One of our readers wrote the following, nearly everyone of us has expressed the same sentiments:
One phone conversation with him could go from loving words in the very begining to total ugliness toward the end and he would often get really mean and hang up on me. It was like he was Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde all rolled into one. You never knew what he was going to be like…
It is part of human nature to develop strong bonds of affection in connection with an intimate sexual relationship. These bonds involve activity in the parts of the brain that are outside of our conscious awareness. These bonds are also not easily subject to conscious control.
Since understanding is helpful, I want to review some of what is known about the behavioral neurochemistry of love. Some of this information comes from studies of animals who “bond.”
1. Intimacy produces bonding. Sexual intimacy especially produces bonding. There are hormones released during sex that go right to the bonding parts of the brain and turn them on. Since sex with a sociopath is often more intense, so is the bonding.
2. After some bonding is already established, fear and anxiety increase the bonding. This is responsible for the Stockholm Syndrome, a syndrome where victims feel bonded to attackers. Sociopaths know how to suck you in with intimacy and sex, then intensify the bond by creating fear and anxiety.
3. Although we cannot consciously undo the bond, we can consciously decide not to act on our feelings.
4. Fortunately, humans are designed to be serial monogamists. That means will be bonded for the life of the other, not for life. With time these bonds fade if the other is gone. That is because in the past people frequently outlived their partners. I can say for sure that time does heal this wound, provided depression and symptoms of PTSD are addressed.
Loise, I understnd what you mean. You have to remember that this carp is 23 years old. I do still see him a couple of times a year, as he lives here and we still get together with the grown kids and grand-kids. He’s always been good to them. Just another confusing element to our story.
How could I not love him? But, disordered or not, he was who he was, and so was I. Neither one of us was gonna change and we were both living in hell together.
We fell in love with each-other for a reason. We completd what was missing in the other. The rocks in his head fit the holes in mine. We were made for each-other, because we were meant to cause eachother to find and fix our own unmet needs and woundedness. Unfortunately, we were both too f’ed up to see it through.
I think I came to my senses before he did, in some ways. I figured out I had issues and needed help, but he wasn’t ready, and he just turned outward toward others, who he saw as better supply, and he was never able to address his issues.
Still isn’t. They say sex addiction is a symptom of an intimacy disorder. He couldn’t really follow through when it got down to brass tacks. It’s easy to fall in love, but really hard to have a real life commited relationship for any length of time. People who come to it with deficits can hardly hope to succeed.
I heard a really good audio on this subject yesterday. I tried to post it under the thread about domestic violence, but don’t know how successful I was. You can google it. under, “shrinks 4 men, and then click on something like abusive relationships and thje WTF moment.
Don’t worry Loise. Eventually you will come to a point when you either do or don’t love someone and you really don’t want them. That’s part of what they do for us. They bring us through a developmental stage, and once wev’e come through it we can never go back.
I read a very good book last winter. I think it was entitled. “Coming Apart”. Not sure. I’ll see if I can find it and post the title.
okay. Heres the link for the audio:
http://www.shrink4men.com/2011/11/15/listen-to-the-shrink4men-radio-embed-relationship-stages-abusive-women-and-the-wtf-moment/
Now i’ll look for the title of the book.
kim,
If it is any consolation I am kind of where you are at….I wouldn’t so much even say that I have given up on love….Just that I haven’t put myself out there to find it and I certainly don’t expect it to find me.
My oldest sons father (my ex) has recently surfaced and has begun to try and build a relationship with our son. He was kind of out of the picture for over 20 years…And not a good dad to my oldest….Blamed the divorce for his absence in his life.
He is also seemingly trying to “mend” our past….And I am (and have been) so over him since our divorce.
He hasn’t changed and still will not accept any responsibility for cheating when we were married. He blames me for ending the marriage (still) and doesn’t seem to understand that cheating IS a deal breaker. Especially when it wasn’t an isolated incident…Duh…
He said to me ” But, I just thought that marriage is forever…what about the vow we made? ” For better and for worse? LOL.
kim:
I love reading your writings. It gives me a lot to think about. I didn’t realize you had grown children and grandchildren.
Yes, sex addiction is absolutely about an intimacy disorder. If you haven’t yet, please see the movie, “Shame.” It depicts a sex addict very well…very realistic. It was so good, yet so sad.
I really do hope I get to that point of still loving him yet not wanting him. I do think I will…I have to trust that I will. How do these disordered men have everyone loving them? I feel like if I was that disordered, everyone would run…haha! Instead, this man has women flocking to him all the time. Smh.
I will Google the shrinks 4 men and please do let me know the title of the book if you can find it…thanks so much.
http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-Relationships-Through-Ending/dp/157324547X#reader_157324547X And here’s the link for the book:
A very good book, I thought, but It was written about normal relationships, I think, not about those with spath’s. Still helpful, at least for me.
kim:
Thanks for the shrinks 4 men link (I’ve already bookmarked it) and this book recommendation. I’ll check it out! I appreciate it.
Yeah, Witty, the better for him and the worse for you. What do you say to him when he says something like that?
Is this triggering to you or are you so far over it that you no longer need the NC rule?
kim,
I am so over him. I waited a long time before getting a divorce. I didn’t want to have any regrets over breaking up the marriage so I tried everything I knew how to do to see if it was salvageable before ending it.
His remarks don’t trigger me. When he says something like that I am just brutally honest….To that remark I told him that there are certain deal breakers for any marriage. Cheating, especially more than once, would definitely qualify. (for me)
He isn’t a spath but has many Narcissistic tendencies. Very self serving & everything is all about him.
I have never regretted my decision to divorce him. By the time we divorced I honestly didn’t love him anymore. I had already gone through the long process of this in the final years of the marriage.
Kim,
The deciet was mindboggling, crippling…un fing believable. I have so many similar experience’s with my X that just left me totally bewildered.. One time M wanted to go to Ross and shop, he had never wanted to go to Ross before, well when we go in side there is a male clerk that stare’s us both down. In five minutes time M has disapeared, I walk the store for 30 minutes looking for him, I go out to the truck and look for him , I go back inside and look for him. I go set outside in my truck and shake with anger because I hate what I am thinking he’s doing.. ”Surely he has not gone to some back room with this store cleark so soon after we just got back together after I had kicked him out for advertising his cell number on a mensroom wall” oh how he begged and pleaded for forgiveness for that, he even cut his wrist to show how much he loved me..and how sorry he was…Well I go back into the store and there he stands and says hey Sugar you read y to go? I ask where he had been, he said in the store lookin at toys, well there are no toys at Ross… I felt like a lunatic..I asked what he had done and he said I was crazy.. to this day I dont have proof..and I will never know for sure but he was not in that store for 45 minutes…We argued on the way home and before we got home I was asking him for forgiveness for thinking he would do such a thing…Duh where was my head? Up my ass in the river of denial is where it was… His own mother told me not to get involved with him because he was a booger. And I felt sorry for him because he told me his mother had abandoned him at age two. She denied that.. Duh..But yes there was something good about M and I miss that so much…but the booger outweighed the good and I had to find some sanity, it didnt matter anymore, I did not want to live like that…Your right Kim we will never know all the answers, but I know to much to ever feel right with him…I dont obsess about him anymore, I just think of him..not good…but how does one forget something like that? He could cheat and lie right in front of me and convince me I was the crazy one… I really dont care who or what or how many he is doing.. I really dont… I just cant seem to forget ……So Kim, should I feel sorry for him because he had a sex adicktion? you tell me… I have never known a more vulgar expression of betrayal and deciet.
hens:
Hens, oh, Hens…how horrible!!!! What an ass. Unfucking believable is right!!! Wow. The shit these people do is beyond belief. I don’t ever want a relationship with someone like this ever again, but I think of mine also…a lot. That’s what they do…the damage they do gets into our psyche somehow and it’s the cog/diss…we still look at the “good” side of them. I don’t know a whole lot, but I do think this has done something to me forever.