date again im over the worst but still deal day to day like alot of us do . not desperate, thanks but i do want children and time is running out when i think about this, maybe its different for those who have already had children, think i talked about this in another blog here. maybe just the age thing and it is all catching up with men now and they have more baggage. i just dont want someone to fix up i can handle history thats normal but defaults no thanks. i do thank myself for finally taking notice of what they are really like though. maybe i , we just have to lift a few rocks up before we find the hidden treasure under one of those rocks. god bless and good luck to all of us in our endevours. ps. nobody semed to say thay found someone wonderful after the s path experience and had or has a great relationship anyone out there love to hear about that too ? well i do believe it exists somewhere.
ox……even though you say you retired,i KNOW that maintaining that farm is a full time job….but prob a most enjoyable one at that…perhaps you should turn it into a healing place for recovering from these creatures….we could work the farm for a few days/week and even pay you to do it and have evening book club like eckhart tolle……….im laughing so hard about the dirty floor yo can stick to…sometimes i feel like min e is like that, and im usually a neat person…i just dont care right now…………..free, i like your analogy to the weeds…we need to all get out of the weeds..lol again happy mommies day to all the moms and all those who are moms by proxy
Newworld view, when my kids were little and I was a stay at home mom, I took in short term foster kids, mostly emergency middle of the night things, or ones that needed tutoring or special needs. Later, I took one longer term foster kid.
My adopted son D has worked for the Boy Scouts for half his life, and is a counselor for the 3500 acre Scout ranch near us. My husband and I thought very seriously about establishing the farm as a foundation to work with troubled kids. There are several good ranches like that in my state, and always a need for more. When we deeded our land into the trust, the provisions of the trust are that at the death of my longest living child, the land goes to such a home for children. Even before all this chaos, none of us trusted my P-son or my son C’s wife not to squander what my family has worked so hard for for generations (the lands and the three houses) so we set it up so it could not be sold, but they could live here for their lives, and there would be enough money in the trust to maintain it, taxes, insurance etc. My P-son was so infuriated at the trust, he was trying to make sure that I died before my mom did so that a provision of the trust could be broken, he could get rid of my adopted son D, and have a bigger share of the proceeds, though he still would not be able to sell the lands and houses.
I know I am not ready right now (and may never be) to take on other people’s emotional problems, though I have been doing some work with collecting household items, clothing, etc. for those 15 families near here who lost their entire homes or farms to a tornado a couple of weeks back, and am boarding a couple of “homeless” horses for their owner whose farm and fences were destroyed by the storm.
There is a good chance that after my mother passes away that I will turn one or two of the houses here into DV shelters or sanctuaries of some kind. When I was working for the rural health clinics our “community outreach” project which I started was free medical care for the women and children at the local DV clinic. There are some free clinics here too that I might volunteer at a few days a week, but not yet ready. I’ve spent too much of my life taking care of other’s needs at the expense of my own, so right now–my own needs are primary. Getting to that point and NOT FEELING GUILTY about it has been a big step for me. A lot of my own self-worth I think came from “doing for others”–in both a healthy and in unhealthy ways as well.
Too much of anything is not good–even too much giving. So learning to prioritize and set boundaries is what I am working on now. Learning it is OK to leave the dishes if you are tired is a giant step–but leaving them for a month is too much of a leap! LOL Finding the balance between what is important and what is not isn’t easy when you are depressed, anxious, injured or ill.
A balance always between recreation and work, between contemplation and action, between giving and taking, between all of the poles of the things we do. Learning to say no to myself, learning to say no to others (and not feel guilty).
I am grateful and thankful to God that I have so many blessings and I do want to share those blessings with others, but no longer at the expense of my own soul. So the P-experience though painful has been one for a growth stimulus, so in the end, I think ANY thing however negative can be turned into a positive. Like Jules says, we may have to turn over a lot of rocks and find frogs before we find the “treasure”—whatever our personal treasure is. My personal treasure is that I don’t have to have a relationship with a man in order to be whole. I am a complete person in myself.
yes ox…..what a wonderful thing to have been able to help the foster kids..i hope to God their lives turned out well…but, who ever really knows…..and what a wonderful legacy to leave…hope the future caretakers will cherish it as much as you…..and yes it seems that we define so much of ourselves in the giving to others…..(i am a family nurse practitioner, but specializing in nephrology, transplant etc….due to the chronicity of their ds…dialysis, transplant…they seem to suck the life out of you…i do love what i do, and do like the advantage of taking care of the same pts for over 20 yrs…but they do tend to want to OWN me and because of the family like nature of seeing them weekly, boundaries frequently do get crossed…..i mention this only because i read awhile back that you too are an np) at any rate, i hope the day may come that we no longer NEED a blog such as this just to survive…..no self-pity, just wishful thinking
Newworld,
Yes, I am a Family NP for 30+ yrs, but retired from NP role and went to work as chg nurse for psych unit so I could decrease my hours in 2002 and spend more time with my family. I worked in various capacities in various places and enjoyed it all. Spinal cord and head injury for years and you had the same patients for years sometimes. My best friend for 25 yrs is the parent of a former patient, spinal cord injury.
Family medicinein the rural clinics was the same way,but it allowed you, I think to treat the whole person not just the “broken leg” or the “diabetes”—sometimes I did as much social work as medicine. 50% of family practice is psych treatment anyway and especially with chronic illnesses.
*I think we get caught up in being able to fix other people’s problems (I see so many dysfunctional people in the nursing field) and God knows I was/am one of them.
Aloha used the “best”!!!!! phrase I have ever seen to describe what state we were in INFORMED DENIAL. If that doesn’t particularly focus on those of us that have the KNOWLEDGE on a professional level, but DON’T USE IT AT ALL. Slap me silly if that didn’t hit home with me! I think somehow I stayed with the adolescent idea that I was “immune” to all these other problems that other people had emotionally. Talk about DENIAL. I had a therapist tell me once that I had the BIGGEST and THICKEST PAIR OF ROSE COLORED GLASSES SHE EVER SAW. I didn’t see the validity in that then, but gosh I sure do NOW. I wish I could have gone back in time and used what she told me and WHAT I DIDN’T HEAR. But hind sight is always 20/20. Can’t change the past, but I am darn sure going to change my future.
I still feel the need to “give back to society” and to share my blessings, but will do it in a different manner than I have in the past. BOUNDARIES and good sense.
When I worked with the spinal cord and head injured patients I told myself if I spent ALL my time crying in the bathroom about the patients I would get out, OR if I spent NO time in the bathroom crying I would also get out. It is all about balance. I don’t think you can be a good physician or nurse without caring some, but if you care too much, you lose your perspective, and you can’t see the trees for the forest.
I’m at a point now that I am trying to ACT on my own advice. In this blog, interacting with others who are in different stages of the disconnection and healing from the Psychopath, I can see myself and what I will revert to if I don’t continue on the UPWARD PATH OF HEALING. It is so easy to drop back into the “safe” and “familiar” dysfunctional paths that we have walked before. They were rocky roads for sure, but they were FAMILIAR and going out on your own, and making your OWN PATH is scary. EVen deciding which direction you want to go is a challenge, then moving along that path without guide posts, into unfamiliar territory is a new challenge.
Finding my own strengths and my own courage to walk those unfamiliar paths toward healing, becoming a better person, a more complete person is a new challenge and I’m glad I have had the support I have from my loved ones and the people here in starting on this journey. I have learned so much, but there is so much more to learn…and to act upon what I learn.
Stillstuck – Your story moved me incredibly; I stayed with my N for a long while following a suicide attempt, worried that if I left, I would have that on my shoulders. The terrible irony is that he got involved with a psychopath woman – this situation was what ultimatelty broke my marriage and was the catalyst for me to leave – she has been threatening suicide all year, and he has continued to make her promises to avoid dealing with her emotional blackmail. It’s so sick – on her part, on his – i had to get out.
It’s also interesting to me, the link of people involved in mental health profession who wind up in these situations too..my very good friend whose husband was a sociopath and who blamed his terminal cancer on her..she’s a psychoanalyst by profession…
The last conversation I had with my ex, before I began no contact (about 2 weeks ago i think?), i warned him about her, and i also tried to stress to him that if she kills herself, it’s simply not his fault – no matter what he promised or said. I don’t know why i tried to protect him, but i just couldn’t help myself – two wrongs just don’t make a right. And now it’s up to him. And her. On their OWN, as two responsible adults – everyone is ultimately responsible for themselves. It’s a simple truth.
OxDrover, Aloha, god, how much pain has been delivered on us. I’m FULL of self pity. I simply miss my ex. I miss him. I can’t help it. I’m not going back, i’m not even considering it, but i want my married status back – my house, my life, my partner. In his last words to me he said i never deserved this, that he was abusive, wrong, a cheater, that he didn’t know why. Why on earth would i continue to love him? But you don’t erase 20 years (13 married – i was SO young) overnight. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. He had always supported my career, and tonight he text-messaged me – said sorry for writing, but good luck tomorrow, i know you’ll be great – remembering that I start a new job tomorrow. I sobbed till I almost threw up. Is it part of the manipulation? is it sick to love a person WITh their sicknesses?
No fears, i am not going back, i won’t break ‘no contact.’ I’m just grieving so hard for the loss of what was. And what never was. God give us strength. I’m not religious, but god give us strength. I have never felt so alone.
Dear Tmassar,
I hear your intense pain, and the pain of stillstuck as well.
Yes, it is amazing that so many mental health professionals are in the “Informed Denial” that Aloha talks about—can you tell I love that phrase! LOL I think I at least, I can’t speak for the others, but because I was “in charge” at work, I thought I was “above” being that dysfunctional…boy, was I arrogant and WRONG!
Yes, many times Borderline Personality Disordered people and others too use “I’ll kill myself, and then you’ll be sorry” as a threat to get what they want. They really have no intention of actually doing it, but use it as a gesture or threat to get what they want. Of course this is quite cruel and a “last ditch effort” to get their own way.
Most times these people don’t actually end up doing it. Or they make an “attempt” half hearted and then it actually succeeds when they didn’t really intend to accomplish it. Of course suicide threats have to be taken seriously by the professional and others, but if it becomes a manipulative tactic to get their way, there has to be some way to deal with it other than “giving them what they want” and rewarding the for their threats as a manipulation tool
In the end, we are all responsible for our own lives, and for the taking of them if that happens. If I kill myself it is no one’s responsibility but mine. That doesn’t mean that those that love me or care about me might not blame themselves for my death. That is the most cruel thing about suicide is the trauma for the survivors.
I know that you miss the fantasy of your “happy home” your status as a married woman, etc. His “sorry” doesn’t hold water, in my opinion, but his words are right, you did NOT deserve that treatment. BTW Good luck with your new job. I know it is difficult to start a new job at any time, but to do it under stressful circmustances makes it much harder.
Take extra care driving and extra care with your own health. Stress does awful things to our bodies and makes us more prone to getting sick and having accidents because we get distracted. (((Big Hugs))))) and BTW, you aren’t alone—we’re here in cyber space rooting for you! Oxy