Lovefraud recently received the following e-mail from a reader:
I have a question for you. I’ve been divorced for 3 years now from my ex-husband who had a porn addiction. I’ve tried the Internet dating sites on and off since, and have had nothing but bad experiences. What do you suggest I do/ how do I go about finding someone? I am really lonely and would like to have a man in my life. However, I’m so afraid of attracting the wrong kind still. If you have any suggestions, I’d be happy to hear them.
If you’ve had a run-in with a sociopath, before attempting to date again, you must first heal yourself. If you’re feeling lonely and afraid, it is an indication that you are not yet healed.
I believe that circumstances and situations come into our lives as a result of our internal states. The energy and emotions that we have within us are like giant magnets, bringing us more of the same. Perhaps you’ve heard this concept described as “The Law of Attraction.” I think it’s a real phenomenon, because I’ve seen it operate in my own life, whether I liked the results or not.
Negative emotion
When sociopaths come into our lives, they bring emotional betrayal, physical assault, financial ruin, psychological manipulation, family devastation—far more trauma than any of us ever bargained for. As a result, we are crushed, afraid, angry, frightened. Often our lives are on the verge of collapse.
We are overwhelmed by negative emotion and energy, which is totally understandable. So what happens? We get more of the same.
It happened in my life, and I’ve seen it in countless Lovefraud stories. The sociopath cheats on us, and we’re in a car crash. The sociopath takes all our money, and then we lose our jobs. The sociopath ruins our marriage, and then we get cancer or some other major illness.
So what are we to do?
Feel the pain
I believe that we must get the negative emotion and energy out of our systems. And the way to do this is to allow ourselves to feel the pain.
Usually, this means crying. Of course, we’ve all probably spent hours and hours crying, and we’re tired of it. We just want to stop. But the pain caused by the sociopath goes very deep, especially if we’ve had the predator in our lives for many years—years that we stuffed our emotions, afraid to let ourselves feel what we were really feeling. It may take a long time to release the pent-up tears.
Then there’s the anger. Anger is a physical sensation—just because we know why we’re angry doesn’t make it go away. Anger needs to be released appropriately. (It does no good to confront the sociopath, and may make matters worse.) My method of choice for releasing anger is visualizing the sociopath’s face on a pillow, and then pounding the crap out of it. The idea is to do something physical—stomping the floor, twisting towels—until we feel an emotional release.
But what often happens as we work on releasing the pain caused by the sociopath is that we find more pain beneath it. This may be disappointment in previous love relationships, anger at mistreatment during our childhoods, betrayal bonds with other people who abused us.
These are the negative emotions that attracted the sociopath in the first place.
In my case, I was lonely, even desperate, when the sociopath showed up on my doorstep. During all of my 20s and 30s, I couldn’t get a relationship with a man to work. I now know that it was due to my internal state, as described above. But when I turned 40, feeling that biological clock ticking, wanting to make a connection—well, I was primed to be plucked. Attracted by my negative internal energy, the sociopath swooped in.
With the devastation wrought by the sociopath, my pain moved to the focus of my awareness. I processed it. It was all I could do.
This is not pretty, so it is best done alone (unless you’ve got a really good therapist who can be with you through it). And it will take repeated sessions. You’ll release some, and more will bubble to the surface. Just keep releasing, until you drain the well of pain.
Healthy and peaceful
Then an amazing thing happens—when you purge the negative energy, it is replaced by peace, hope and self-love.
I am here to tell you that it works. Changing my internal state, moving from desperate to peaceful, made all the difference in the world. Not long after I began feeling better, I met the man who became my husband—in a bar.
Some people say you can’t meet anyone worthwhile in a bar, but location is not the issue. The issue is your internal state. If you’re feeling positive, healthy and peaceful, an appropriate person will just show up.
My husband and I have been together for eight years. We are happy. Our relationship is comfortable and easy. There are no games, only love. And our love is not a lie—it’s the real thing.
Dear Areyoukiddingme,
Thanks for coming back and telling us what helped. I feel like I too need to get connected into a support group more than my online communities. A guy who was visiting me last weekend turned his life around with the 12 step program. He stopped drinking 2 years ago, but only in the past year he began working the steps, going diligently to meetings and taking on sponsees. He has made huge strides in his life. He is a happy and successful person. I haven’t had much luck with support groups I’ve tried. I even dabbled in 12 step groups for a while but found the people so needy and wanting to descend on me like flies, pushing a lot of dogma on me, when they don’t seem particularly peaceful themselves. This guy seems genuinely happy so it is making me think. I’m wondering if there is a 12 step group I could join. I don’t drink or have any major addictions, and I can’t seem to find a generic group of people who are just following the 12 steps. Also, it takes a while (sometimes a year or longer) of friendship before I can open up to someone, though it sometimes depends on the person. I do feel like it’s the piece that is missing in my life right now. I am thinking of joining a few social clubs. I was invited to join Mensa, assuming I could pass the test. I think it will be good for me to do this. Does anyone have any ideas about generic 12 step groups? I have a background in intensive meditation practice, but Buddhist groups don’t seem to have built in support for people who have been abused.
I just came back from an acupuncture appointment. I went for a sinus infection. While it doesn’t seem to be helping the sinus infection, it seemed to jar some energy around a little and is helping me get in touch more with my feelings. I’m wondering how it would be to get acupuncture treatments that were specifically designed for depression and emotional clearing.
Dear Cutandrun,
When you set a boundary you must be prepared to cut that person out of your life if they do not respect that boundary.
As long as you are NOT willing to set a firm boundary and stick to it….oh, well you get the idea.
“Dad, it hurts me when you scream mean things to me when you are angry. Please do not do that.”
Eventually, If he keeps on doing it—what are your options? Continue to let him, or cut him off, and walk away.
The boundary I set for my egg donor was NO MORE LIES, and NO more money to the man (my P son) who tried to kill me.
She continued to do both. My only options were :
A) pretend it never happened
B) NO CONTACT, which is what I told her the consequence would be for her lying and sending money to the P-son.
Actually, I think she didn’t believe I would “hold out” for very long, that i would eventually break no contact and “give in”—what she does not realize is that I will never trust her, never play let’s pretend again.
Oxy,
I love when you post about boundaries. I always find myself nodding. Today is my mother’s birthday. As she has never made amends for all the pain she caused me nor ever honored her promise to let me talk about my feelings about the past when they come up, I am done with her, too. No fake relationships for me.
On an unrelated note, I wanted to share something with all of you that I have found very helpful today in dealing with depression. I had an acupuncture treatment for an unrelated health issue. It seems to have really helped with emotional healing. I may go back and get some sessions specifically for that. Acupuncture has no bad side effects like medications do, and it helps balance out organ function, which gets depleted with prolonged stress, trauma, and even a prolonged period of medications. I’ve had acupuncture before for stress and depression and loved it, but for that it can be somewhat expensive. Just wanted to pass that along to anyone wanting to try something different. It seems to be helping me get unstuck.
Dear Star,
Glad my posts are helpful t oyou, believe me I have to REINFORCE them on myself, so I am “preaching” to myself more than to anyone else. Boundaries are HARD when you have been taught all your life that you “must’n’t upset” anyone else no matter how they act, or “cause a scene.”
Heck, if someone “hits” me and I “hit back” then I AM CAUSING A SCENE HOW? It is not my purpose to “not upset” someone because THEY are acting abusively! How RUDE it would be for me to confront them. LOL ROTFLMAO, but I have to keep reminding myself.
I know what you mean, Oxy. Sometimes when I write about all the boundaries I’ve had to set with people, I find myself second guessing myself….”was I just being a bitch? etc.” Your boundary stories alway give me confirmation. Not too many people have the courage to go NC with their own mother. You are probably the only other one I know. And I know you would not do it if you had a choice about it, but there really is no other choice when she so grossly disrespects your boundaries, which could possibly be a life-or-death issue for you with your P son.
I set another boundary today and I’m quite proud. My boss has a tendency to micromanage a few projects I’ve taken on. I don’t really care except when she forgets to follow through, and that places an undue burden on me. So I told her today I was “off” one project, because she forgot to send out a time-sensitive survey that needed to be sent. I could have sent out the survey myself months ago, but she wanted to be the one to do it. So basically, I just handed her over the project. It felt so good. I could see the stress in her face when she realized she now had one more massive project to do. But eventually, she’ll figure out she brought it on herself via her micromanaging. It just feels so good to just say no.
Stargazer,
yes acupuncture is really helpful for emotional stress.
I think it was the only thing that got me through the first few weeks after I realized that I had been living with a homocidal maniac for 25 years.
There is a nationwide chain of accupuncture clinics called communichi. they do 10 people in one room all laying on recliner chairs and it only costs $15/session in seattle.
that’s because they don’t have private rooms for each person.
look at this link for practitioners in your area.
http://www.communityacupuncturenetwork.org/clinics#CO
I’m having PTSD again, and need to go in for a tune up.
Weird thing about the PTSD is that it makes me want to contact the P! It’s as though the fear and horror is so terrible that I want to face it. I want to confront it and either die or get past it. I keep fantasizing about it.
There is also a type of acupuncture called esoteric acupuncture that is supposed to balance your chakras and get you past all this emotional crap. but the only practitioner is in LA.
I really have to learn how to say no.
What is the community accupuncture like? There is one near me.
SC,
You go into a large, quiet room with soft, newage or eastern meditation music in the background. Their are about 10 recliners arranged far apart along the edges of the room.
Depending on how busy they are, the recliners could all be full with sleeping people or the room could be mostly empty.
You do a quick interview with the acupuncturist before you enter the treatment room. They do a limited acupuncture “set” because obviously you leave your clothes on and you recline on your back so they only do your front. But you do take off your socks and shoes. They check your pulse and insert needles in your ears, head, face, arms, hands, feet or lower legs. You fall asleep and stay for an hour or so. You decide when you are done “cooking”.
2 days ago I had this dream, it was two dreams in sequence I guess:
I’m in school and taken out of class to hear a lecture/field trip on evolution.
One teacher, a man with his face wrapped in bandages so only part of it was showing,
takes me somewhere and buys me a burger, but he keeps eating bites of it.
Then he kisses me and I kiss back, but just as I’m getting very passionate, he stops and takes me back to school.
Later, I’m meeting with my XP to consider new living arrangements. He is living in a trialer with an male friend of mine and lots of other grungy hippie guys. I tell him what I know that he is and I knock him to the ground and stomp on him all over his body until he is completely flat. Then we get back to re-arranging the furniture in the trailer so that I can move in. Past the area where we will be living, I can see that the trailer is really long and goes on like a tunnel for miles with lots of locked doors lining the hallway.
I think I get parts of these dreams but if anyone wants to take a whack at interpreting, be my guest.
Thanks SO much for that link, Skylar! I will be checking it out.